Tim Powers

Tim Powers
Powers celebrating his 61st birthday in 2013
Born	(1952-02-29) February 29, 1952 (age 65) Buffalo, New York, USA
Pen name	William Ashbless (joint)
Occupation	Writer
Nationality	American
Education	California State University, Fullerton
Period	1976–present
Genre	Adventure fiction, speculative fiction
Literary movement	Steampunk
Website
theworksoftimpowers.com

Timothy Thomas "Tim" Powers (born February 29, 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare. His 1988 novel On Stranger Tides served as inspiration for the Monkey Island franchise of video games and was optioned for adaptation into the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film.

Most of Powers' novels are "secret histories". He uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters.

Typically, Powers strictly adheres to established historical facts. He reads extensively on a given subject, and the plot develops as he notes inconsistencies, gaps and curious data; regarding his 2000 novel Declare, he stated,

"I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar – and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all."

Powers was born in Buffalo, New York but has lived in California since 1959. He studied English Literature at Cal State Fullerton, and earned his B.A. in 1976. It was there that he first met James Blaylock and K. W. Jeter, both of whom remained close friends and occasional collaborators; the trio have half-seriously referred to themselves as "steampunks" in contrast to the prevailing cyberpunk genre of the 1980s. Powers and Blaylock invented the poet William Ashbless while they were at Cal State Fullerton.