Тим Пауэрс: Dinner At Deviant s Palace

First published in 1985, this legendary and still distinctive novel may attract new fans, although the postnuclear-war theme has become somewhat dated. Technology has vanished in a barbaric, 22nd-century California run by a Sidney Greenstreet lookalike messiah, Norton Jaybush, who boasts a fancifully colossal «night club of the damned» in Venice and his own Holy City in Irvine. His young hippie followers, aka «Jaybirds,» drift in a hallucinatory Philip K. Dick-style dream, while «redeemers» strive to rescue them. The serviceable plot focuses largely on the efforts of the hero, Gregorio Rivas, a musician and former redeemer who lives in «Ellay,» to bring back a runaway. The film Mad Max (1980) seems to have inspired many of the images in this rundown world, such as «an old but painstakingly polished Chevrolet body mounted on a flat wooden wagon drawn by two horses.» Powers has a nice knack for puns, e.g., a «hemogoblin,» a balloonlike monster who sucks blood from its victims, and «fifths,» paper money issued by a «Distiller of the Treasury.» The antireligious tone of the book, not uncommon in science fiction of the era, is a refreshing change from much of today s blatantly proselytizing SF (see feature, «Other Worlds, Suffused with Religion,» Apr. 16). At times Powers s heavy prose style can be trying, but his engaging conceptions will keep most readers turning the pages.