Budayeen Nights: Stories

Introduction to The Plastic Pasha

This is what George had to say about “The Plastic Pasha”:

“It’s about Marîd Audran’s kid brother (I’ve mentioned in the books that their mother sold the younger brother when they were young). He’s grown up now and become the ruler of Algeria. I don’t think Marîd ever meets him, though. The story’s about the official acceptance of the brain-wiring technology in the Islamic world…Somebody comes up with a personality module of the perfect Islamic governor, and that leads to a battle over who is qualified to wear it….”

George had also told me that the personality moddy was that of Thomas Jefferson — one of George’s personal heroes — thus leaving the reader with the rather puzzling question of who’s really in charge here?

George’s relationship with his own brother was stormy and difficult, and they finally became estranged about three years before George’s death. I don’t know how, or if, that would have translated into this story, or which of the characters we’ve met so far, in the few pages that he wrote, is the protagonist, if any.

George finally began work on this story the week of April 15, 2002; I got this fragment off his computer’s hard drive after he died.

— Barbara Hambly