May 10, today as I’m writing this, is the birthday of George Alec Effinger (1947-2002). George was a regular at Armadillcon for a number of years back in the nineties. He was very easy to approach and talk to.

He has faded into obscurity these days. He wrote a handful of stand-alone novels, but one (Nightmare Blue) in collaboration with Gardner Dozois and one (The Red Tape War) in collaboration with Mike Resnick and Jack Chalker.

He was working a cyberpunk series featuring a character named Maurid Audran, who lived in an Arab ghetto called the Budayeen. He didn’t live to finish the series, but the three novels (start with When Gravity Fails) and the collection from Golden Gryphon press are worth seeking out.

But I want to highlight a series of short stories and novelettes Effinger wrote through the eighties and nineties. They were collected in Maureen Birnbaum, Barbarian Swordsperson in 1993. another three stories were written later and not included in this volume. These were a series of tongue-in-cheek tales that palyed with the tropes of classic pulp adventure. Continue reading →