Budayeen Nights Book

I've read works by many (but nowhere near all) of the most iconic science fiction writers: William Gibson, Isaac Asimov, Philip K Dick, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein, and Stanislaw Lem, to name a few. As great as they all are, I've yet to have as much fun reading any of them as I do when I read George Alec Effinger. One of the founders of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, Effinger is best known for his classic cyberpunk novel When Gravity Fails. That book is the first in a trilogy known as The Budayeen Cycle (a.k.a. The Audran Sequence). That trilogy is excellent, and I highly recommend it.

After completing the third novel in the trilogy, Effinger started work on a fourth Budayeen novel, Word of Night, but he died in early 2002, with only two chapters completed. Shortly after he died, in 2003, a collection of his short stories was published, Budayeen Nights. This collection contains nine stories, but seven of them have already been published elsewhere, either as parts of novels or in magazines.

What's here is mostly great though. I came into this book looking for one last trip to Effinger's legendary futuristic Muslim city, the Budayeen. I got that and more, but like any book there are pros and cons to it. Pros? This book is worth the entire purchase price just from two things: the spectacular foreword by Barbara Hambly, and the previously-unpublished story Marîd Throws a Party, which is the first two chapters of the unfinished fourth Budayeen novel.

Cons? One of the stories, Marîd Changes His Mind, is literally just the first six chapters of the second Budayeen novel, A Fire in the Sun. This is by far the longest story in the book, and seems like a shameful throw-in just to get the book to a length where it could be sold. I didn't appreciate this at all, and it made the book seem like a bit of a money grab. It doesn't even make sense for it to be in the book. Why the second novel? Why not the first few chapters of When Gravity Fails, when all the characters were first introduced? Then you don't have to have read the Budayeen novels to know who characters are and what's going on. I also didn't care for the last two stories in the collection, one of which, disappointingly, was one of the two previously-unpublished stories.

Cons aside, this is definitely a collection worth reading; there are some great stories in here. As I said earlier, Effinger's work is just "fun". It brings a smile to my face, and it's a true joy to read. If you love the unique world of Effinger's Budayeen as much as I do, this is really a must-read, for the first two chapters of the unfinished fourth novel if nothing else. Even if you're not already a fan, but you're a science fiction fan in general, you have to read Effinger. Though he's highly underappreciated and not terribly well known, he's one of the greatest science fiction writers ever, in my opinion. Check out The Budayeen Cycle. You will not be disappointed.