Tim Powers

American fantasy author.

His works are mostly notable for being `secret histories' - he uses actual, documented historical events, but shows another view of them, in which magic is a major moving force in the motivations and actions of the characters.

Novels:

• `The Drawing of the Dark' - The siege of Vienna was actually a struggle between Muslim and Christian magicians over the spiritual heart of the West, which happens to be a small inn and brewery in Vienna. The 'dark' of the title is a beer that has been brewing for centuries, which the Fisher King will eventually drink.

• `The Anubis Gates' - Probably Powers' most popular book, and winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. An Egyptian magician, realising that magic is gradually becoming ineffective (the spread of Christianity somehow having a magic-suppressing effect) , calls on Anubis? in an attempt to stop this process: the attempt fails disastrously but something happens. The story moves to the present day, where a millionaire is organising an expedition into the past: his researchers have discovered `gates' opening in predictable times and places, where time travel is possible (the result of the failed magical ceremony centuries earlier). The hero, an expert on an obscure 19th century poet, William Ashbless¹ is one of those who wind up in early 19th century London. The plot is far too complicated to summarise here, featuring Byron?, [Samuel Taylor Coleridge]?, time travel paradoxes and a further jump to a frozen 17th century London. One thing is evident, Powers is having a lot of fun with this novel, and the reader generally does too...

• `Dinner at Deviants Palace' - unusuallly for Powers, this is set in the future, in a postatomic America in which an alien psychic vampire is slowly taking over.

• `On Stranger Tides' moves to the 17th century Caribbean; with pirates (many of them real people), Voodoo, zombies, [Ponce de Leon]?, and a strangely quantum-mechanical Fountain of Youth.

• `The Stress of Her Regard'

• 'Last Call'

• `Expiration Date'

• `Earthquake Weather'

Notes:

¹ William Ashbless never existed: he was invented by Powers and his school friend James Blaylock; they quoted extracts from Ashbless' poems in their English essays, and reportedly fooled their teacher into believing him to be real. Ashbless also appears in a couple of Blaylock's novels.