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Come to think of it, the same applies to \'\'The Anubis Gates\'\'.
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* BlessedWithSuck: Magic rituals in Power's novels tend to be horribly inconvenient or have some horrible side-effect. In ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', magic users can't touch the earth.
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\'\'The Stress Of Her Regard\'\' has its own page. This list is for examples with nowhere else to go.
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* BlessedWithSuck: Magic rituals in Power's novels tend to be horribly inconvenient or have some horrible side-effect. In ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', magic users can't touch the earth. In ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', being under the attention of the Nephilim is great... except you can never raise a family, ever, and all your other loved ones are fated to die.
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* BlessedWithSuck: Magic rituals in Power's novels tend to be horribly inconvenient or have some horrible side-effect. In ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', magic users can't touch the earth. In ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', being under the attention of the Nephilim is great... except you can never raise a family, ever, and all your other loved ones are fated to die.
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* EyeScream: The protagonist of ''Last Call'' loses an eye in the prologue, the love interest/deuteragonist of ''TheStressOfHerRegard loses one of hers early in the book, and manages to weaponize the replacement.
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* EyeScream: The protagonist of ''Last Call'' loses an eye in the prologue, the love interest/deuteragonist of ''TheStressOfHerRegard loses one of hers early in the book, and manages to weaponize the replacement.prologue.
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* EarnYourHappyEnding: A recurring feature.
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* EarnYourHappyEnding: A recurring feature. Nearly every book runs on this trope, and few of Power's characters survive their arc without making some major sacrifices along the way, be it of blood, love, flesh, or memory.
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* EyeScream: The protagonist of ''Last Call'' loses an eye in the prologue.
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* EyeScream: The protagonist of ''Last Call'' loses an eye in the prologue.prologue, the love interest/deuteragonist of ''TheStressOfHerRegard loses one of hers early in the book, and manages to weaponize the replacement.
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* OurZombiesAreDifferent: ''Expiration Date'' mentions a few weird cases where ghosts have taken possession of their own dead bodies and attempted to continue on as if they were still alive. Some last only minutes before losing their grip, with dramatically unpleasant consequences, though others (who generally have GhostlyGoals and fit into the RevenantZombie category) may hang on for years, taking careful precautions against going to pieces psychically or physically.
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examples from trope pages (leaving out the ones from works that have their own trope lists)
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* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: A recurring feature. See the trope page for a list of examples.
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* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: A recurring feature. See feature.
** ''Last Call'' has Bugsy Siegel serving as thetrope page for a list uncrowned emperor of examples.Las Vegas while channeling the archetype of the FisherKing.
** ''Three Days To Never'' has a truly unconventional [[TimeTravel time machine]] created by UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein as a result of his exploration into astral projection and the Sephirot, with Creator/CharlieChaplin lending a hand at some point.
** ''Expiration Date'' gives Thomas Edison and Harry Houdini, among others, parts in the United States' secret history of ghost exploitation.
** ''Last Call'' has Bugsy Siegel serving as the
** ''Three Days To Never'' has a truly unconventional [[TimeTravel time machine]] created by UsefulNotes/AlbertEinstein as a result of his exploration into astral projection and the Sephirot, with Creator/CharlieChaplin lending a hand at some point.
** ''Expiration Date'' gives Thomas Edison and Harry Houdini, among others, parts in the United States' secret history of ghost exploitation.
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* NotBloodSiblings: Happens in a couple of Powers's novels. See the trope page for the list.
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* NotBloodSiblings: Happens in a couple of Powers's novels. See In ''Literature/LastCall'', the trope page for [[FisherKing protagonist]] marries his foster-sister (at that point the list.full-fledged earthly representation of a syncretic moon goddess). Mythologically speaking, they can't really win the game (as it were) without marrying; the {{Squick}} factor is potentially mitigated (or greatly enhanced) by the fact that the protagonist was fifteen or sixteen when his sister was born and at the time of the novel hasn't seen her since she was a child.
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* BlessedwithSuck: Magic rituals in Power's novels tend to be horribly inconvenient or have some horrible side-effect. In ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', magic users can't touch the earth. In ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', being under the attention of the Nephilim is great... except you can never raise a family, ever, and all your other loved ones are fated to die.
to:
* BlessedwithSuck: BlessedWithSuck: Magic rituals in Power's novels tend to be horribly inconvenient or have some horrible side-effect. In ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', magic users can't touch the earth. In ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', being under the attention of the Nephilim is great... except you can never raise a family, ever, and all your other loved ones are fated to die.
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** ''Earthquake Weather'' is a sequel to bother ''Expiration Date'' and ''Last Call'', with characters returning from both.
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** ''Earthquake Weather'' is a sequel to bother both ''Expiration Date'' and ''Last Call'', with characters returning from both.
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* DemonicPossession: In ''Three Days to Never'' (though strictly speaking it's a dybbuk, not a demon); ''Expiration Date'' has possession by ghosts.
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* DemonicPossession: DemonicPossession:
** In ''Three Days toNever'' (though strictly speaking Never'', though the characters refer to it by the Jewish term "dybbuk", and it's a dybbuk, actually [[spoiler:the vengeful ghost, not a demon); of somebody who died badly, but of somebody who was never born]].
** ''Expiration Date'' has possession by ghosts.
** In ''Three Days to
** ''Expiration Date'' has possession by ghosts.
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* CanonWelding:
** ''Earthquake Weather'' is a sequel to bother ''Expiration Date'' and ''Last Call'', with characters returning from both.
** "Nobody's Home" is a ghost story using the ghost lore from ''Expiration Date'' but set during ''The Anubis Gates''.
** ''Earthquake Weather'' is a sequel to bother ''Expiration Date'' and ''Last Call'', with characters returning from both.
** "Nobody's Home" is a ghost story using the ghost lore from ''Expiration Date'' but set during ''The Anubis Gates''.
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Interesting historical note: During the 1970s, Tim Powers spent a lot of time hanging out with PhilipKDick.
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Interesting historical note: During the 1970s, Tim Powers spent a lot of time hanging out with PhilipKDick.Creator/PhilipKDick.
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example indentation
* LivingMemory: In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but psychic copies created in the trauma of death. (They can also be created by other traumatic events, but they usually merge back into the person if the person survives.)
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* OurGhostsAreDifferent / LivingMemory: In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but psychic copies created in the trauma of death. (They can also be created by other traumatic events, but they usually merge back into the person if the person survives.)
** He does some weird variation on ghosts a lot. In ''Three Days to Never'' ghosts experience time backwards, so if one has the proper apparatus (involving [[spoiler:the specially prepared mummified head of someone chosen to be a medium]]) they can talk to ghosts to get hints of the future. In ''Hide Me Among the Graves'' ghosts are just fragments of people's souls and memories that eventually wander into streams and rivers and are carried out gradually to the ocean where they join and decay with other ghosts.
** He does some weird variation on ghosts a lot. In ''Three Days to Never'' ghosts experience time backwards, so if one has the proper apparatus (involving [[spoiler:the specially prepared mummified head of someone chosen to be a medium]]) they can talk to ghosts to get hints of the future. In ''Hide Me Among the Graves'' ghosts are just fragments of people's souls and memories that eventually wander into streams and rivers and are carried out gradually to the ocean where they join and decay with other ghosts.
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* OurGhostsAreDifferent / LivingMemory: OurGhostsAreDifferent:
** In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but psychic copies created in the trauma of death. (They can also be created by other traumatic events, but they usually merge back into the person if the person survives.)
**He does some weird variation on ghosts a lot. In ''Three Days to Never'' ghosts experience time backwards, so if one has the proper apparatus (involving [[spoiler:the specially prepared mummified head of someone chosen to be a medium]]) they can talk to ghosts to get hints of the future. future.
** In ''Hide Me Among the Graves'' ghosts are just fragments of people's souls and memories that eventually wander into streams and rivers and are carried out gradually to the ocean where they join and decay with other ghosts.
** In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but psychic copies created in the trauma of death. (They can also be created by other traumatic events, but they usually merge back into the person if the person survives.)
**
** In ''Hide Me Among the Graves'' ghosts are just fragments of people's souls and memories that eventually wander into streams and rivers and are carried out gradually to the ocean where they join and decay with other ghosts.
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** He does some weird variation on ghosts a lot. In ''Three Days to Never'' ghosts experience time backwards, so if one has the proper apparatus (involving [[spoiler:the specially prepared mummified head of someone chosen to be a medium]]) they can talk to ghosts to get hints of the future. In ''Hide Me Among the Graves'' ghosts are just fragments of people's souls and memories that eventually wander into streams and rivers and are carried out gradually to the ocean where they join and decay with other ghosts.
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* OneSteveLimit: Inverted in the short story "Pat Moore", in which it's a plot point that all the main characters have the same name.
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* SeeingThroughAnothersEyes:
** In the short story "Pat Moore" a man meets the ghost of his wife, who, having no eyes of her own, can see only what he can see.
** One of the characters in ''Three Days to Never'' is blind, but can see through the eyes of people near her. The ramifications and limitations are explored in some depth.
** In the short story "Pat Moore" a man meets the ghost of his wife, who, having no eyes of her own, can see only what he can see.
** One of the characters in ''Three Days to Never'' is blind, but can see through the eyes of people near her. The ramifications and limitations are explored in some depth.
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* ShootTheHostageTaker: In the prologue of ''Last Call'', the BigBad uses his young son as a human shield when his wife threatens to shoot him, and finds out the hard way that holding a small child so that his head and chest are covered leaves his groin exposed.
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* BlessedwithSuck: Magic rituals in Power's novels tend to be horribly inconvenient or have some horrible side-effect. In ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', magic users can't touch the earth. In ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', being under the attention of the Nephilim is great... except you can never raise a family, ever, and all your other loved ones are fated to die.
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* CareerKillers: Al Funo in ''Last Call''
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* ProfessionalKiller: Al Funo in ''Last Call''
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* FormerChildStar: Nicky Bradshaw in ''Expiration Date'', who as a teenager starred as a boy ghost in a sitcom called ''Ghost of a Chance''.
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* LiteraryWorkOfMagic: In ''Three Days To Never'', it turns out CharlieChaplin worked symbolic imagery into ''City Lights'' as part of a magical ritual to attempt to bring his son back from the dead. An earlier movie he'd worked on but never shown to the public is part of the {{MacGuffin}}; AlbertEinstein had to talk Chaplin out of showing the movie, as the mojo generated by the imagery would likely fry some audience brains.
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* LiteraryWorkOfMagic: In ''Three Days To Never'', it turns out CharlieChaplin Creator/CharlieChaplin worked symbolic imagery into ''City Lights'' as part of a magical ritual to attempt to bring his son back from the dead. An earlier movie he'd worked on but never shown to the public is part of the {{MacGuffin}}; AlbertEinstein had to talk Chaplin out of showing the movie, as the mojo generated by the imagery would likely fry some audience brains.
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----
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''Literature/OnStrangerTides'' became the basis for the fourth movie in Disney's ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' series, as well as the ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland'' series of games.
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''Literature/OnStrangerTides'' became the basis for the fourth movie in Disney's ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' series, as well as being an inspiration for the ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland'' series of games.
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''Literature/OnStrangerTides'' became the basis for the fourth movie in Disney's ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' series.
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''Literature/OnStrangerTides'' became the basis for the fourth movie in Disney's ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' series.
series, as well as the ''VideoGame/MonkeyIsland'' series of games.
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* CreatorInJoke: When Tim Powers and James Blaylock were in college together, they invented a fake poet named "William Ashbless" to satirize the quality of their college's literary magazine. Nearly every novel Powers has written has had a reference to Ashbless in it somewhere -- most famously ''The Anubis Gates'', in which he appears as a major character.
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* CreatorInJoke: When Tim Powers and James Blaylock were in college together, they invented a fake poet named "William Ashbless" to satirize the quality of their college's literary magazine. Nearly every novel Powers has and Blaylock have written has had a reference to Ashbless in it somewhere -- most famously ''The Anubis Gates'', in which he appears as a major character.
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American science fiction and fantasy writer. His breakout novel was ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', published in 1983. Other novels include ''Literature/{{Declare}}'', ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', ''Expiration Date'', ''Last Call'', ''Literature/OnStrangerTides'', ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', and ''Three Days to Never''.
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American science fiction and fantasy writer. His breakout novel was ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', published in 1983. Other novels include ''Literature/{{Declare}}'', ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Literature/TheDrawingOfTheDark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', ''Expiration Date'', ''Last Call'', ''Literature/OnStrangerTides'', ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', and ''Three Days to Never''.
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* TrappedByGamblingDebts: An inverted version in ''Last Call'' where the character is trapped by ''winning''.
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remove examples now on the new work page
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* HornyVikings: ''The Drawing of the Dark'' includes a small group of middle-aged Vikings who have improbably sailed their ship up the Danube River to Vienna, having sensed the possibility that the prophesied final battle of Ragnarok will take place here.
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* {{MacGuffin Title}}: ''The Drawing of the Dark''
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* TranslationConvention: ''The Drawing of the Dark'' applies Translation Convention to 16th-century Italian and German dialects (the main language of the story), Old Norse, Welsh, Latin, and several other tongues. An added twist is that the main character himself is subject to this trope; he doesn't actually "know" most of the languages he gets involved with, but he understands them anyway.
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Works by Tim Powers with their own trope pages include:
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!! Works by Tim Powers with their own trope pages include:
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Other works by Tim Powers provide examples of:
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!! Other works by Tim Powers provide examples of:
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* ''Literature/TheDrawingOfTheDark''
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[[index]]
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[[/index]]
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** This also shows up briefly in OnStrangerTides to explain why Blackbeard married so many women (what, seventeen or so?).
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** This also shows up briefly in OnStrangerTides ''On Stranger Tides'' to explain why Blackbeard married so many women (what, seventeen or so?).
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''OnStrangerTides'' became the basis for the fourth movie in Disney's ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' series.
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Other works by TimPowers provide examples of:
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Other works by TimPowers Tim Powers provide examples of:
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American science fiction and fantasy writer. His breakout novel was ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', published in 1983. Other novels include ''Literature/{{Declare}}'', ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', ''Expiration Date'', ''Last Call'', ''OnStrangerTides'', ''TheStressOfHerRegard'', and ''Three Days to Never''.
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American science fiction and fantasy writer. His breakout novel was ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', published in 1983. Other novels include ''Literature/{{Declare}}'', ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', ''Expiration Date'', ''Last Call'', ''OnStrangerTides'', ''TheStressOfHerRegard'', ''Literature/OnStrangerTides'', ''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard'', and ''Three Days to Never''.
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* ''OnStrangerTides''
* ''TheStressOfHerRegard''
* ''TheStressOfHerRegard''
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* ''OnStrangerTides''
''Literature/OnStrangerTides''
*''TheStressOfHerRegard''''Literature/TheStressOfHerRegard''
*
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http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tim-powers_112.jpg
American science fiction and fantasy writer. His breakout novel was ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', published in 1983. Other novels include ''Literature/{{Declare}}'', ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', ''Expiration Date'', ''Last Call'', ''OnStrangerTides'', ''TheStressOfHerRegard'', and ''Three Days to Never''.
Many of his works show arcane forces at work in the backstage areas of history, revealing the "real" causes and motivations behind historical events.
They also tend to be populated by body snatchers, identical twins, clones, time-travelling duplicates, and other kinds of {{doppelganger}} -- Powers has said in interviews that he finds something powerful and worrying about the idea of meeting a person who looks and acts just like somebody you know ''but isn't'', and many of his works have a scene of that kind. Some of them invert it, with a character meeting a complete stranger who turns out somehow to be somebody they already know; it's not any less creepy that way around.
''OnStrangerTides'' became the basis for the fourth movie in Disney's ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' series.
Interesting historical note: During the 1970s, Tim Powers spent a lot of time hanging out with PhilipKDick.
----
Works by Tim Powers with their own trope pages include:
* ''Literature/TheAnubisGates''
* ''OnStrangerTides''
* ''TheStressOfHerRegard''
* ''Literature/{{Declare}}''
Other works by TimPowers provide examples of:
* AbusiveParents: Dondi Snayheever in ''Last Call'' was walled up inside a giant Skinner box by his father for virtually his entire childhood, surrounded by oversized paintings of playing cards and books about poker. His father was trying to condition his child to be the ultimate poker player, but lack of human contact left Dondi unable to judge other players' intentions, not to mention socially incompetent.
* BadassIsraeli: The Mossad team in ''Three Days to Never''
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: A recurring feature. See the trope page for a list of examples.
* BodySnatcher: A recurring feature.
* CareerKillers: Al Funo in ''Last Call''
* TheChessmaster: Neal Obstadt. It doesn't work out well for him.
* CreatorInJoke: When Tim Powers and James Blaylock were in college together, they invented a fake poet named "William Ashbless" to satirize the quality of their college's literary magazine. Nearly every novel Powers has written has had a reference to Ashbless in it somewhere -- most famously ''The Anubis Gates'', in which he appears as a major character.
* DemonicPossession: In ''Three Days to Never'' (though strictly speaking it's a dybbuk, not a demon); ''Expiration Date'' has possession by ghosts.
* DisguisedInDrag: In ''Last Call'' the protagonist dresses in drag to infiltrate a party being hosted by the villain. In defiance of the usual subtropes, nobody is in any doubt about his sex, let alone [[AttractiveBentGender strangely attracted to him]] -- but it serves perfectly as a disguise in as much as nobody suspects for a moment that it's him.
* {{Doppelganger}}: A recurring feature.
* TheDragon: Vaughan Trumbill in ''Last Call''
* EarnYourHappyEnding: A recurring feature.
* ElectromagneticGhosts: Ghosts in ''Last Call'', ''Expiration Date'', and ''Earthquake Weather'' affect compasses, make telephone calls, and appear on TV sets to communicate important information.
* EnergyEconomy: In ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', the dominant currency in a ScavengerWorld L.A. is a high-proof distilled alcohol: useable as a fuel, a disinfectant, or as plain ol' booze, hence much in demand.
* {{Epigraph}}: A recurring feature.
** In ''Expiration Date'', each section begins with a quote from or about Thomas Edison, and each chapter with a quote from ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' or ''[[Literature/AliceInWonderland Through the Looking Glass]]''.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace''
* EyeScream: The protagonist of ''Last Call'' loses an eye in the prologue.
* FatBastard: Leo Friend in ''On Stranger Tides'' and [=Loretta deLarava=] in ''Expiration Date'' are both described as extremely, grotesquely fat. Also Vaughan Trumbill, TheDragon in ''Last Call''. The protagonist mistakes Norton Jaybush for a leather beanbag chair at first glance in ''Dinner At Deviant's Palace''
* FingertipDrugAnalysis: Used in ''Last Call'', getting it right about the identifying feature of cocaine being the numbness.
* {{Fingore}}: Something horrible happens to at least one character's hands or fingers in each book.
* FisherKing: The legend of the Fisher King is central to ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', and ''Last Call''. It is also mentioned in ''On Stranger Tides'' and ''Expiration Date'', the latter forming a trilogy with ''Last Call'' and ''Earthquake Weather''
* FlyingDutchman, Man Without A Country subtype: An unnamed minor character in the short story "Itinerary", based on the real-life Merhan Karimi Nasseri.
* TheFool: Dondi Snayheever in ''Last Call''
* FutureMeScaresMe: The plot of ''Three Days to Never'' is complicated by the arrival of a future version of one of the characters, who is dangerously determined to prevent the course of events that produced him.
* GenderRestrictedAbility: In ''Three Days to Never'', certain magical powers are restricted by gender; one of the characters is a sorcerer who, it turns out, was born female and went to extreme lengths to gain access to male magic.
** This also shows up briefly in OnStrangerTides to explain why Blackbeard married so many women (what, seventeen or so?).
* GrandTheftMe: A recurring feature.
* GroinAttack: In ''Last Call'', [[spoiler:the villain finds out the hard way that if you use a five-year-old boy as a HumanShield you can't protect your head and chest without leaving other important parts vulnerable]].
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: A recurring feature.
* HistoricalFantasy: A recurring feature.
* HornyVikings: ''The Drawing of the Dark'' includes a small group of middle-aged Vikings who have improbably sailed their ship up the Danube River to Vienna, having sensed the possibility that the prophesied final battle of Ragnarok will take place here.
* HumanShield: Used by the villain in ''Last Call''.
* IfIDoNotReturn: Twice in ''Last Call''; both times, the end of the sentence is some form of "assume I'm dead and get the heck out of here".
* ImmortalityImmorality: Shows up again and again in his work.
* InstantDramaJustAddTracheotomy: An emergency tracheotomy performed by a non-professional is a key plot event in ''Three Days to Never''. It's not a neat Hollywood tracheotomy, though, and has serious repercussions.
* LiteraryWorkOfMagic: In ''Three Days To Never'', it turns out CharlieChaplin worked symbolic imagery into ''City Lights'' as part of a magical ritual to attempt to bring his son back from the dead. An earlier movie he'd worked on but never shown to the public is part of the {{MacGuffin}}; AlbertEinstein had to talk Chaplin out of showing the movie, as the mojo generated by the imagery would likely fry some audience brains.
* LostHimInACardGame: ''Last Call'' features a particularly twisted variation.
* {{MacGuffin Title}}: ''The Drawing of the Dark''
* NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine: ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace''
* NoQuestionsAsked: After Kootie Parganas's parents are killed and he goes on the run, advertisements start appearing that offer a large reward for his whereabouts, no questions asked.
* NotBloodSiblings: Happens in a couple of Powers's novels. See the trope page for the list.
* OurGhostsAreDifferent / LivingMemory: In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but psychic copies created in the trauma of death. (They can also be created by other traumatic events, but they usually merge back into the person if the person survives.)
* PocketProtector: In ''Expiration Date'', [[spoiler:Pete Sullivan is shot by the villain in the final confrontation, but is saved by a memento of his father he's carrying inside his shirt]].
* PsychicLink:
** Between Scott and Diana in ''Last Call'', which lets each know when the other has been injured.
** There's one between the protagonist of ''Three Days to Never'' and his daughter, that grows stronger over the course of the novel.
** The twins in ''Expiration Date'' frequently know what each other is thinking and can finish sentences in unison, but it's explicitly stated that they ''don't'' have a psychic link, they just know each other really well.
* PsychicPowers: Several characters in ''Three Days to Never'' have versions of Remote Viewing ability.
* PunnyName: Powers occasionally gives characters names that are puns on ecclesiastical Latin catchphrases, apparently just for the lulz. Examples include "Neal Obstadt", who appears in ''Last Call'' and ''Expiration Date'', and "Libra Nosamalo", who appears in ''Three Days to Never''.
* RetGone: The villains of ''Three Days to Never'' can do this to a person.
* ScavengerWorld: ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace''
* SerialKiller: Al Funo in ''Last Call'' makes his living taking money to kill specific people, but it's clear he'd be killing people even if nobody paid him.
* ShapeshifterBaggage: In ''Expiration Date'', a fugitive ghost is briefly able to disguise the body it's inhabiting by adding biomass to increase the body's height and shape. The question of where the extra biomass comes from is addressed, and it's not pleasant.
* SpontaneousHumanCombustion: In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts sometimes burst into flames if they are suddenly alarmed. It's suggested that human combustion happens when a person dies, but their ghost doesn't immediately notice and keeps walking around in their body for a while before suffering some shock (such as, often, the shocking realisation that they've been dead for a while and hadn't noticed).
* SpyFiction: ''Declare'', and the Mossad subplot of ''Three Days to Never''
* SpySpeak: ''Declare'' involves lots of code phrases and recognition exchanges, some of which turn out to have occult significance.
* StableTimeLoop: Powers's default model of time travel. Demonstrated most triumphantly in ''The Anubis Gates''.
* SteamPunk: The term "steampunk" was coined by K. W. Jeter to describe the speculative fiction stories in a Victorian setting that he, Powers and James Blaylock were writing in the early 1980s.
* StolenGoodReturnedBetter: In ''Earthquake Weather'', fugitive Cody steals a car, picking one that's a few decades old because it's easier to hotwire. She does some work on it while it's in her hands, so when the owner eventually gets it back it's in better condition than it was when she stole it.
* TarotMotifs: ''Last Call''
* TarotTroubles: ''Last Call''
* TimeTravel: Most centrally in ''The Anubis Gates'' and ''Three Days to Never''
* TranslationConvention: ''The Drawing of the Dark'' applies Translation Convention to 16th-century Italian and German dialects (the main language of the story), Old Norse, Welsh, Latin, and several other tongues. An added twist is that the main character himself is subject to this trope; he doesn't actually "know" most of the languages he gets involved with, but he understands them anyway.
* UrbanFantasy: A recurring feature.
* VirginPower: Played with in ''Last Call''.
* WhoWantsToLiveForever
* YouCantFightFate: A recurring feature on any occasion that involves time travel.
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American science fiction and fantasy writer. His breakout novel was ''Literature/TheAnubisGates'', published in 1983. Other novels include ''Literature/{{Declare}}'', ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', ''Expiration Date'', ''Last Call'', ''OnStrangerTides'', ''TheStressOfHerRegard'', and ''Three Days to Never''.
Many of his works show arcane forces at work in the backstage areas of history, revealing the "real" causes and motivations behind historical events.
They also tend to be populated by body snatchers, identical twins, clones, time-travelling duplicates, and other kinds of {{doppelganger}} -- Powers has said in interviews that he finds something powerful and worrying about the idea of meeting a person who looks and acts just like somebody you know ''but isn't'', and many of his works have a scene of that kind. Some of them invert it, with a character meeting a complete stranger who turns out somehow to be somebody they already know; it's not any less creepy that way around.
''OnStrangerTides'' became the basis for the fourth movie in Disney's ''Film/PiratesOfTheCaribbean'' series.
Interesting historical note: During the 1970s, Tim Powers spent a lot of time hanging out with PhilipKDick.
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Works by Tim Powers with their own trope pages include:
* ''Literature/TheAnubisGates''
* ''OnStrangerTides''
* ''TheStressOfHerRegard''
* ''Literature/{{Declare}}''
Other works by TimPowers provide examples of:
* AbusiveParents: Dondi Snayheever in ''Last Call'' was walled up inside a giant Skinner box by his father for virtually his entire childhood, surrounded by oversized paintings of playing cards and books about poker. His father was trying to condition his child to be the ultimate poker player, but lack of human contact left Dondi unable to judge other players' intentions, not to mention socially incompetent.
* BadassIsraeli: The Mossad team in ''Three Days to Never''
* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: A recurring feature. See the trope page for a list of examples.
* BodySnatcher: A recurring feature.
* CareerKillers: Al Funo in ''Last Call''
* TheChessmaster: Neal Obstadt. It doesn't work out well for him.
* CreatorInJoke: When Tim Powers and James Blaylock were in college together, they invented a fake poet named "William Ashbless" to satirize the quality of their college's literary magazine. Nearly every novel Powers has written has had a reference to Ashbless in it somewhere -- most famously ''The Anubis Gates'', in which he appears as a major character.
* DemonicPossession: In ''Three Days to Never'' (though strictly speaking it's a dybbuk, not a demon); ''Expiration Date'' has possession by ghosts.
* DisguisedInDrag: In ''Last Call'' the protagonist dresses in drag to infiltrate a party being hosted by the villain. In defiance of the usual subtropes, nobody is in any doubt about his sex, let alone [[AttractiveBentGender strangely attracted to him]] -- but it serves perfectly as a disguise in as much as nobody suspects for a moment that it's him.
* {{Doppelganger}}: A recurring feature.
* TheDragon: Vaughan Trumbill in ''Last Call''
* EarnYourHappyEnding: A recurring feature.
* ElectromagneticGhosts: Ghosts in ''Last Call'', ''Expiration Date'', and ''Earthquake Weather'' affect compasses, make telephone calls, and appear on TV sets to communicate important information.
* EnergyEconomy: In ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace'', the dominant currency in a ScavengerWorld L.A. is a high-proof distilled alcohol: useable as a fuel, a disinfectant, or as plain ol' booze, hence much in demand.
* {{Epigraph}}: A recurring feature.
** In ''Expiration Date'', each section begins with a quote from or about Thomas Edison, and each chapter with a quote from ''Literature/AliceInWonderland'' or ''[[Literature/AliceInWonderland Through the Looking Glass]]''.
* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace''
* EyeScream: The protagonist of ''Last Call'' loses an eye in the prologue.
* FatBastard: Leo Friend in ''On Stranger Tides'' and [=Loretta deLarava=] in ''Expiration Date'' are both described as extremely, grotesquely fat. Also Vaughan Trumbill, TheDragon in ''Last Call''. The protagonist mistakes Norton Jaybush for a leather beanbag chair at first glance in ''Dinner At Deviant's Palace''
* FingertipDrugAnalysis: Used in ''Last Call'', getting it right about the identifying feature of cocaine being the numbness.
* {{Fingore}}: Something horrible happens to at least one character's hands or fingers in each book.
* FisherKing: The legend of the Fisher King is central to ''The Drawing of the Dark'', ''Earthquake Weather'', and ''Last Call''. It is also mentioned in ''On Stranger Tides'' and ''Expiration Date'', the latter forming a trilogy with ''Last Call'' and ''Earthquake Weather''
* FlyingDutchman, Man Without A Country subtype: An unnamed minor character in the short story "Itinerary", based on the real-life Merhan Karimi Nasseri.
* TheFool: Dondi Snayheever in ''Last Call''
* FutureMeScaresMe: The plot of ''Three Days to Never'' is complicated by the arrival of a future version of one of the characters, who is dangerously determined to prevent the course of events that produced him.
* GenderRestrictedAbility: In ''Three Days to Never'', certain magical powers are restricted by gender; one of the characters is a sorcerer who, it turns out, was born female and went to extreme lengths to gain access to male magic.
** This also shows up briefly in OnStrangerTides to explain why Blackbeard married so many women (what, seventeen or so?).
* GrandTheftMe: A recurring feature.
* GroinAttack: In ''Last Call'', [[spoiler:the villain finds out the hard way that if you use a five-year-old boy as a HumanShield you can't protect your head and chest without leaving other important parts vulnerable]].
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: A recurring feature.
* HistoricalFantasy: A recurring feature.
* HornyVikings: ''The Drawing of the Dark'' includes a small group of middle-aged Vikings who have improbably sailed their ship up the Danube River to Vienna, having sensed the possibility that the prophesied final battle of Ragnarok will take place here.
* HumanShield: Used by the villain in ''Last Call''.
* IfIDoNotReturn: Twice in ''Last Call''; both times, the end of the sentence is some form of "assume I'm dead and get the heck out of here".
* ImmortalityImmorality: Shows up again and again in his work.
* InstantDramaJustAddTracheotomy: An emergency tracheotomy performed by a non-professional is a key plot event in ''Three Days to Never''. It's not a neat Hollywood tracheotomy, though, and has serious repercussions.
* LiteraryWorkOfMagic: In ''Three Days To Never'', it turns out CharlieChaplin worked symbolic imagery into ''City Lights'' as part of a magical ritual to attempt to bring his son back from the dead. An earlier movie he'd worked on but never shown to the public is part of the {{MacGuffin}}; AlbertEinstein had to talk Chaplin out of showing the movie, as the mojo generated by the imagery would likely fry some audience brains.
* LostHimInACardGame: ''Last Call'' features a particularly twisted variation.
* {{MacGuffin Title}}: ''The Drawing of the Dark''
* NoMrBondIExpectYouToDine: ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace''
* NoQuestionsAsked: After Kootie Parganas's parents are killed and he goes on the run, advertisements start appearing that offer a large reward for his whereabouts, no questions asked.
* NotBloodSiblings: Happens in a couple of Powers's novels. See the trope page for the list.
* OurGhostsAreDifferent / LivingMemory: In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts are not the souls of the dead, but psychic copies created in the trauma of death. (They can also be created by other traumatic events, but they usually merge back into the person if the person survives.)
* PocketProtector: In ''Expiration Date'', [[spoiler:Pete Sullivan is shot by the villain in the final confrontation, but is saved by a memento of his father he's carrying inside his shirt]].
* PsychicLink:
** Between Scott and Diana in ''Last Call'', which lets each know when the other has been injured.
** There's one between the protagonist of ''Three Days to Never'' and his daughter, that grows stronger over the course of the novel.
** The twins in ''Expiration Date'' frequently know what each other is thinking and can finish sentences in unison, but it's explicitly stated that they ''don't'' have a psychic link, they just know each other really well.
* PsychicPowers: Several characters in ''Three Days to Never'' have versions of Remote Viewing ability.
* PunnyName: Powers occasionally gives characters names that are puns on ecclesiastical Latin catchphrases, apparently just for the lulz. Examples include "Neal Obstadt", who appears in ''Last Call'' and ''Expiration Date'', and "Libra Nosamalo", who appears in ''Three Days to Never''.
* RetGone: The villains of ''Three Days to Never'' can do this to a person.
* ScavengerWorld: ''Dinner at Deviant's Palace''
* SerialKiller: Al Funo in ''Last Call'' makes his living taking money to kill specific people, but it's clear he'd be killing people even if nobody paid him.
* ShapeshifterBaggage: In ''Expiration Date'', a fugitive ghost is briefly able to disguise the body it's inhabiting by adding biomass to increase the body's height and shape. The question of where the extra biomass comes from is addressed, and it's not pleasant.
* SpontaneousHumanCombustion: In ''Expiration Date'', ghosts sometimes burst into flames if they are suddenly alarmed. It's suggested that human combustion happens when a person dies, but their ghost doesn't immediately notice and keeps walking around in their body for a while before suffering some shock (such as, often, the shocking realisation that they've been dead for a while and hadn't noticed).
* SpyFiction: ''Declare'', and the Mossad subplot of ''Three Days to Never''
* SpySpeak: ''Declare'' involves lots of code phrases and recognition exchanges, some of which turn out to have occult significance.
* StableTimeLoop: Powers's default model of time travel. Demonstrated most triumphantly in ''The Anubis Gates''.
* SteamPunk: The term "steampunk" was coined by K. W. Jeter to describe the speculative fiction stories in a Victorian setting that he, Powers and James Blaylock were writing in the early 1980s.
* StolenGoodReturnedBetter: In ''Earthquake Weather'', fugitive Cody steals a car, picking one that's a few decades old because it's easier to hotwire. She does some work on it while it's in her hands, so when the owner eventually gets it back it's in better condition than it was when she stole it.
* TarotMotifs: ''Last Call''
* TarotTroubles: ''Last Call''
* TimeTravel: Most centrally in ''The Anubis Gates'' and ''Three Days to Never''
* TranslationConvention: ''The Drawing of the Dark'' applies Translation Convention to 16th-century Italian and German dialects (the main language of the story), Old Norse, Welsh, Latin, and several other tongues. An added twist is that the main character himself is subject to this trope; he doesn't actually "know" most of the languages he gets involved with, but he understands them anyway.
* UrbanFantasy: A recurring feature.
* VirginPower: Played with in ''Last Call''.
* WhoWantsToLiveForever
* YouCantFightFate: A recurring feature on any occasion that involves time travel.
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