Into the Archives: The Mills of the Gods

As long ago as April I knew of the coming of The Mills of the Gods by Tim Powers (published on December 2^nd), so when Kaitlyn asked me what I wanted for Christmas I had a ready answer. You can see the details about the book on that previous post; for here and now, suffice to it say it involves another one of Power’s ‘explorations of the strange bindings within historical circles.’ This time it’s of Paris between the World Wars. By a strange coincidence, Jimmy Akin on his yearly podcast episode Alone Together at Christmas answered a question about what he enjoyed reading, and he mentioned Tim Powers as one of the authors, with Expiration Date as one of his favorites of Power’s books he's read so far. I’ve read half of Mills already; it’s a real page turner. It was a Merry Christmas, indeed.

Wish Fulfillment: Five Years of the Wish List (Powers & Blaylock)

A Prophecy of Powers

The Mills of the Gods Hardcover – December 2, 2025

by Tim Powers (Author)

---

PARIS, 1925 –

HARRY NOLAN is an expatriate American, making a meager living as an illustrator for a low-paying magazine, but his life is upended when he is assigned to illustrate an anonymous article about the death of a god—for a centuries-old French brotherhood, the Sauteurs, are determined to suppress the story the article tells. The Sauteurs have burned the magazine’s office and killed the editor, and Nolan has the only surviving copy of the article. The author turns out to be a local writer named ERNEST HEMINGWAY, who—at first—tries to distance himself from the article and its lethal consequences.

VIVI CHASTAIN is a rootless 19-year-old orphan who sustains herself by betting on horse races—aided by the spirit of the man she was in a previous life. But now that old identity is crowding her consciousness, threatening to push her own precarious identity into oblivion. It was her alcoholic occasional “stepfather” who told Hemingway the story about killing a god, and the Sauteurs are now aware of the story—and of her.

The SAUTEURS maintain their identities past death through controlled reincarnation—when members die and are reborn, the brotherhood finds their newborn incarnations, kidnaps them, and raises them in special nurseries, where they can fully resume their previous lives. Vivi escaped from one of these nurseries when she was six years old, and so her previous identity has not yet consummated his possession of her. The Sauteurs want that consummation to happen—soon.

GERTRUDE STEIN is the hub of literary and artistic Paris, and knows many of the city’s supernatural secrets. She has written a book which appears to be nonsense but which can be used to deflect the kind of psychic assault that threatens Vivi, and she becomes a Merlin-like mentor to Vivi and Nolan—

—who find themselves reluctantly thrown together as hunted fugitives. Their struggles to evade the murderous Sauteurs and free Vivi from her increasingly intrusive previous self lead the pair to a mysterious hermit who lives in the towers of Notre Dame cathedral, and the haunted catacombs under Paris, and a confrontation with the Roman goddess Cybele in an other-worldly temple on an island in the Seine. In pursuit of a secret painting by PABLO PICASSO, they learn that the god whose death the Hemingway manuscript describes is Moloch, the child-devouring Phoenician god mentioned in the Bible—and that the Sauteurs make sacrifices to Moloch to maintain their reincarnations.

From the narrow streets and rooftops of post-war Paris to, finally, a supernatural battle between gods in a remote village in Spain, Nolan and Vivi contend with forces natural and supernatural, enemies living and dead , and ultimately find themselves pitted against the god Moloch himself—at peril of their eternal souls.

The Mills of the Gods is a harrowing supernatural adventure, full of color, drama, and romance, as only Tim Powers could tell it. 400 pages. - Amazon.

---

I've been wondering when I'd see another new Tim Powers book. I was able to catch up with missed Powers publications between new novels for a while, but for the past few months I pretty much had everything, at least anything within my pay grade (I can't spend $200 on an ancient four page give-away pamphlet) and was starting to faunch at the bit. Knowing that I have a new Powers book to look forward to gives me an added interest in the future, another lure to keep me going, as it were. That it takes place within the milieu of the Lost Generation in Paris gives it added interest, as Hemingway was my brother Mike's particular literary mentor, and I therefore know a little bit about it. And him. Powers's explorations of the strange bindings within historical circles inform much of his work, be it pirates or Romantic poets or spy rings. I sometimes wonder why he doesn't 'explore' the Inklings, but perhaps he sees that as low-hanging fruit (several authors have made fictional adventures about them already) or maybe he doesn't want to poach on fellow fantasists and Christians. Although if he did write such a book I am sure it would be amazing and streets beyond anything that's been produced yet. 

Update!

The Proposed Cover

Well, Bless My Ash

I’ve been interested in the career of ‘William Ashbless’ since at least the last years of high school; I remember him being quoted in The Elfin Ship by James P. Blaylock. I learned much more about him, first in Blaylock’s The Digging Leviathan (1984) and then in The Anubis Gates (1983) by Tim Powers. They had created Ashbless in their college years in the early 70’s and had unwittingly had him as a major character in their novels, only finding it out when their editor pointed it out to them. Ashbless has appeared in various degrees in more of their works; Tim Powers in fact tries to mention him in one form or another in all of his books (sometimes as Ceniza-Bendiga) as a form of good luck charm.

I’ve been trying to get all of ‘Ashbless’s’ published works, and I have On Pirates, The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook, and Pilot Light. But one item has eluded my grasp: Offering the Bicentennial Edition of the Complete Twelve Hours of the Night: 1785–1985, a prospectus for a non-existent collection of Ashbless poetry, published by Cheap Street Press in 1985. It is a tiny sliver of a thing, just a cover and a single sheet of paper, and only 100 copies, printed up as a joke and handed out for free at the 1985 World Fantasy Convention. I’ve seen copies of it going out now for in excess of $200, way out of my price range, especially for such a slight thing.

Still, I always kept looking around for a copy I could afford, so curious was I about the work. Imagine my surprise when I found it sold at an auction for $50. It was gone, of course, but there were pictures of it, clear as a bell, at least the poem part of it. At last, I could at least read it. I quickly downloaded the pictures and transcribed the lines for easy reading. Then I transcribed the text describing the proposed book, the description itself an interesting fiction. This was a little more difficult as it was printed on dark, sometimes folded, pages. But eventually I had the whole thing, more or less.

And now I faced a quandary. I wanted to post the thing, to share it with anybody who might be in my same position. After all, it had already been published, as it were, on the auction website. It wasn’t the complete thing; there were still unguessable (well, kind of guessable) lacunae in the text. And the value didn’t completely reside in the words, but mostly in the artefact itself, with its history and provenance, signed by both authors and William Ashbless himself (Powers and Blaylock both signing one part of his name). To own such a thing people would still need to buy it. I don’t think I’ll be doing any harm to any sellers, and certainly none to the authors, I hope; the pamphlets have long since passed out of their profit-grasp, though I’m sure they still have the copyright. If any one asks me, I will certainly remove it. Well, anyway, here it is, as far as I can tell.

The Twelve Hours of the Night

 

"Yonder the ebon sails approach, in sight

Of hells made brighter by comparison;

Under this dead men’s sky the sun god’s boat

Rocks on the tide that surges blackly from

Eternity, and ebbs dawnward despite

Rude parliaments of ghosts upon the shore

Intent on begging passage … What dread thing

Ghastly in form, is this, though, rising up

Hideous to behold, from this necrotic stream?

“Take me hence!’ cries Osiris, when the dire

Insatiable serpent lifts its ovoid head –

No more shall these shadows show obedience,

Though, to this ungerminating king,

Howe’er unhappily he wave his parts.

Even as he cries, in fact, Apep the snake

Grabs him upon the fundament; bites it

Right off his body, then spits it aside.

“Oh no!” Osiris does complain, and then

Osiris is himself spat to the shore.

Vanquished for now, grievous asunder bit,

Evolving piecemeal, stoic Osiris lies

Knowing it all before – and now content,

Implacable through this undignified

Division, to await reassembly."

-William Ashbless

 

ANNOUNCING

"In late December of this year the [International William Ashbless] Society will publish the first complete [version of The Twelve Hours] of the Night, to commemorate the [200^th anniversary of its author’s] birth. This historically important volume [has been anxiously anticipated by] scholars and reviewers ever since its announcement [about 4 words, including ‘at’?] the Society’s annual gathering in London.

ABOUT THE BOOK

"This deluxe edition will include an introduction [----------] and [--- --] annotations by the noted historian and Ashbless [expert William Hastings]. Besides being a published poet himself, [he is chairman of The] Eleventh Hour, the Los Angeles chapter [of IWAS]. [This is an excerpt] from his insightful introduction:

"Lord Byron once described the time [minor Romantic poet] [Ash]bless as “a damned improbable character”, [and the details of] Ashbless’ life are hard to establish. It [----------] born somewhere west of the Blue Ridge [ -----------] Craig County Virginia, in late 1785, and [in 1810 moved to England] where he spent most of the rest of his life. In 1811 he married Jacqueline Tichy, who died in 1839; Ashbless [was killed in 1846], presumably by some enemy out of his [colorful past]. Among [-----] his obscure works are The Twelve Hours of the Night. [3 words]

An Account of London Philosophers, and its companion volumes An Account of London Madmen and An Account of London Scientists. There is some circumstantial evidence that portions of these last [works] were actually written after his death, and Stevenson, in a letter to Henry James, cites Mayhew as a possible collaborator. His reasoning is [---in] at best.

"Included in this version will be the notorious “suppressed two-dozen [lines]” Hazlitt refers to in his essay “Two Inconsequential Poets.” First published in the PMLA in 1940, these are the flimsy basis of scholar Brendan Doyle’s contention that the science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein may have borrowed from The Twelve Hours of the Night to [con]struct his famous short story “By His Bootstraps.” Brendan Doyle disappeared [under?] mysterious circumstances in England in 1983, though, and whatever basis he had for this theory seems to have disappeared with him.

"As a footnote, and flying in the face of common sense and of the reliable [---] account of Ashbless’ death in the Woolwich Marshes in [1846], there surfaced in Los Angeles, California, between 1935 and 1940, a [po]et named, preposterously, William Ashbless, who had clinging to [him] bits and pieces of evidence that suggested that he was Ashbless the Ro[mantic] poet, prodigiously old. A founding member of the Cahuenga [poets? school? school of poets?], his own literary reputation is, of course, fairly solidly established, [---]ly on the strength of his Amazon Moon sonnets and his long im[pene?]trable Rippling England Bleeds. He disappeared beneath the city [-- Rancho? Pa]los Verdes twenty years ago after a series of half understood misadventures.

"The notion of the two men being one and the same is, of course, [---]ess, as almost certainly, is the rumor that this false Ashbless has [resur]faced, and that a collection of recent poems is to be published in [the P]aris Review next year."

                             William Hastings, The Maze Shed

                             Eagle Rock, California May, 1985

A DESCRIPTION

"The definitive edition will be printed in hand set types upon pure linen paper handmade in France especially for the IWAS edition of The Twelve Hours of the Night. This volume will be bound in three-quarter levant with vellum over boards and vellum doublures. The books will be encapsulated in handcrafted mahogany drop-back folding boxes. The binding was designed and executed by world renowned binder Rummondo Hardcase whose fine bindings have been exhibited in the Louvre.

"There will be 100 copies of The Twelve Hours of the Night printed of which 90 copies are available to the public for L500.00. Remittance or inquiries should be directed to the nearest IWAS society chapter.

"Further inquiries may be made of the nearest chapter or branch of the International William Ashbless Society. I-W-A-S London/Los Angeles/Sydney. Printed in London."

Here is an interesting talk that goes into the Ashbless phenomenon in more detail; his character seems to have taken on a life of its own, spreading to other authors and works. I hope someday Powers and Blaylock will publish a complete collection of their work as Ashbless, including their student work. I hope it will be before either passes away, so 'Ashbless' has another chance to sign another book.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwWRNitEOAI

Wideo Wednesday: Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock

 

My reading for the last few days has been the first two volumes of Tim Powers' Vickery and Castine books. In light of this, I thought I would link several YouTube locations where Powers gives interviews, including some with his friend James P. Blaylock, whose work I also like. The first link is the shortest, and is fairly restricted to Powers himself. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsnwvy-I0cM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKpKeN4wBlQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fe9MWlS7EI

Into the Archive: We Meet Again, Mr. Powers

 

My Brother’s Keeper, by Tim Powers (Sept. 5, 2023)

This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world.

When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England.

But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat.

In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives. – Amazon.

I got my copy yesterday (Sept. 6) two days earlier than expected. I have been slowly letting myself ease into the book, hoping to make it last at least a good while, and not to simply gobble it down all at once. This is not easy because the story seems to hit the ground running. I suppose Powers knows what his readers expect by now and needs less ‘wind up.’ But I shall have to wait until I finish it, of course, to give a complete opinion.

Into the Archive: More Powers to Me

 

After Many a Summer, by Tim Powers

Subterranean Press, Jan. 1, 2023

“A down-and-out screenwriter is hired to deliver a mummified head as the ransom for a kidnapped Belgian heiress, but his encounters with the superstitious kidnappers and the heiress lead him to question his actions.” – Amazon.

More of a longish short story than a novella, I would say: this slim little book tops out at 84 pages. I wasn’t even aware of it a week ago, and now it arrived at about 2 PM today and I have already finished reading it. With relish, I might add; it is after all a Tim Powers. I am expecting a more substantial offering from him later this month. My Brother’s Keeper continues his works featuring English Romantic authors and the supernatural. I suppose I shall soon have to rearrange my Powers shelf.

At the same time I ordered the book, I got this too, overwhelmed with yearning, toy-lust stirred up by my recent postings, and with the rather poor rationalization that the price would only go up with time. Hard to resist, under the circumstances. 

New Items on the Wish List

Venture Bros.: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (July 25, 2023)

“Doc's latest invention will either bankrupt team Venture or launch them to new heights, as Hank searches for himself, Dean searches for Hank, the Monarch searches for answers, and a mysterious woman from their pasts threatens to bring their entire world crashing down on them.” -Amazon.

“The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart is an upcoming 2023 American direct-to-video adult animated science fiction action adventure film based on the Adult Swim animated series The Venture Bros., where it will serve as the series finale. The film is directed and co-written by the series creator Jackson Publick and writer Doc Hammer, who serves as the film's executive producers and features the voices of the show's returning principal cast, James Urbaniak, Patrick Warburton, Michael Sinterniklaas, Publick and Hammer. The film centers on a nationwide manhunt for Hank Venture, which leads to a coming darkness from the past that involves the Venture Family, the Guild, and the Monarch themselves.” – Wikipedia.

 Tolkien's Faith: A Spiritual Biography (Hardcover – August 28, 2023), by Holly Ordway

Tolkien described The Lord of the Rings as “a fundamentally religious and Catholic work” and declared, “I am a Christian (which can be deduced from my stories).” Yet he insisted his writings were not allegories, and Middle-earth is loved by millions who do not share his religious beliefs.

How were his faith and his fiction related? Holly Ordway answers that question biographically, focusing on Tolkien’s spiritual development, a dramatic story that previous accounts of his life have left largely unexplored.

Tolkien’s faith was hard-won. His Anglican upbringing was overturned when his mother converted to Catholicism. Soon afterward, she died, leaving Tolkien under the guardianship of a Catholic priest, who forbade him for three years to see his Protestant sweetheart; he eventually married her nonetheless. The Great War, in which most of his close friends were killed, deepened Tolkien’s reliance on his faith but was followed by a barren stretch in which he “almost ceased to practise” his religion. Friendship with C.S. Lewis and success with The Hobbit were followed by another war and by turmoil in the Church that sternly tested Tolkien’s commitments.

The challenges and triumphs in his religious life are reflected in his masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, that epic tale of endurance against the odds. As Ordway shows in her expertly researched and richly illustrated study, Tolkien’s faith and Tolkien’s fiction are intimately related, though in subtle and complex ways. This long-overdue spiritual biography gives new insight into his works by shedding fresh light on their author’s deepest-held convictions.

My Brother's Keeper (Hardcover – September 5, 2023) by Tim Powers

This is a ghost story. It is a story about werewolves, and things that go bump in the night. It is a story of an ill-fated land, the pathless moors of Northern England so well chronicled in Wuthering Heights. And it is the story of a real family whose destiny it is to deal with this darkly glamorous and dangerous world.

When young Emily Brontë helps a wounded man she finds at the foot of an ancient pagan shrine in the remote Yorkshire moors, her life becomes contentiously entwined with his. He is Alcuin Curzon, embittered member of a sect working to eradicate the resurgent plague of lycanthropy in Europe and northern England.

But Emily’s father, curate of the Haworth village church, is responsible for having unwittingly brought a demonic werewolf god to Yorkshire forty years ago—and it is taking possession of Emily’s beloved but foolish and dissolute brother. Curzon must regard Emily’s family as a dire threat.

In spite of being at deadly odds, Emily and Curzon find themselves thrown together in fighting werewolves, confronting pagan gods, even saving each other from the lures of moorland demons. And in a final battle that sweeps from the haunted village of Haworth to a monstrous shrine far out on the moors, the two of them must be reluctant allies against an ancient power that seems likely to take their souls as well as their lives.

So it seems that The Venture Bros. will finally be getting the series finale and climax that it always deserved. It began in 2003, twenty years ago, but it seems a lifetime. Well, I suppose if the length of a generation is defined as 21 years, it nearly is. Thank goodness they got around to this before any of the major voice-actors died.

Holly Ordway continues on her insightful investigation into Tolkien's life, and has quickly established herself in my mind as one of the go-to scholars in that area. It's amazing how things have gone from a fandom to an academic subject within my lifetime. 

And Tim Powers adds to what can only be termed as his 'supernatural Romantic authors' saga, begun in The Stress of Her Regard and continued in Hide Me Among the Graves. It should make for some fine reading in the coming autumnal penumbra.

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories

 

The Bible Repairman and Other Stories (2011) is a book I bought more or less on a misapprehension. I heard that it contained a story about Edward Trelawny, a linking character between Powers’ The Stress of Her Regard (1989) and Hide Me Among the Graves (2012). It was only when I started reading it that I realized that I was already familiar with the tale from Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers (2017). It had not sunk deep enough into my long-term memory yet. Every other short story in Repairman was there as well.   

          Still, I cannot bring myself to regret the purchase entirely. It is a smaller, handier volume (sturdy, too) for rereading the tales therein, and is pre-eminently a good loaner copy. It was only $1.38, with five bucks shipping, so I am not much out of pocket.

          Apparently, it is an ex-Denver Public Library book, carrying the usual stickers. Curiously, it does not have the common cancellation marks (a DISCARD stamp and the bar codes struck through with black marker). Odd, that.

Tim Powers, Past and Present

[The Drawing of the Dark (1979)] “was the first Tim Powers book I ever read, and I can’t say I was very impressed. Oh, all the great elements of a Powers tale were there. The weaving and the blending weren’t quite yet tight enough, though, and there were a few of the strands (like the Vikings) that I thought were a little forced. Still, it was good enough so that when I heard the word about The Anubis Gates I gave that a shot. A Del Rey book, but his other works were from Ace after it.” That’s what I said for my assessment of the book here on this blog. I can now say a little more.

Powers has stated several times in interviews that Dark was written for what was proposed to be an entire series (written by various authors and to be set in various times, including the future) about Arthur Reborn. The plan collapsed, but Powers was left with what became his breakaway novel, widely applauded and truly establishing his reputation after his first two obscure productions for Lancer.

I was looking at my growing shelf of Powers books and noticing my lone Del Rey paperback representing in its number. I hadn’t re-visited it again for many years and became curious how it would read after all the Powers that had developed since. I knew that it had been re-issued in a trade paperback as a Del Rey Impact, volumes that had a special influence on the books that came after them. A quick look on Amazon showed copies very reasonably priced, so I decided it was time to upgrade and reread. No sooner said than done.

I’m finding the reread a curious experience. I know nothing has changed, but I find myself taking it more seriously. Elements in it remain almost stereotypically flavored of early Eighties fantasy and many terms and turns of phrase seem historically inappropriate, but the strong bones of what make a good Powers’ novel are all there. Perhaps not having that characteristically period fantasy novel cover by Doug Beekman (replaced by the gravitas of a woodcut style illustration) also helps me think of it differently. As it is, I am re-adjusting my assessment, mostly for the better, as I go along.

Stolen Skies (2022) is the third volume in Tim Powers’ Vickery and Castine books. UFOs are real, but not only are they not what crackpot ufologists think they are, they are not even what the government (which has been sowing disinformation for decades) believe them to be. When Naval Intelligence supposes ex-agent Sebastian Vickery has become privy to information that threatens their plans, they send his old partner Ingrid Castine (who has managed somehow to stay just inside this side of the law) to contact, arrest, and, if necessary, eliminate him.

Castine, of course, has no intention of doing so and plans to covertly warn him away. Intelligence hopes to lure Vickery in with a fake UFO crash, but things become complicated when a genuine appearance of dozens of silver spheres appear at the site, whizzing around at physically impossible speeds and vanishing just as inexplicably as they came.

Vickery and Castine escape in the chaos that ensues, pursued by another government agent and a Russian agent who has been left over from the Cold War. Helped by their teenage acquaintance Santiago (a boy of many talents), they go in search of an old employee of Area 51 who may actually hold the information Intelligence is seeking. The six uncover the imminent danger that threatens the entire earth and must band together to evade the earthly forces seeking them and prevent the destruction of life as they know it … all by noon the next day.

I enjoyed this book quite a bit; the ideas are intriguing, the action exciting, the characters engaging. If anything, it is too short and might have benefited with a little more fleshing out, as Powers is entering territory that is not as familiar as his other themes.  If there is one bit, though, that I find personally a little irksome, and that is when Powers gets ‘narratively recursive’ as he explains history and backstories from the previous books in the series. I’m sure that’s to make things more explicable to readers coming to Vickery and Castine for the first time, to entice them to the earlier volumes, and to remind us of what’s gone before. It slows things down just a tad for one familiar with the details and eager to get on with the gripping tale; but it is, after all, merely momentary occasions. More power to Powers!

Powers of Two: Into the Real Live Library

“Powers of Two” (2004) is the reprint of Tim Powers’ two earliest novels, The Skies Discrowned and An Epitaph in Rust, originally published by Laser Books. As Powers retells it in his foreword, he and his fellow proto-steampunk friends James P. Blaylock and K. W. Jeter, learned that Harlequin Books (the romance publishers) were trying to branch out into science fiction and were looking for new talent. Powers quickly dropped his current project (a version of his A Dinner at Deviant’s Palace), wrote a few chapters, and sent them off to Laser Press as the new branch was called. They were accepted, he paused college, quickly finished The Skies Discrowned, and became a published author in 1976, while still in his early twenties. He followed up with Epitaph in Rust (the original title), but it was so badly edited that he decided that he would no longer submit work to Laser. The line folded soon after anyway. This corrected edition of both novels is published by the New England Science Fiction Association (NEFSA) on behalf of “Arisia 2004 in honor of their guest Tim Powers”.

The Skies Discrowned is set “In a time when Earth's interplanetary Empire is crumbling . . .On a world where technology has begun to fail . . .When the rightful ruler of the planet has been deposed by renegades . . .One young man embodies the spirit of survival. Frank Rovzar has seen his father murdered most foully in a palace coup. Escaping the deadly Transports, he flees to the only safe place he can think of, Munson Underground, the city beneath the surface of the planet, den of thieves and haven of the damned. Rovzar has only two goals. The first is survival. The second is vengeance. He will have both, he vows, and he embarks on a course that will see him rise from the dregs of society to the very pinnacle of power.” – Google Books.

An Epitaph in Rust is takes place on a post-apocalyptic Earth, mostly in the decaying city of L.A. and its surrounding area. “When Brother Thomas tries sky-fishing from the monastery roof he knows he is breaking the law, but the few risks seem a small price to escape the stifling boredom of his cloistered life. What he doesn't understand is why his insignificant brush with the law makes him the object of a massive manhunt and triggers off such a dramatic chain of events. Certainly, he achieves his aim and finds the excitement he craves - but in the process the lives of everyone around him change as well.” – Google Books. What with the presence of mutants and androids this book seems even more sci-fi than Discrowned with its off-world setting.

In these early productions Powers’ themes are already on full display. The move from innocence to initiation, the triumph of skill over power, and the steep price that must be paid for both (it is a rare Powers hero that does lose at least one body part during his adventures). Science Fiction, rather than Secret History, was his mode here, and his writing style might be described as snappy and scrappy as compared to his later, more involved style. Both are good, but quite different. In fact, I was reminded sometimes of early Blaylock, where adventure takes precedence over emotional and psychological insight. But perhaps that is only my awareness of their personal connection raising its cumbersome head. Speaking of which, the shared fictional poet Ashbless gets a mention in each novel. Squee! 

More Walls Broken: Into the Archive

More Walls Broken by Tim Powers  (Author), Jon Foster (Illustrator)

As this ingenious new novella, More Walls Broken, begins, a trio of academics have just entered a deserted California cemetery late at night, bringing with them a number of arcane devices aimed at achieving an equally arcane purpose. What follows is the sort of dizzying, mind-expanding entertainment that only the always reliable, always astonishing Tim Powers could have written. These three men, professors in the “Consciousness Research” department at Cal Tech University, have come together to perform a seemingly impossible task. Their goal: to open a door between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and to capture the ghost of the recently deceased scientist Armand Vitrielli. For their own desperate reasons, they hope to avail themselves of the secrets Vitrielli left behind at the time of his death. Their experiment, naturally, fails to come off exactly as planned. A door between the worlds does, in fact, open, letting in something—someone—completely unexpected, and setting in motion a chain of events that will reverberate throughout the narrative. Intricate, intelligent, and always thoroughly absorbing, More Walls Broken mixes fantasy and quantum physics in utterly unique fashion. The result is a brilliantly imagined account of multiple realities and unintended consequences that is pure dazzle, pure storytelling, pure—and unmistakable—Tim Powers. In book after book, story after story, Powers has set the standard for literate imaginative fiction. With this essential, beautifully realized novella, he has done it once again. – Amazon

The Power of Powers

Last month I got these four volumes from my Wish List and spent a wondrous week reading them. I had been unable to catch up on my Tim Powers for some time (first from financial hardship, then because of some higher book priorities – though these were pretty high themselves) and was eager to do so. Alas! Perhaps too eager.

I got the sequel Forced Perspectives two days before the original ‘Vickery and Castine’ book Alternate Routes and like a fool I had – HAD! – to read it first. I enjoyed it very much. So when I came to Alternate Routes (an ex-library copy) I had a fairly good idea of who would live and who would die. This to some degree tempered my enjoyment and anticipation; not terribly much, but some. Perhaps with the passage of time when I come to a second reading, I will be able to see it again on its own and not as a ‘prequel’.

The Properties of Rooftop Air returns to the world of The Anubis Gates and further explores the evil Horrabin and his magical criminal underworld through the adventures of Isaac Fairchild, a dimwitted beggar that the malevolent clown chooses for one of his occult experiments. A slender little book, more of a short story than a novella, really.

Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers is a lovely gathering of many of Powers’ short stories and novellas and renders unnecessary my hunting of several separate books. I am not sure of it, but I have the impression that there is a second volume coming. Also makes moot the necessity of several other volumes (I may mention Strange Itineraries, I think) that I already have.

For more info on these books, see elsewhere in this blog under “Powers” and “Items from the Wish List”.  

William Ashbless

 

On Pirates, by ‘William Ashbless’. Introductions by Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock. Illustrations by Gahan Wilson. Afterwords by ‘William Ashbless’ and ‘William Hastings’.

A chapbook put out by Subterranean Press, signed by both authors, and #344 out of 1000 such special editions of signed chapbooks. “William Ashbless is a fictional poet, invented by fantasy writers James Blaylock and Tim Powers. Ashbless was invented by Powers and Blaylock when they were students at Cal State Fullerton in the early 1970s, originally as a reaction to the low quality of the poetry being published in the school magazine. They invented nonsensical free verse poetry and submitted it to the paper in Ashbless's name, where it was reportedly enthusiastically accepted. Ashbless is, however, best known in his incarnation as a 19th-century poet, in which guise he appears in Powers' The Anubis Gates (1983) and as a lesser character in Blaylock's The Digging Leviathan (1984). Neither author was aware that the other's novel contained a William Ashbless until the coincidence was noticed by the editor responsible for both books, who suggested that the two consult one another so that their references would be consistent.” – Wikipedia. There is another book I want to get: “In 1985, Powers and Blaylock produced Offering the Bicentennial Edition of the Complete Twelve Hours of the Night: 1785–1985, a prospectus for a non-existent collection of Ashbless poetry, published by Cheap Street Press. ("The Twelve Hours of the Night" had been mentioned in The Anubis Gates as Ashbless's most famous work.) The prospectus included a sample poem and a replica of Ashbless's signature (the "William" was signed by one, and the "Ashbless" by the other, of the authors).” – Ibid.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Chapbook. Pirates. Humor.

The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook, by James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers.

An honest-to-goodness cookbook full of recipes I wouldn’t mind trying out, surrounded with the usual humorous appurtenances by Blaylock and Powers. It goes like this: they find clues that seem to point to Ashbless’s demise and try to rush one of his works into publication. Ashbless turns up and castigates them for trying to cash in on their old friend’s death, but the book is too far along in the process so they have to simply add an explanation in an Afterword from the old poet of what really is going on. From the Subterranean Press, not only one of 750 signed copies by both Blaylock and Powers, but also personally inscribed to “Lisa! Finally you’ve got yourself a real cookbook! Happy Birthday! Love, Jim & Viki”, Viki being Blaylock’s wife, whom he mentions in just about every dedication page of his books.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Cookbook. Fantasy. Hardback.

Pilot Light, by ‘William Ashbless’. Illustrated by Gahan Wilson. Introduction by Tim Powers. Afterword by James P. Blaylock. Annotations and A Postscript by ‘William Ashbless’.

Once again Powers and Blaylock try to issue one of Ashbless’s works in the wake of his supposed death (here a short science fiction story to be submitted to Harlan Ellison), and once again Ashbless turns up to throw cold water on their efforts. Special Bonus Feature: An Interview with William Ashbless. A First Edition, but not signed, and a tiny book from Subterranean Press, at that.

Ranking: Essential.

File Code: Short Story. Science Fiction. Satire. Hardback.