When Gravity Fails: Kill Weeds

George Alec Effinger's When Gravity Fails: on shelves since '87, what's your excuse?

Gaston Bachelard, in the Psychoanalysis of Fire, recalls the winter festivals of his youth wherein brulot (brandy burnt with sugar) was prepared.

" My father would pour into a wide dish some marc-brandy produced form our own vineyard. In the center he would place pieces of broken sugar, the biggest ones in the sugar bowl. As soon as the match touched the tip of the sugar, a blue flame would run down to the surface of the alcohol with a little hiss....If the flames wavered and flickered, father would stir at the brulot with an iron spoon. The spoon would come out sheathed in fire like an instrument of the devil."

You know damn good and well he mulched. Brandy fire that can turn a spoon into the instrument of the devil could only come from vines coddled in mulch. It's in our very souls as humans to dick around with anything we've planted. It's not possible to just watch it grow. We must be proud when the fruits are bursting forth from the vine; a pride that comes only from aiding its growth. And so humanity continues to mulch.

Mulch has no class boundaries. Mulch is the great equalizer. Wealthy suburban Americans Mulch. The Queen of England's gardeners mulch. Rooftop plants in the barrios of Mexico City are mulched. Peasant farmers in India mulch. Freidlander Bey; George Alec Effinger's Budayeen based international kingpin, probably mulched his garden. That's what makes him "Papa". He mulches. He mulches the ghetto streets of the Budayeen, and Marid Audran is his mulch. When Gravity Fails, Mulch will keep you down.

Audran is applied to the streets in a thick layer, to rid them of parasitic insects and suffocate the weeds. Papa gives him a job with the police, that municipal half-mulch oft applied with impudence, and he thus becomes a metaphor for composting. The new soil is created from the decayed matter of the old guard, with a handful of good clean organic material tossed in to speed the process. The result is an Uber Mulch; the police have access to Papa's instrument of the devil and the instrument of the devil has unhindered access to the city. The flames waver and flicker, and papa stirs the brulot with an iron spoon. Killers are brought to justice, and by that I mean killed. Criminals are hauled in to the station. Debts are paid. Business is business. Mulch is mulch.

This novel is beautiful, intellectual, a brutal treatise on power and control over the human spirit. Stop what you are doing and read it right now.