The Works of Tim Powers

Karen of Johnny Depp Reads talked to Tim Powers again about going to the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and how the book evolved into the film.

Alison Flood of guardian.co.uk talked to Tim Powers about On Stranger Tides and other topics. He gets chatty about his next book and he explains how he builds his fantastic tales from 'real-world lumber'.

Maryann Yin of GalleyCat talked to Tim Powers about how his book inspired Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.

The red carpet for the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides was broadcast live on May 07, 2011. You can rewatch the broadcast by clicking on the link below. Tim is interviewed at about the 38 minute mark.

Corvus released an edition of On Stranger Tides in the UK (cover above left) on the first of May 2011. Not to be outdone, Harper has released two editions of On Stranger Tides, both in late April 2011 (cover above middle and right).

Sirius Publishing House in Belgrade (Serbia) has published On Stranger Tides.

John Berlyne reports that there is big promotion on Amazon.co.uk's Kindle store and both On Stranger Tides and Declare are available for only £1.00 and £1.23. I went to have a look and I got the message, "Kindle titles at Amazon.co.uk are available for UK customers only." So if you're in the UK, here are the links for each.

On Stranger Tides

Declare

Last August, Tim mentioned that he and Serena were going to visit the set of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Here is evidence that they made it and had a chance to meet Johnny Depp.

Christine Amarantus has written an article for The Daily Titan of Call State Fullerton. In it, she interviews James Blaylock and Tim Powers about their time there and the early days of their writing. It covers their days with Philip K. Dick and K.W. Jeter and delves into their adventures developing novels known as steampunk. It mentions their relationship with William Ashbless who gave On Stranger Tides its name.

While Johnny Depp is expected to return as Captain Jack Sparrow for a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Titans may be interested to know that the roots of it stem back to Cal State Fullerton.

Read the full article on the The Daily Titan of Call State Fullerton web site.
Photo © Janelle Conner/Daily Titan

On Stranger Tides is one of my favourite Powers novels - I mean come on! Voodoo magic? Zombie Pirates? The Fountain of Youth? Who doesn't want to read an adventure chock-full of all that stuff? I remember I first read that book back in the late 80s and as well as loving the novel, I was captivated by the cover art - I'm talking here of the UK edition published by Grafton, which featured an amazingly strong cover image painted by Richard Clifton-Dey.

The artist died in 1997, but left behind an incredible body of work, now highly sought after by collectors. This wasn't always the case - a few years ago now, I began to make enquiries about his pirate painting and these led me (after some considerable investigation work!) into contact with his agent, the hugely helpful Alison Eldred who told me that following his death, Clifton-Dey's widow had basically shut down his studio and put everything under wraps. Perhaps my interest in the pirate painting might convince her it was time to look at allowing some of the originals on to the market. On my behalf Alison kindly travelled down to visit Mrs Clifton-Dey and found a treasure trove of his work, all stored, preserved and untouched since his death. And there also she found, in perfect condition, the pirate painting and also his cover art for the Grafton edition of The Anubis Gates (this edition being the very first Powers book I ever read, and largely becuase of the cool cover!), along with the preparatory sketches for both commissions. I ended up with both the paintings and the sketches and no, they're not for sale!

In this recent blog entry, the wonderful American artist Jim Gurney wrote a piece about his experiences of producing the cover art for the original Ace edition of On Stranger Tides, a painting that has been reused a number of times, most recently on the recent Czech translation and on the Subterranean Press reissue of the novel
published earlier this year. You can read this fascinating article by following the link above. Most interesting to me was the inclusion of the image shown below of Gurney's preparatory watercolours for the eventual image - a wonderful accompaniment to Clifton-Dey's pencil sketches above. As to which of the two images make for the best cover... well, that is a debate that will run and run!