Tim Powers, two-time World Fantasy Award–winning author and a pioneer of the steampunk genre, is most widely recognized for his critically acclaimed historical fantasies, which have revolutionized speculative fiction worldwide. With his post-atomic novel Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, however, Powers goes back to the future, returning to his science fiction roots in a decidedly nuclear fashion.
In post-apocalyptic, twenty-second century California, Gregorio Rivas has turned over a new leaf. Now a band member gunning the pelican in Ellay (read: LA), Rivas has left his shady lifestyle as a redeemer, or deprogrammer, behind. Playing the stringed instrument isn’t the life Rivas initially envisioned for himself, but at thirty-one years old, things change. Just when he is coming to terms with his newfound stability, Rivas’s life takes a sharp turn when he has a conversation regarding the one person he thought he left in his past—Urania.
Urania, Rivas’s long-lost first love, is trapped in the Jaybirds cult of the deviant himself, the formidable menace Norton Jaybush, a madman who reprograms the minds of his cult followers. With the desperate plea (and large monetary incentive) of Urania’s father, a powerful Californian official, Rivas is pulled back into one last act of redemption. To rescue Urania from the sinister clutches of Norton Jaybush in the face of blood-sucking hemogoblins and other horrors, Rivas must put his one-of-a-kind deprogramming skills to the test—the fate of his first love depends upon it.
Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace is a thrilling standalone novel showcasing Tim Powers’s mastery of worldbuilding with amazing detail and stunning prose. Featuring an original introduction by the author, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace proves why Tim Powers is one of the most inventive contemporary fantasists in America.
To learn more about Tim Powers and his critically acclaimed novels, visit his author page here.
Image: From Operation Doorstep, nuclear testing, March 17, 1953.