Behind the Budayeen

An Interview with George Alec Effinger

Mr. Effinger is a science fiction author who has created a fictitious universe that became the setting for Infocom's Circuit's Edge.

CGW: First of all, we want to ask a few questions about the books which form the background of Circuit's Edge. For instance, how did the books come to reflect Islamic culture?

Effinger: Actually, When Gravity Fails is based on the French Quarter in New Orleans, but it has been transmogrified into the Budayeen. In general, I wanted to avoid the Japanese-dominated future described by William Gibson in his books, Neuromancer, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and Lucien Shepherd had already staked out Central America for his dark future, I decided that the Islamic world offered the best potential for merging a lesser known culture with an advanced future.

CGW: There is one particularly unique facet about your world in both the books and the game. We're talking about the sexual crossovers. Was there a social agenda in depicting characters with switches in sexual identity? In fact, doesn't Marid seem to prefer people who have changed their sexual identities?

Effinger: I don't know exactly how it happened, but I was trying to create a world where people could not pigeonhole others based on sexual identity. Once I had created the world, having Marid be completely heterosexual would have been cowardly. I think you'll like the third book of the series. It has kind of a soap opera between Yasmin (Marid's former lover), the widow, and Marid.

CGW: Now, to be a little more relevant to the game itself, what was your involvement with the game?

Effinger: Basically, I demanded a certain degree of control in order to be certain that the on-screen messages would appear in my style. I wrote almost all the messages that appear on the screen. In fact, I probably wrote about 75% of everything on the screen. There are only a couple of side-plots that I didn't see.

Beyond that, I provided Westwood Associates [Ed: The developer used by Infocom in producing the game.]) with a list of all the characters and places in gravity and fire and they placed them the way they wanted.

CGW: Your books have some pretty mature themes in them with plenty of sex and violence. Was there any problem in transforming your fiction into a computer game?

Effinger: Actually, references to sex and drugs were a problem. I wrote the sex scenes in a tasteful way, but the drug stuff had to go. Mediagenic didn't want any references to drugs. Personally, I don't want to be supporting drug use or anything like that, because in the books, whenever Marid uses drugs he gets punished in some way or another.

I also don't know why Mediagenic took the condoms out. I was trying to say something positive by mentioning them.

CGW: Getting into the fiction a little bit, if you could have the kind of "moddie" (a personality modification chip which plugs into the brain and enables one to take on the personality characteristics of either a real or fictitious character) you describe in the book, what moddie would you most like to use?

Effinger: Lou Gehrig, probably, I'm the biggest baseball fan in the world. Of course, it would be great to experience Bob Feller. I'm a long-time Cleveland Indians fan.

CGW: We understand. Some of us like the Chicago Cubs. Getting back to the game, though, we wonder about the amount of violence in your books, as well as the game. For example, your short story, "No Prisoners", seems to justify war as an instrument of social policy.

Effinger: I'm actually anti-war in my philosophy, just on this side of being a pacifist. With regard to "No Prisoners", I believe that war can be like surgery in a World War II setting with clear-cut villains. However, if you were born in an Islamic country, war would be understood differently. Frankly, I think one of the reasons we have difficulty in dealing with Islamic countries is because we know as little about them as we did about the Vietnamese. We don't know what is important to them and we are ignorant of what motivates them, even trying to convert them by force.

CGW: Do you think that the study of Islam in preparation for writing the books and the game has changed you yourself in any way?

Effinger: Well, Islam has, basically, five e pillars that the devout follower tries to keep: testify to one god with Mohammed as his prophet, pray five times a day, make pilgrimage to Mecca, keep Ramadan and give to the poor. That last pillar has probably changed my attitude the most. I've learned to be more generous. Did you know that there are documented tales of one beggar passing another on the way home and giving his alms to the other?

CGW: No, but we were impressed with how Marid learned to be more generous in A Fire in the Sun.

Effinger: In fact, Marid is almost completely autobiographical. Many of the gorier things in "Gravity" were actually witnessed by me at one time or another. I have sort of a fascination with the way things are in the lower rungs of society. In fact, I've probably done a lot of foolish things, but I've got a writer's curiosity about the lower depths of society. The main story in "Gravity" was based on a transvestite dancer I knew that was murdered. The police in the real city didn't do anything about the crime. They didn't care about those people and felt like they had gotten what was coming to them. The ending, by the way, was true.

CGW: So, you transformed the story and set it in the Budayeen? Are there other times you've drawn from real life?

Effinger: Well, "Fire" is based on another true story. Paul Jaworski is the name of the man who really killed my grandfather. In 1928, my grandfather was killed in the line of duty. He was always a big hero in my family and is still honored in a station house in Cleveland.

CGW: How was working on the game compared to writing science fiction novels?

Effinger: Actually, I found working on the game much tougher than I thought it was going to be. I was very proud when Infocom asked me to work on the project and it was more work than I thought it was going to be. Working with the Westwood people and the Infocom people, has been a real pleasure. The parts of the game I've played, I've enjoyed very much.

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