George Alec Effinger
From Free net encyclopedia
George Alec Effinger (January 10, 1947–April 27, 2002) was an American science fiction author, born in Cleveland, Ohio.
He was a part of the Clarion class of 1970 and had three stories in the first Clarion anthology. His first published story was "The Eight-Thirty to Nine Slot" in Fantastic in 1971. During his early period, he also published under a variety of pseudonyms.
His first novel, What Entropy Means to Me (1972), was nominated for the Nebula Award. He achieved his greatest success, perhaps, with the trilogy of Marid Audran novels set in a 21st century Middle East, with cybernetic implants and modules allowing individuals to change their personalities or bodies. The novels are in fact set in a thinly veiled version of the French Quarter of New Orleans, telling the fictionalized stories of the transvestites and other people Effinger knew in the slums of that city. The three published novels were When Gravity Fails (1987), A Fire in the Sun (1989), and The Exile Kiss (1991). He began a fourth Budayeen novel, Word of Night, but completed only the first two chapters. Those two chapters were reprinted in the anthology Budayeen Nights, (2003) which has all of Effinger's short material from the Marid Audran setting.
His novelette, "Schrödinger's Kitten" (1988), received both the Hugo and the Nebula Award. A collection of stories was published posthumously in 2005 entitled George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth and includes the complete stories Effinger wrote under the pseudonym "O. Niemand" and many of Effinger's best-known stories.
Other stories he wrote were the series of Maureen (Muffy) Birnbaum parodies, which placed a preppy into a variety of science fictional, fantasy, and horror scenarios.
Throughout his life, Effinger suffered from health problems. These resulted in enormous medical bills which he was unable to pay. A lawsuit by the hospital tied up the rights to all of his books and characters, causing a dearth of Effinger material. Eventually the suit was dropped, and Effinger regained the rights to all his intellectual property.
Effinger was married from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s to artist Beverly K. Effinger, and for a few years shortly before his death to fellow science fiction author Barbara Hambly.
Effinger died in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Bibliography
- What Entropy Means to Me (1972)
- Relatives (1973)
- Mixed Feelings (1974) (short story collection)
- Nightmare Blue (1975) (with Gardner Dozois)
- Felicia (1976)
- Irrational Numbers (1976) (short story collection)
- Dirty Tricks (1978) (short story collection)
- Heroics (1979)
- The Wolves of Memory (1981)
- Idle Pleasures (1983) (collection of science fiction sports stories)
- The Nick of Time (1985)
- The Bird of Time (1986)
- When Gravity Fails (1987)
- A Fire in the Sun (1989)
- The Exile Kiss (1991)
- Those Gentle Voices (1976)
- Death in Florence (1978) (aka Utopia 3)
- Shadow Money (1988)
- Author's Choice Monthly Issue 1: The Old Funny Stuff (1989) (short story collection)
- The Red Tape War (1990) (with Mike Resnick and Jack L. Chalker)
- The Zork Chronicles (1990)
- Look Away (1990) (novella)
- Budayeen Nights (2003) (short story collection)
- George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth (2005) (short story collection)
- Planet of the Apes- Man the Fugitive
- Planet of the Apes-Journey Into Terror
- Planet of the Apes-Lord of the Apes
- A League of Dragons (unpublished)