A Fire in the Sun

A Fire In the Sun (1989) is the second SF novel in the Budayeen series, following When Gravity Fails. In the previous volume, Friedlander Bey paid a large sum of money for Marid to have cerebral augmentation, with both anterior and posterior connections. Marid found the personality modules and add-ons to be quite helpful, especially when he confronts two killers that have been haunting the Budayeen. In this novel, Marid Audran travels to Mauretania to see his mother and ask a few questions about his father. Saied the Half-Hajj accompanies him on the bus and they pull the lost diamond scam at stops along the way. When they reach Algiers, Angel Morgan insists that his father was Bernard Audran, a French sailor, who had left them when Marid was four. But Friedlander Bey's records state that this man had died before Marid was conceived. Returning to the Budayeen, Marid visits Chiriga's club for a few drinks. Chiri is a big kaffir -- a black woman -- with filed teeth and ritual tattoos. Nobody wants Chiri to be angry with them. However, she still welcomes Marid into her bar despite his prior violence and his new job as a cop; she serves him a shot of White Death, the drink that he had invented. Sipping his liquor, Marid watches the dancer as she finishes her set. Afterward, Indihar solicits a tip from him and he stuffs a kiam bill in her cleavage. She moves on to the other customers for more tips, but returns to Marid and asks him what it is like to work for Friedlander Bey. She stays with him until he leaves. Arriving at Friedlander Bey's estate, Marid notices an unknown woman going up the stairs. He is told that she is Umm Saad. When he asks Friedlander Bey about her, Marid is told to destroy her and her son. The next morning, Marid is awaken by his sleep control daddy to find that he now has a slave of his own. Kmuzu is a tall, well built kaffir, with a long, serious face and a shaven head; he is a practicing Christian. Kmuzu refuses to admit that he is a spy for Friedlander Bey and insists that he is Marid's friend, yet he has been told to limit Marid's drug use. In this story, Marid is assigned as the partner of Jirji Shaknahyi by Lieutenant Hajjar and tasked with investigating Reda Abu Adil, a competitor of Friedlander Bey. Shaknahyi is not happy about having a rank amateur as a partner, but they both make the best of it. Marid buys a Complete Guardian moddy to provide the background he needs as a street cop; Laila also sells him a Wise Counselor moddy. After almost getting them both killed in a bomber incident, Shaknahyi crushes the Complete Guardian moddy and threatens to do the same to any other personality module that Marid uses while they are patrolling. Later, Shaknahyi invites him to supper and Marid finds that Indihar is Shaknahyi's wife; he also learns that they have two sons and a daughter. Friedlander Bey presents Marid with the title to Chiri's club. When he gets there on the way the copshop, Chiri thro

The narrative in 'When Gravity Fails' is uneven; Marid in particular is supposed to be a relatively uneducated son of a prostitute, yet he compares himself to Hamlet. Eh? 'A Fire in the Sun makes no pretensions and slips like that. It is the fully contained story of Marid's struggle between his old life of the Buyadeen hustler, and the new life in "Papa" Friedlander Bey's employ. No background or further reading are required. This book is better than both "When Gravity Fails" and "The Exile Kiss". I'll go as far as to say that it's almost criminally obscure and is one heck of a read. Effinger often makes a point of the supposed paradox between religion and reality; in this case he chooses Islam, in part for its beauty and depth, but also in part because 'A Fire in the Sun' could happen nowhere else. It doesn't detract from the book and only pushes it higher in the ratings. Anyone interested in a story with heartbreaking reality behind slick lines should read this one.

As mentioned, this is the second book in a (currently) three book series. Sadly, there won't be a fourth, as George Alec Effinger died last year. It looks like we'll get a taste of it, with "Budayeen Nights" being due in September 2003. From what I've read, this is a collection of short stories and is not the 4th novel we've been waiting for.In this book, Marid works as a policeman in the Budayeen (a walled portion in an anonymous Islamic city, where pretty much anything goes) and making sure that his patron's interests within the police are taken care of. At it's heart, like the first book, it's a mystery...but one with a colorful (to say the least) cast of characters. There is a focus on cybernetics, landing the book squarely in the cyberpunk sci-fi genre, but the electronic gizmos are not the focus of the story. The levels of sex and drug use, and to a slightly lesser extent the violence, in these books is astounding but I don't feel it took anything away from the story.

The 3 books (so far) of the Audran series are some of the best SF that has been available in recent years. Sadly often a mix of bargain bin chance find or out of print & unobtainable it can be very difficult to get hold of them, but when you do the satisfaction is all the greater.The premise behind the series is brilliant. It places the characters in a cyberpunkesque middle east landscape but rather than in the course of one book turning characters into world beating superheroes - the characters remain grounded in an often seedy but very consistent universe. There are real shades here of Phiip K Dick at his best. It may not be SF for juveniles (wish fulfillment if any is darker and a lot more adult).People in this series spend much of their time doing very human things (evasion of reality & difficult questions through drink, drugs or media being the most common). These books certainly live up to one valuable SF trend of holding a mirror to current daily life.

This book is the second in a series of books (3 so far) about Marid Audran. In this book, he searches for his past while trying to stay alive as a cop, investigating strings of murders... The excellent blend of cyberpunk technology, mystery, and action make it a great story, and I have read it 5 or 6 times so far.