Three Days to Never by Tim Powers

Tim Powers is not a prolific writer; he seem to produce a new book only every few years. But what he does is of such quality that I tend to rush out and buy his new books as soon as they are released. His previous novel – Declare -- was published in 2001 – and is certainly one of the two or three best fantasy novels of the decade so far. It combined gritty, John le Carre style espionage with Powers’s usual “secret history” style of fantasy, giving a fantastic explanation to the events of the cold war, ranging from the fall of the Soviet Union to the strange career of double agent Kim Philby.

Three Days to Never explores similar territory. Israeli Massad agents and a secret organization battle one another in California, while the great grandson and great-great granddaughter of Albert Einstein are caught in the middle. Einstein, it seems, had discovered far more than relativity, though he had kept his other discoveries secret from all but a few. Only those secret groups – including government groups – that delve into the supernatural know at least some of what he had discovered, which involves time travel, ghosts, and the multi-dimensional universe. Now, the Massad is searching for Einstein’s time travel device, in order to prevent the Yom Kippur War from ever having occurred, while the occultist society that is also searching for Einstein’s legacy simply wants to gain ultimate power.

As the novel starts, Frank Marrity and his daughter Daphne hear that their grandmother has died, leaving them a strange message about burning down her shed. They find the shed still intact, though the grandmother had tried to burn it down. Inside, they find some strange objects, including what seems to be the Chinese Theatre slab where Charlie Chaplin had left his handprints, as well as more mundane things like a tape of Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. The leave with the latter, but when Daphne tries to watch it, she discovers that only the first few minutes are the Pee-Wee film. Instead, she finds a strange silent film, which somehow triggers a psychic event, in which she sets fire to the VCR and her own room.

Bit by bit Powers reveals the story. The grandmother turns out to be Einstein’s daughter, and the tape and the Chaplin slab part of time travel device that Einstein had asked her to destroy. Powers, as usual, weaves together all sorts of strange details – details that on the surface shouldn’t be connected or make not sense, like Chaplin’s handprints, strange voices from TVs, gold swastikas, and the Israeli attack on the Iraqi nuclear reactor – into one big picture. In Powers’s hands, they all become part of a strange and complicated history.

The real heart of the story is the bond between Marrity and Daphne. They are very close, and have an easy, friendly relationship (in our reality anyway, but since the past can be changed, other realities can exist). Marrity is an English professor and Daphne the idea daughter for an English professor, one who can quote Shakespeare back to him. (This also ties to the story, since The Tempest plays a role.) The climax of the story involves Marrity’s attempts to save her from being wiped from existence (not just killed, but made never to exist) as the cabal of occultists tries to find the discovery Einstein most tried to suppress – a way to wipe someone’s entire lifeline from existence. It all makes for an existing reading experience.

This is a good – even a very good book – and if it were by almost anyone else, I’d probably have been even more enthusiastic. As it stands, it’s good mid-level Powers (which is certainly praise). It’s not as good as his very best novels. It doesn’t quite have the amazing mix of historical details and sense of wonder that Declare had (few books do), not the frenetic mix of action and strangeness found in The Anubis Gates. But it’s still highly recommended.