Expiration Date

by Tim Powers

Overview

Growing up in the L.A. of the 1990s, all young Koot Parganas wants is to be normal, but his weird parents won't allow it. They venerate the spirits of dead Mahatmas. Feeling he has no alternative, Koot disobeys his parents and breaks into a bust of Dante and steals a small glass vial that was concealed inside the bust. The vial contains the preserved ghost of Thomas Edison. Now, aided by allies as strange as his enemies, Koot is pursued through the dark underside of the city.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481484084
Publisher:	Baen
Publication date:	05/28/2019
Pages:	704
Sales rank:	747,453
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 6.70(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Tim Powers won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare. Declare also received the International Horror Guild Award. His novel On Stranger Tides inspired the Monkey Island video game series and was sold to Disney for the movie franchise installment Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. His book The Anubis Gates won the Philip K. Dick Award and is considered a modern science fiction classic and a progenitor of the steampunk genre. Powers won the Dick Award again for straight science fiction post-apocalypse novel Dinner at Deviant’s Palace. Many of his novels, such as Last Call and Alternate Routes, are so-called “secret histories,” which use real historical events in which supernatural and metaphysical elements influence the the story in weird and compelling manners. Powers grew up in Southern California and studied English at Cal State Fullerton, where he met frequent collaborators James Blaylock and K.W. Jeter, as well as renowned science fiction author Philip K. Dick, who became a close friend and mentor. Powers is a practicing Catholic who claims “Stories are more effective, and more truly represent the writer’s actual convictions, when they manifest themselves without the writer's conscious assistance. I concern myself with my plots, but I let my subconscious worry about my themes.” Powers still resides in Southern California with his wife, Serena.

Editorial Reviews

There is much humor in the book, some exciting chase scenes, and some beautifully descriptive writing by the author.” —VOYA

“Expiration Date is a minefield of exploding surprises that will have readers convinced that the author has tapped into a more magical reality behind everyday life.” —Publishers Weekly

“Expiration Date is fascinating ... It'll have you turning pages as much for his sheer inventiveness as for the plot ... for the remarkable frisson that sparks from the page, the playfulness of the language.” —Charles de Lint, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

“Expiration Date is Tim Powers's darkest book to date, in both its characters and settings, resulting in a complex, fascinating series of potential disasters. But it is also Kootie's story, where terror alternates with sheer nuttiness and even (dare we say it?) hope.” —Locus

“Expiration Date is a work of fiction so wickedly rooted in real people, places and events that a lot of readers probably will be hitting the history books and biographies to check out the ‘facts' in the novel....This is a must-read book for fans of Powers or anyone looking for a truly different work of fantasy.” —The Orlando Sentinel

From the Publisher