Medusa's Web: Tim Powers is the Philip K Dick of our age

boing
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The comparison with PKD is at least irritating, certainly lightweight and too convenient. Superficial review of deep authors.

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Would you say that you’re disappointed in Boing Boing?

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24

Is that some local meme? I really don’t get it.

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It’s certainly a long running theme.

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26

Okay…

I’m not even sure I want to know how that list got started.

27

People would show up, usually ones who have hardly ever spoken in the BBS before or who just made accounts, claim to be longtime readers, and then talk about how disappointed they were in Boing Boing and/or a particular Boing Boing author (whether Mark, Xeni, Cory, etc.).

It became a thing.

The list isn’t being kept up to date, unfortunately.

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Disappointed?

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29

@jlw

#ahem

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30

So the whole “secret reality” plus “mentored by PKD” is a tenuous connection better left unsaid?

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Wait wait wait what?!

There were more books involving that whole setting with the Nephilim and the “Carbonari” and quantum physics and all that? Man, I guess I was not paying attention.

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33

Three, I think yeah.

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34

I’ve found that most of my wishlist is filled with books I find out about on posts/comments here at Boing Boing… except for Sir Terry, whom I already knew about long ago… but alas… well… sigh

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35

I second @monkeyoh as suggesting one of his older books as one of the best starting points. I’d recommend specifically The Anubis Gates which was my introduction to him. It’s got a mind-boggling, spectacular, density of ideas and action.

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lol i would not go that far… afterall, i am in the middle of the fun Pirate Cinema by CD, and love his work on copyright… but maybe i could sit in on a few DWBB meetings, just to get a feel for the vibes there. I could bring oatmeal raison d’etre cookies…

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37

I see Hide Me Among the Graves, his last previous novel which I’ll have to get and read now,
is a sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, but I can’t figure out if there is a third or which it might be.

(Edited for clarity)

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I think Mark added someone this week.

“https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ptOCAuEHRqu3jCpE7ThBwHdl1CfEHcevDnVz_abTxvg/edit?usp=sharing”

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39

Oh right - lemme add:

For everyone who likes Tim Powers, I’d also highly recommend James Blaylock, some of whose novels are in a very similar vein but often lighter and funnier. They even have shared a fictional character, William Ashbless, a minor romantic poet. (Not all of Blaylock’s novels are in the vein of Powers’ main novels, so YMMV.)

A couple of my favorite Blaylock books are The Paper Grail - imagine a Tim Powers supernatural conspiracy novel with a little dash of Big Trouble in Little China stirred in - and The Last Coin.

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40

I’d agree with those Blaylock choices. I’d also add “The Rainy Season” and “All the Bells on Earth” – they also are of the supernatural conspiracy mold.

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I have enjoyed Power’s novels immensely. However, profuse detail should not be confused with meticulous research. In “Declare” (I’m quoting from memory since I don’t have my copy to hand), Andrew Hale is in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War and refers to radio speeches by la Pasionaria, that “nun-like old woman”.
La Pasionaria actually existed (she is credited with coining the phrase “No pasarán”). And she did eventually become a “nun-like old woman”. However, during the Spanish Civil War, she was in her early 40s.

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