Salvage and Demolition - Hardcover

Tim Powers

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159606515X ISBN 13: 9781596065154

Publisher: Subterranean, 2013

Synopsis

Salvage and Demolition, the astonishing new 21,000 word novella by Tim Powers, begins when Richard Blanzac, a San Francisco-based rare book dealer, opens a box of consignment items and encounters the unexpected. There, among an assortment of literary rarities, he discovers a manuscript in verse, an Ace Double Novel, and a scattering of very old cigarette butts. These commonplace objects serve as catalysts for an extraordinary--and unpredictable--adventure.

Without warning, Blanzac finds himself traversing a 'circle of discontinuity' that leads from the present day to the San Francisco of 1957. Caught up in that circle are an ancient Sumerian deity, a forgotten Beat-era poet named Sophie Greenwald, and an apocalyptic cult in search of the key to absolute non-existence. With unobtrusive artistry, Powers weaves these elements into something strange and utterly compelling. The resulting story is at once a romance, a thriller, and the kind of intricately constructed time travel story that only the author of The Anubis Gates--that quintessential time travel classic--could have written. Ingenious, affecting, and endlessly inventive, Salvage and Demoliton is a compact gem from the pen of a modern master, a man whose singular creations never fail to dazzle and delight.

About this title

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* It might be small, but Powers’ novella packs a wallop. Rare-book dealer Richard Blanzac receives a box of items on consignment, among which is a verse manuscript written, apparently, by one Sophie Greenwald. Before he’s quite figured out what the manuscript is, he gets a call from a stranger, an elderly woman, who begs him to destroy it. And, soon after that, he encounters a man claiming to be a scholar who seems quite intent on getting his hands on the manuscript. Baffling as those two incidents are, they pale by comparison to the next thing that happens: Blanzac is transported 55 years back in time, where he meets the author of the manuscript, who tells him that she has already encountered him earlier that same day (although that meeting lies, apparently, in Richard’s own future) and that the manuscript, if it lands in the wrong hands, could have terrible, world-altering consequences. Evoking such genre notables as Richard Matheson’s Bid Time Return, Jack Finney’s Time and Again, and Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife (along with such films as Source Code and The Terminator), the book is a sort of literary Möbius strip, looping around on itself, finding its ending in its beginning. Powers is an acclaimed SF and fantasy author—The Anubis Gates (1983) is considered a time-travel classic—and this new title has the feel of a cult favorite, the kind of small-press jewel that will develop a devoted following. --David Pitt

About this edition

• Publisher: Subterranean
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 159606515X
• ISBN 13: 9781596065154
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: J. K. Potter