I really like Tim Powers for fiction. He basically writes historical pieces with prominant real-life personalities but injects an element of sci-fi or fantasy to explain a lot of peripheral phenomena that occured at the time, he does stuff like Bugsy Siegel was the Fisher King, Lord Byron was addicted to a vampire, that kind of stuff.
Neil Stephenson is pretty outstanding as well, in a similar vein. His Cryptonomicon juxtaposes WWII-era codebreaking with modern data encryption and it's just awesome, cover to cover. Snow Crash is outright Sci-fi, kind of like early William Gibson, but it's all-killer, no-filler.
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__________________ All manner of men came to work for the News: everything from wild young Turks who wanted to rip the world in half and start all over again -- to tired, beer-bellied old hacks who wanted nothing more than to live out their days in peace before a bunch of lunatics ripped the world in half.
Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
The Rum Diary
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