I just finished Last Call, a science fiction novel by Tim Powers, that I’m mentioning here to add to our list of literary descriptions of poker. Last Call is pretty good: it’s full of action and it reads like a cross between Stephen King, Roger Zelazny, and George Pelecanos. I thought the ending was weak, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.
The poker scenes in Last Call were carried out well. The only problem I had was in some of the exposition near the beginning, where it seemed that the author was regurgitating a bunch of Frank Wallace’s classic, “Poker: A guaranteed income for life by using the advanced concepts of poker,” even to the extent of repeating the anecdote about the sandwich. Wallace’s book remains very readable, and I have no problem using it as background, but it’s gotta be processed first so it doesn’t look like raw research.
I wouldn’t call it science fiction exactly. Much of Tim Powers’ more recent stuff, including the sort-of-sequels to Last Call, is considerably weaker, but I would strongly recommend The Anubis Gates, Declare, The Stress of Her Regard and On Stranger Tides, with a good also-ran for Dinner at Deviant’s Palace.
Don’t forget “The Drawing of the Dark”, Tim Power’s earliest book which I’ve read, and also great. “The Anubis Gates” is one of my all-time favorites. “On Stranger Tides” was remade into one of the “Black Pearl” (Johnny Depp) movies. (The book is much better.)
Jerry Pournelle, not much of a fantasy reader, said of Tim Powers, something like, “This guy writes the most fantastic, unbelievable stuff–yet he makes you believe it!”
My favorite line from “Declare!” (paraphrasing from memory): “Not all the beasts who were left off the Ark had the decency to expire”. I was going to name a game mod “Not All The Beasts” but in the end went with “Godzilla” instead.
Check out Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje. One of the plotlines is about a poker player. I’m not really into poker, so not in a position to say much on the topic, but Ondaatje usually researches his novels thoroughly (even includes a bibliography) so I imagine it is solid. And he is a beautiful writer…
“Last Call, a science fiction novel by Tim Parks” — as some of the other commenters have already inferred, I think you may have meant Tim Powers
Ib:
Typo fixed; thanks. Tim Parks is the author of Judge Savage and Cleaver. I prefer Tim Parks to Tim Powers (comparing their writing, that is; I know nothing about them as people), I guess that’s why I accidentally used Parks’s name there.