Wired.com presents the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. And here is your host, David Barr-Kirtley.

Hello and welcome to episode 186 of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy.

Our guest today is Tim Powers, author of such novels as The Nubus Gates, Last Call, and Declare.

Along with his friends James Blaylock and KW Jeter, he's considered one of the founders of the steampunk genre, and he was also good friends with Philip K Dick, who included a character based on Tim in his novel, Valis.

Tim's pirate novel on Stranger Tides inspired one of my all-time favorite video games, The Secret of

Monkey Island, and also provided the premise for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

Tim was also one of my instructors at the Clarion Writers Workshop back in 1999.

And now here's our interview with Tim Powers.

All right, so we're here with Tim Powers. Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, David. Happy to be here.

Okay, and so your new book is called Medusa's Web. So what's that about?

Well, broadly speaking, I guess, it's about a brother and sister who returned to the decrepit mansion in the Hollywood Hills where they were brought up because their

aunt has died and left a will and when they get there they discover that they're immeshed in a bunch of

supernatural mysteries that have their origins in Hollywood in the 1920s.

Right, and so the book jacket describes this as the House of Usher in the

Hollywood Hills.

Does it really? Okay. That's not bad.

I mean in what way do you think it's similar to the House of Usher?

Well, uh, the House of Usher is mentioned in the book.

Um, at one point there's kind of ghostly communication with the dead

aunt and she's in the midst of kind of dementia gibberish quotes some bits from the House of

Usher and so I sort of to an extent kept that story in mind as I was plotting the book.

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