When Gravity Fails is a cyberpunk novel by George Alec Effinger, published in 1987. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novel and the Nebula Award for Best Novel. February 2006 : ← - January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December- → 28 February 2006 (Tuesday) Al Askari Mosque bombing: Sixty-eight people have been killed so far today in Baghdad, Iraq. ... Berlins Sony Centre in Potsdamer Platz reflects the global reach of a Japanese corporation. ... George Alec Effinger (January 10, 1947–April 27, 2002) was an American science fiction author, born in Cleveland, Ohio. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Winners of the Hugo Award for best novel. ... Winners of the Nebula Award for Best Novel. ...

Like William Gibson, the linguistic style is generally coarse and occasionally opaque. But the metaphors are less florid, and the story telling, while sometimes lapsing into rambling diary monologue, remains less distant — and indeed approaches the reader as if in friendship, yet without being over familiar. Some credit William Gibson with writing the most clear-cut examples of the Science Fiction genre known as cyberpunk, as well as coining the term cyberspace. ...

Like Gibson, Effinger combines mind altering drugs with mind altering machines. However, the drugs are more prominent, often tossed with wry souffrance — and social connections are rarely a savior in Effinger's world, but rather the cause of more painkillers, uppers, downers, and so on.

Where Gibson sees the future West moving inextricably towards Japan, Effinger twists the future towards the Middle East instead. In the process Effinger effortly drops the benefits of future high-tech developments firmly in the gutter — where it will inevitably land, given humanity's incessant ability corrupt any vision, no matter how lofty. Perhaps the most disturbing image, that of Microsoft making chips that plug in your brain to teach you anything instantaneously, may have been unstated inspiration for the Matrix movies. The term Western world or the West can have multiple meanings depending on its context. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT, SEHK: 4338) is an American computer technology corporation with 2005 global annual sales of close to $40 billion USD and about 64,000 employees in 85 countries and regions which develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. ... The Matrix is a science-fiction/action film first released in the USA on March 31, 1999, written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski. ...