It’s hard to say who my favorite author is because different authors provide for different “needs.” Life would be too monochrome if one were too much more important than the other.

Still, if someone forced me at gunpoint to name a favorite “science fiction” author (don’t even get me started on the folly of trying to figure out the point of that literary category) there is a really good chance that “Tim Powers!” would be forced from my lips.

I have used some lines to categorize some of these books (see the far sidebar). Except for Last Call, Expiration Date, and Earthquake Weather, the correlations are my own opinion. When I read Last Call and Expiration Date I thought they were linked by being in the same setting, but Earthquake Weather brought characters together from both stories to make a sequel to them both.

These three were not the first I had read about Powers, and some readers may not like them who like his other works. While I love his historical fiction, I’m also a sucker for gritty “secret war” type action novels. Last Call is a word play title about an alcooholic who makes his living as a gambler. He was adopted by a professional gambler who rescued him from a family in which his real father had something strange and mysterious and horrible planned for him. As an adopted son raised to support himself in his father’s trade, Scot learns the tricks he needs. Most are normal (don’t gamble in casinos, find people to play who aren’t smarter than you, etc), but there are others. Always use a cigarette and have a glass of something handy. Watch the smoke and the level of the drink because when random molecule movement gets suppressed and the smoke begins forming a symmetrical swirl pattern over the table, and the surface of the liquid begins climbing up the side of the glass, it is time to throw in you hand and leave the game. Otherwise, you aren’t gambling with money but for your soul. Scot, it turns out, has sold his. The story is about his attempt to get it back.

Expiration Date takes place in LA. Many homeless people, it turns out, are actually ghosts who have picked up enough debris to give themselves solid bodies. In fact the city is filled with addicts who trap ghosts in their incorporeal form and get high by inhaling them. In this weird world a child accidentally breaks a container and inhaled Thomas Edison.

Earthquake Weather ties up the previous two and makes them into a trilogy. The issue this time is California wine-making and the god Dionysius. Weird combination of sacramentology and paganism.

These, as I said, are not even the books that my Christian readers are the most likely to resonate to, but I plan to re-use my recommendations from time to time and I’ll write about other of Powers’ works then.