I discovered Tim Powers more than thirty years ago when I picked up a paperback copy of The Anubis Gates, one of the best time travel novels ever. Later, I enjoyed many of his other novels, such as The Drawing of the Dark, On Stranger Tides, Last Call, and The Stress of Her Regard. He’s a great fantasist and his books rely on recurring themes and motifs. Many of the books provide secret histories, nearly all involving historical characters, often related to The Fisher King. He’s also got a fascination for poetry. In fact, he and steampunk writer James Blaylock, an old college friend, created a fictional romantic poet named William Ashbless whose works they’ve featured in several of their novels.
It was with surprise that I saw this novella offered a few weeks ago through one of the ebook promotion websites I belong to. I picked it up for 99 cents, a real bargain. Finally got around to reading it on Christmas Day.
The story begins with a rare-book dealer in Daly City, California, named Richard Blanzac (who later in the story—but earlier in time—goes by the name Richard Vader, as in Darth) who opens a box of items sent to him. Inside the box he finds ashes, several cigarette butts, issues of The San Francisco Chronicle and TV Guide from the Fifties, an old ACE Science Fiction double novel, and a handwritten manuscript written by an obscure poet named Sophia Greenwald, who died from cholera in Mexico in 1969. He begins to read the poet’s long narrative poem, and feels water droplets fall on his neck and sees raindrops fall upon his desk. He then experiences the following hallucination:
But even before he snatched off his glasses to see clearly across the room, he was aware of the dry-white-wine smell of rain on pavement, and a whiff of chocolate; and he caught a familiar melody, and a hissing like tires on a wet street, growing more audible and then fading.
Something strange is going on. And that strangeness is the life blood of a Tim Powers story. Without that strangeness, you’re left with a meaningless miscellany.
Here are some of the things that Powers stirs into this thin stew that he calls a novella:
-
Arcane trivia about rare bookselling, science fiction history, Sumerian translation, Beat poetry, and the Mayan deity Akan (and just about anything else that interested Powers at the time)
-
A hint of menace, without any overt violence, and a hint of romance with a long-dead poet
-
Nostalgia for 1950s San Francisco
-
Noir mystery writing style paired with a time travel fantasy
It’s a sweet concoction, and it works as wistful fantasy. Although it’s a time travel story, you won’t find any details of how the time travel actually works. The main character just zips from the present to the past without any explanation. Powers is a skilled writer, so he pulls off this sleight-of-hand with apparent ease.
Powers has said that it takes as long to plan a short story as it does to do a novel, and it pays half as well, so you may as well write the novel instead. My sense is that this is one of those stories he never intended to publish; the old manuscript was probably lying around in his house, perhaps at the bottom of a filing cabinet. Then one day the publisher of Subterranean Press asked him if he had an unpublished work that was perhaps good enough to salvage for publication, something they could dress up with new artwork to look more significant. Salvage and Demolition is the enjoyable result, a delightful novella you can read in one sitting. The illustrations by J.K. Potter are stunning.
It’s not his best work, and it pales in comparison to his novels. But even a second-rate Powers is better than first-rate work by most other fantasy writers. And I got more than my 99 cents worth, so no complaints.
Salvage and Demolition
Tim Powers
Subterranean Press
