Wild Cards 30 - Full House

Short Runs

Wild Cards Vol 30
Full House
by George R. R. Martin
Tor Books
ISBN: 9781635912715256167958

Proclaiming itself a Wild Cards mosaic novel on the first printed page of the book, this 30th new collection of short stories in the Wild Cards series, Full House, isn’t really that at all. Sure it consists of new stories by a variety of the Wild Cards writers but, unlike the majority of the multi-authored previous volumes in the series, these aren’t all going towards making up an overreaching story arc. Instead, this is a collection of stories previously published on Tor’s website... which is fine by me, I don’t really have time for electronic PDFs or Epubs of fiction when there are so many good printed stories to be read... hence, I haven’t read any of these before, myself.

But the point is, these don’t go together so well and, yeah, I’ll hit you with my one negative comment at the end but, if you are a Wild Cards fan... lapping up these tales taking place in an alternate Earth history where a virus from an alien world was unleashed in the 1940s, which either leaves people as they are, turns them into hideously deformed Jokers, kills them or gives them Ace powers (basically gives them super powers)... then you are going to love this one.

As usual, all of the stories in this tome are amazingly well written and, if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably be absolutely into all the characters... old and brand new alike. These are skilled writers giving us fantastic prose set in a version of Earth where literally anything can happen... these books are like addictive drugs, they’re so good. Here’s a very brief rundown of what’s in this new edition of the stories... I’m not going to go into detail on each one because, frankly, they’re all absolutely brilliant.

When We Were Heroes by Daniel Abraham
This one has former American Hero contestant Bugsy, moved on since the various big international conflicts he’s been involved with since the first season of that reality show, now working as a ‘reporter’ on Aces magazine, a gossip rag of some notoriety. He is on the sharp end of an angry Curveball, after she finds out about a shot he uses of her combined with an Ace celebrity piece he puts out, catching her on a first date. The conversation they have crosscuts between a recent, tragic event in Bugsy’s life where he was working security for an organisation and the awkwardness and romance of Curveball’s first date with a Nat (Nats or naturals are people who haven’t been affected by the virus... yet).  

Evernight by Victor Milan
This one’s a fairly dark tale featuring Candace Sessou aka The Darkness, as she tries to free her terrorist brother from captivity in a Joker sanctuary beneath the catacombs of Paris, by doing a job for those who run the place in exchange for his release. Things go wrong all over.

Lies My Mother Told Me by Caroline Spector
This one sees Bubbles and her adopted, insect-like daughter Adesina attacked by zombies on a carnival float. However, it’s not Bubbles former lesbian lover and friend Hoodoo Mama who is responsible for the zombie disruption and deaths. Someone sole Mama’s power temporarily to specifically put pressure on Bubbles through her friends. Between the two of them, the ladies fight back and neutralise the threat... as far as we know... in the usual deadly manner.

Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza by Carrie Vaughn
Earth Witch, still mending from a bullet wound she received in one of the big international battles told in the novels, is wracked with guilt for killing so many enemy soldiers and then finds out that, somewhere in Mexico, her grandmother is still alive. Finding the advice of the local priest completely unsympathetic to the plight of those touched by the virus, she takes a road trip to go and find her grandmother for some advice on the matter... one Ace to another. A background detail... Curveball seems to still be in a relationship with John Fortune, son of the first wave Ace Fortunato, in this. Which kinda contradicts the first story in the volume... I’ll get to that soon.

Discards by David D. Levine
This one is by David D. Levine who wrote the wonderful Arabella of Mars novels (which I reviewed here, here and here). This one tells of a new Joker/Ace when his card turns, transforming him into someone who can attract certain kinds of junk and debris to overcome his obstacles. Now, I think Levine has been involved in the Wild Cards novels before on a number of occasions but this is the first time I’ve consciously noticed that this is the same guy who created Arabella. The writing style is totally different here to those aforementioned tomes and shows what a great, diverse talent this writer is... but the same can be said for all the Wild Cards writers, I’m sure.

The Elephant In The Room by Paul Cornell
This one’s a nice little sketch of Abigail, who picks up passing Ace and Joker powers (I think her first appearance was in the Wild Cards novel Fort Freak, reviewed here). She’s also the current girlfriend of the original, multigenerational, ageless Ace... Croyd ‘The Sleeper’ Crenson. But when Croyd is coming to the end of his current waking cycle and desperate to stay awake via whatever amphetamines or alternatives he can find, becoming his usual cranky self... Abigail’s mum comes for a visit.

When The Devil Drives by Melinda M. Snodgrass
Star Trek writer extraordinaire Melinda M. Snodgrass is one of the old and constant guard of the Wild Cards universe (and sometimes shares the editing credit with George R. R. Martin). This is another tale of assassin Noel Matthews, former teleporting assassin for the Order Of The Silver Helix and his various male and female incarnations. In this one, pursuing a somewhat ‘straight’ life, he is framed for a murder he didn’t commit and, in chasing down the real culprit, finds himself trying to fix his own family, from whom he has retreated.

The Atonement Tango by Stephen Leigh
This one headlines Drummer Boy, everyone’s favourite Joker/Ace musician. However, when a Joker Plague concert is bombed and all but one of his group and himself survive, with life changing injuries, he needs to investigate just what crackpot let the bomb off and come to terms with some home truths. This one features another cameo by Croyd Crenson and also the centaur Dr. Bradley Finn, who is looking after DB’s wounds. There’s also a mention of Jube, the walrus newspaper vendor and I love that people still assume that Jube is just another Joker, rather than an alien visitor from the old days of the early books in the series.

Prompt. Professional. Pop! by Walter Jon Williams
Irritating, self important, teleporting Ace Cleopatra is leading a life of crime but an intervention by original 1940s Ace Jack Braun, aka Golden Boy (who also doesn’t age and has been both a hero and a villain... due to his turning evidence in 1950s McCarthy hearings on ‘hidden virus citizens’ back in the 1950s) helps land her in more trouble pursuing fame and money.

How to move Spheres and influence people by Marko Kloos
This one is another story of a new Ace. When disabled 15 year old TK’s card turns on the last week or two before her summer holiday from the expensive school she is enrolled at, she eventually becomes a hero when she is trying to have a holiday in Edinburgh with her folks. She is expelled from school for her heroism but she is also approached by The Committee On Extraordinary Interventions, who are helpful and let her know she can go and work for them when she turns 18, if she wants to.
TK’s Ace ability is she can manipulate any spherical object with her mind... which obviously makes her very dangerous but, I won’t tell you her Ace name because the writer holds that back as a little reveal at the end of the story.

And that’s me done with Wild Cards Full House. My one disappointment is that the stories aren’t presented in chronological order, so there are lots of contradictions from story to story as various Aces are mentioned as doing different things at different stages of their lives (even though the stories are all about the more modern of the Wild Cards heroes... within the last ten years). So you do have to kind of ignore the seeming contradictions as you go on this one. But, other than that, another absolutely fantastic ride and I can’t wait for the next volume, which is due out next year. I love these books and have been reading them since the first tome appeared in the 1980s. Great stuff.

Wild Cards - Joker Moon

 

Lunar Tunes

Wild Cards - Joker Moon
Edited by George R. R. Martin
& Melinda M. Snodgrass
Harper Voyager ISBN: 9780008283605

Joker Moon is, by my count, the 29th of the series of mosaic novels which comprise the Wild Cards saga to date. The majority of most of the novels are short stories, often split between sections, which make up an overall story arc for that specific novel, written by a hugely talented array of science fiction and fantasy writers over the years. Nowadays, the overview and editing of the novels is accredited to George R. R. Martin & Melinda M. Snodgrass although, I have to say, it’s been many years since I’ve seen Martin contributing significantly to the content as he used to (although Snodgrass still has at least one story per novel, it seems to me). That being said, this is obviously a marketing ploy for the front covers to cash in on Martin’s successful Game Of Thrones novels and, I can’t blame them, to be honest. I noticed on the inside of this one, it actually says it’s edited by Melinda M Snodgrass and ‘assisted’ by George R. R. Martin so, yeah, make of that what you will.

I’ve been reading these novels since they first appeared, with handsome paperback covers by British comic book artist Brian Bolland, in the mid-1980s and, hard as it’s been over the years where various publishing houses for the series have gone bankrupt a week after a novel came out or just jumped ship on the series, I’ve managed to buy a copy of each and every one, more or less, as they were released. On the one occasion where one went in and out of print within a week or so, as is my understanding, I actually picked that one up on ebay a few years later and... that was even more of a thrill because it turned out the guy selling it to me, who only had one copy left, was the sole writer of that tome so he personalised it for me. So, yeah, I’ve been lucky with this series of novels over the years too, for sure.

The basic plot is of an alternate history of Earth when the time line diverges from our own in 1946 due to an alien Black Card virus, which is our constant legacy for ever after, is released into our atmosphere. Many die. Some people stay the same... the Nats. Some turn into Aces with superheroic and bizarre powers. Some turn into hideous jokers of all shapes, sizes and forms. And some of them, Deuces, are a little bit Ace and sometimes a bit Joker too. And there’s anything in between. And because the virus is lodged in our genes, sometime (in puberty perhaps), your card might ‘turn’ and you get powers or go through some hideous mutation.

And the books are great, it has to be said.

Over the years we are introduced to characters and some are killed, some age and die and other generations take their place. Indeed, sometimes, as in the case of Roger Zelazny or Victor Milán, writers die and their specific characters either exit the story, are used just as little cameos or, sometimes, taken over as something all the writers can seem to include in their stories if they like. So one of the most famous characters in the saga.. Croyd Crenson (aka The Sleeper, created by Zelazny), who has an infinite lifespan because whenever he finally sleeps (when the speed he’s on to stop him from sleeping finally doesn’t do him any good) he wakes up as either a new kind of Ace or Joker... still turns up every now and again from the original generation of Wild Card heroes. And, yes, for all of those Wild Cards fans who are constantly on ‘Croyd watch’, I’m happy to report that he does indeed have a few pages of a very specific adventure in this latest volume.

Okay, so the main interlocking story points of this one, as told through multi-part chapters gluing the other stories together with split sections entitled The Moon Maid and Within That House Secure, are focused on three specific characters. We have the Indian, Aarti, whose card turns in 1948 when she’s studying at Oxford University over here in the UK (among her fellow students are J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis). She has her head swelling up to resemble the Moon and her body marked by craters etc. However, unknown to everyone, is the fact she is teleported to the moon by night and has the night time to paint and frolic and create whatever she wants with her special powers on the moon. So she’s more or less confined to her bed as a joker by day but, by night, she is the sole occupant of the Moon, and she likes it that way. Which is where her other problems begin.

The other two characters start off as children... Mathilde is a red skinned joker girl and her best friend is the super rich heir to a fortune, Theodorus. Both are lovers of science and both have the talent for rocketry. Mathilde is especially good at maths and inventing things. However, not long before his parents’ death, when he inherits the estate, Theodorus’ card turns and he becomes a huge snail centaur, half man, half snail. He doesn’t let it set him back though and he pulls the strings of his ambitions from his rich, hermit like existence with his best friend Mathilde at his side... a bit like Nero Wolfe in a way, since he’s often in his green house cultivating his army of super sized snails.

His ambitions however, take him into direct opposition to Aarti, The Moon Maid. The book takes place in various stories from 1948 up until 2020 and tells the tale of Theodorus’ plans, decade by decade, to populate the moon and terraform it so that all the jokers of the Earth can live there in peace and harmony, free from the hatred and prejudices of the Nats (aka regular humans). But, you know, The Moon Maid has other ideas.

And, like any of the Wild Cards novels, it’s a hugely emotional ride and a very clever series of interlocking stories, which I certainly won’t spoil for any potential readers here. Because it’s set over various decades, many of the characters from the past pop up in odd cameos or mentions throughout. So the original Dr. Tachyon actually turns up as a character early in the novel (a Takisian from the race of aliens whose virus got accidentally unleashed on Earth). There are also sizeable appearances from characters like Bugsy, the joker centaur Doctor Bradley Finn, Tesseract, the Infamous Black Tongue and Bubbles... including one chapter set in the heat of the battle of the war in Egypt where these ‘green’ Aces from the American Hero reality TV show ended up fighting in wars to protect the Living Gods of Egypt. And, yeah, obviously famous Wild Cards twists on history from previous stories make it in as mentions in the novel too... such as The Rox on Ellis Island (where jokers took the island in an incident in the 1990s) and there’s even a chapter where Aces are battling The Swarm again from the 1980s (if you’ve not read these then this is an indication, I think, that if you want to jump on board with these, then you really need to start from the very beginning). There are also some lovely little mentions and very brief, one liner appearances from such Wild Cards stalwarts as Golden Boy, The Great And Powerful Turtle (I really miss that character), the late but great Father Squid and, from the recent British cycle, The Green Man.

And I don’t want to say a whole lot more about the story but I will say it’s as powerful as most of the Wild Cards novels and it contains some great moments (including an unexpected villain from the most unlikeliest place, at one point) and various dramatic situations on both Earth and the Moon. Although the end is a fairly optimistic one, in some ways, it’s a mixed bag of emotional intensity again and I found myself counting the losses in terms of characters who meet their end in this novel as much as watching the bitter sweet celebration of the final mini chapter, which presumably takes us into where the next couple of novels might go. Like I say in pretty much all of my Wild Cards reviews, Joker Moon is an absolutely fantastic novel but... it’s definitely not a jumping on point. These books really should be read from the start and, fortunately for newcomers, the earlier novels are slowly coming back into print again so, if you’re going to do it, now might be a good time.

Wild Cards - Low Chicago

Temporal Temptations

Wild Cards - Low Chicago
Edited by George R. R. Martin
Tor Books
ISBN: 978-0765390561

Warning: Slight spoilers on character appearances in this one if you’re a regular Wild Cards reader.

Low Chicago is the 25th of the long running Wild Cards mosaic novels which have been going, on and off, since the 1980s. If you’ve not read these before they map out a complete alternate history of the world since the Wild Card Virus was released in the Earths atmosphere in the 1940s, dividing the survivors into either Aces (with different superpowers), Jokers (deformed creatures, some of whom can still access superpowers) and the Nats (those somehow unaffected). The virus is passed down from generation to generation throughout history and these novels are seen through the eyes of multiple characters by multiple writers, often given a section of a novel each involving their character with one writer weaving all the bits together to make a coherent whole. George R. R. Martin used to be one of the many contributing writers (and it was his project from day one in the 1980s, from what I remember) but these days he’s usually just listed as editor (not that this isn’t a significant job).

The last decade or so has seen the series divided up and reclassified into trilogies and other sized sections which kinda makes sense when you look back on things. This book is apparently the middle section of one such trilogy, following on directly from the last novel Mississipi Roll (which I reviewed here) but, honestly, I can’t work out what that last one has to do with this one. That being said, the previous 'trilogy' did exactly the same thing to me until I realised how everything was tying together in the third part so... I’m keeping an open mind until I can see how they are going to link this in down the line in the near future. If it hadn’t been for that I would have said that this is a good jumping on point for people who haven't read one of these before but... yeah... I have no idea how this is going to link in later.

The book itself is the usual blend of well written, attention grabbing short stories held together by an overall arc. That arc being a high stakes card game in Chicago played out by rich people with a number of Ace bodyguards in tow. Fans who have been with the series since it’s inception will possibly be interested to know that Jack Braun, aka Golden Boy, is one of those players. I’d never thought about it before but I guess he doesn’t age so much and still looks pretty much the same since we first met him in the 1940/50s. That being said, a few old faces return in this volume because, for the first time that I can remember in Wild Cards history, this book is all about time travel. One of the players, or bodyguards actually, is fan favourite Croyd, who was originally created by the late, great Roger Zelazny from what I can remember but the character has been turning up, off and on, since the first volume. Like certain other characters, he doesn’t get old and die, due to the nature of his ace. Croyd Crenson is also known in the novels as The Sleeper and that’s because he tries to keep himself awake for as many weeks/months possible (getting more and more paranoid the longer he is awake due to the large quantities of pills he pops to keep him alert) before crashing out big time and sleeping for months at a time. The reason he does this is... well... because he never knows who he’s going to wake up as next. His ace is that he draws a new Wild Card every time he goes to sleep... so he knows he’ll either be an ace or a joker (or a combination of both) and he always dreads waking as a joker (at which point he just sleeps it off as quickly as he can).

Anyway, Croyd is at the table, along with many others including another long lived Ace born before the Wild Card extended his life, Nighthawk. And the linking story which pulls all the shorts here together is of Croyd and Nighthawk working together to rescue various people in the room since tragedy struck. A kerfuffle in the room in a hotel meant that Croyd accidentally, by reflex, defended himself with his new powers which he’s still trying to get to grips with... the power to travel in time. He accidentally transports a large number of people and they are all thrown into separate parts of history before the card game... some even before the Wild Card virus infected the Earth in the first place (and some of those by several million years). It’s up to Croyd and Nighthawk to keep dipping back to other times to re-teleport each one out of there before they change history which, given the time storm that starts to occur outside the hotel in the present, may well be a huge problem. And although this sounds like a good starting point to revisit some of the long dead characters from Wild Cards history... the book doesn’t do this as a main agenda and a surprising amount of the stories are, in fact, free of old characters at all. Although, the sequence where Croyd and Nighthawk meet the P. G. Wodehouse characters Jeeves and Wooster seems a bit odd as one would assume they are also fictional characters in the Wild Cards universe?

Anyway, the book uses the various characters stranded for weeks, months or years in another time before Croyd can find them to explore their personal histories in detail and also to craft some entertaining stories where the main character of each story can at least, if they know their history, predict certain events before they happen. Some of the writers also, quite cleverly, do leave history changed at the end of their stories, only to have Croyd and Nighthawk arrive in the next chapter of the linking story and go back to before that character had changed history too. And sometimes not. There’s a wonderful argument in the book about who wrote the famous science fiction story where treading on a butterfly in the past changed all of future history and this gives the novel its basis in terms of where everything is going... not to mention a nice punchline to the perpetual argument in the closing sentence of the novel.

That being said, there is also a lot for long term fans of the series regarding appearances and interaction. For instance, we are reminded that in the Wild Cards universe, Kennedy was still assassinated but Marilyn Monroe went on to live a full and healthy life. That being said, there’s a wonderful set up in this book, in a story which takes place in the Playboy Mansion over the week the magazine was officially launched, that gives us a perfect ‘future character’ if these novels are still being written in 20 or so years time. Asides from this return to the plot threads of an old storyline, we have appearances by fan pleasing characters like The Great And Powerful Turtle, Fortunato and there’s even an appearance by the Joker Brigade Army Sergeant who went on to become the Jokertown priest Father Squid in later years (a character who, when we last left him, was seemingly killed by being turned into a pew by Baba Yaga a couple of novels ago). There’s also a brilliant story set at the dawn of time where one of the characters bumps into an alien who she thinks is Jube, the news vendor in her street. Jube is a walrus looking character disguised as a Joker who is really an alien from the same species as this new character and who has been on Earth a long time (and is presumably named after The Beatles song I Am The Walrus... you know, "goo goo ga joob"). New possibilities for a future story arc are presented when this alien is also teleported back to the present day by accident so... I’m sure one of the writers will start to pull on some alien invasion threads in a few year’s time (it wouldn’t be the first time in Wild Cards history).

Low Chicago is yet another great set of Wild Cards stories and fans of the series should eat this one up. I’m quite looking forward to reading the next installment which was published in the US in October but, before then, there is already another trilogy started in the form of a British series of Wild Cards books involving British characters... so I’m really not sure of which one to read first, to be honest.

High Stakes - Wild Cards 23

Frandemonium 

High Stakes - Wild Cards 23
edited by George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass
Tor Books ISBN: 9780765335823

Well, here I go again. Almost 30 years since I started reading the first Wild Cards books (in those wonderful Brian Bolland covers), the Aces, Jokers and Nats are back in the 23rd of the mosaic novels to date.

Looking in the ‘previous books in the series’ style listing in the front of the volume finds that the publishers have now split up different chronological groups into subsets that, despite all the novels overlapping and making up the same timeline, are obviously arranged to allow people to peruse the shared Wild Cards universe in an easier manner. So we have little subsections like The Puppetman Quartet, The Rox Triad, The Card Sharks Triad etc. This new novel, High Stakes, is apparently the final part of The Fort Freak Triad but, I really couldn’t care, truth be told. After the cliffhanger ending of Lowball (reviewed here), I couldn’t wait to find out if the apocalypse had been ushered in and the world was about to end for the collective of characters in this particular literary universe.

I put a pretty high profile 'spoiler warning' in that last review where I predicted that the old enemy The Astrologer would be back and that the streets would be running red with blood. Well, I have to say, I got it dead wrong about the return of the astrologer but the absolute carnage in this particular tome is certainly on a level with some of the blood baths of the very early days. This one is a battle royale like no other in the series and I was almost surprised, whenever I looked away from the words on the pages, that the leaves of the book themselves weren’t running crimson with the blood of lost souls. It’s an apocalyptic battle, to be sure.

This novel carries on directly from the end of the last book, with Marcus the snake man (aka The Infamous Black Tongue) fleeing the botched rescue showdown of the last volume with his new girlfriend, after the death of a very much loved character in the last novel who he does return for... at some point. The Wild Cards writers have never been shy at killing off their characters and the last novel was no different. You get a sense of finality and closure here, to some of the characters that were lost in the last novel. So we have Marcus trying to get out of Talos, as does Franny (Detective Francis Xavier Black) who had travelled to Talos to stop one abomination only to find, once he stopped it, that in doing so he automatically unleashed the ensuing apocalypse. And he has to get out of Talos too... but this time as the puppet-pet of the lead villainess of the last book, Baba Yaga, who he slowly builds a certain bond of understanding with. Kind of.

High Stakes pretty much focusses on the relatively new characters of the recent Wild Cards volumes, although there are still some old timers ‘in the mess’, so to speak, as key players in this novel. There’s even an uncredited Croyd (aka The Sleeper) sighting in this one again, although this story has nothing to do with his character this time and he’s not even mentioned in the ‘end credits’ of the book (I believe he was originally created and written by late great sci-fi writer Roger Zelazny in the earliest Wild Cards books). However, readers still know this generation of characters well and it’s completetly suspenseful to read about some much loved fictional people being pushed and ripped asunder, both mentally and physically, as they try to stop the sheer dread of an advancing army of a surrealistic terror realm slowly creeping across the world.

Early on in the novel, the writers drop in an almost Mothra-like incident which is something they could call on to save the day in the final battle as it plays out here. All the way through I was waiting for a certain character to ‘pop’ out into the world in a new form and drop back into the plot all 'deus ex machina' in the last act. To their credit, the writers didn’t actually use that strand at all and, in the end, a different resolution.... or a different kind of resolution (take your pick)... is introduced into the text. I’m not going to say whether it’s a good or bad resolution but... yeah, there is at least a sense of closure to the unspeakable evil that is slowly destroying the world.

The book doesn’t let up in the pacing department from the get go... which is not actually that surprising since we are basically dropped back into the middle of a story which we’d already started but, I have to say, just keeps speeding up and getting more ugly and darker as it carries on towards its conclusion... which is just what I would expect from a team of writers who have woven together such special characters and situations over the years. And, as usual, interjected into all this mayhem are some great little concepts and some nice explorations of the machinations of the unique powers of some of the characters which, sometimes, may have you laughing out loud, just like me when I was reading this. For all its grotesque insanity and high stakes bedlam, the book still manages to find time for a lot of humour within its pages and, all I can say is that the writers, as always, do a fantastic job.

There is also an epilogue section in the novel, which shows some of the characters once their ‘final solution’ has been played out. Now I don’t want to put any spoilers in here for anybody but I will say that one of my favourite characters out of the last few books definitely has a slight shift in personality here. There is a certain vengeful part of the epilogue which, almost, signals a loss of innocence or, at the very least, an unwillingness to stick to a more heroic code from one of the main players of the last two books. I felt sad about this scene but, if the writers of this series know anything, it’s how to write drama and I can only imagine, ten years from now, how this fictional person’s arc will play out. After all, I remember when Mark Meadows was one of the heroes of the books, for people who can recall back to the early novels and how his character turned out 40 or so years later in the shared chronology of the Wild Cards universe. No, Mark Meadows is not in this one... I was just using it as an example for long time fans of the series but... yeah... the point is that there’s a shift in tone towards the end and one wonders how this will play out for a certain character in the future of the series.

For almost thirty years now I’ve been saying that the Wild Cards stories should be made into a high budget TV show. Not a movie because, frankly, that wouldn’t have the scope and breadth required in a mere two or three hours to even begin to cover the contents of the first novel. Well, fairly recently it looks like Hollywoodland have finally agreed with me and, after the success of a certain other George R. R. Martin property on the airwaves, it looks like a Wild Cards TV show is finally...well... on the cards, if you’ll forgive the pun. This fills me with both hope and trepidation. Hope because, well, modern CGI special effects are finally at a point where they might be able to cope with something of this nature. Trepidation, however, because I hope they’ll give the earlier novels a fair crack and, when all is said and done, they really are going to have to throw a huge amount of money at each and every episode to make this thing work properly, methinks.

Either way, getting back to the subject at hand, High Stakes - A Wild Cards Novel is certainly going to keep fans of this long running literary sensation happy. For people who aren’t long running fans, however, it might not make the most sense and I can only urge you to start at the very beginning if you want to get into these amazing adventures. Either way... excellent book and bravo, once again, to all the writers who are able to magically juggle all these character strands without getting lost in the fray. I applaud you all.

Lowball - Wild Cards 22

Queen Of Clubs 

Lowball - Wild Cards 22
Edited by George R. R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass
Tor Books ISBN: 9780765331953

Warning: Very slight spoilers if you are
a regular reader of the Wild Cards series.

Wow. 28 years since I first started reading them and 22 novels in, the Wild Cards series of mosaic novels are still continuing to be published and this one, released towards the end of 2014 in its original hardback form, once again demonstrates that, despite the changing characters and scenarios inherent in a lot of different writers of different lengths of association with the series, there’s certainly no drop in quality. Lowball is a real page turner which has left me clamouring for the next novel in the series to find out what happens next... released sometime this year, or so it seems.

This one picks up with a lot of the same crew from the police station at the heart of Jokertown and from which the title of the previous book in the series, Fort Freak, was taken (and reviewed by me here). Like the majority of the volumes in the series, this one comprises lots of short story episodes by various writers but, once again, they are all working towards the same climax. Four of the narratives - Those About To Die, Galahad In Blue, Ties That Bind and The Big Bleed, are much longer stretches but they are all split into multiple installments and dotted between the other sections, used as both connective tissue and the main narrative path to the final showdown of the book between... oh, I’ll kinda get to that in a while... and as a kind of gathering of all the clues and adventures which are leading the book to its dark conclusion. Or lack of one, depending on your viewpoint.


This one is a deadly game and has real life parallels. Remember those awful ‘bum fights’ videos which were being sold illegally a few years back? Where tramps were made to fight for the purposes of gambling and selling dodgy videos? Well the plot line of the story is a parallel hooked right into that. Various Jokers are going missing from the streets of Jokertown and it’s up to the newly promoted Detective Frank ‘Franny’ Black to figure out what’s going on when the troubles are brought to his attention by Wild Cards regular Father Squid, the priest whose character dates all the way back to the third Wild Cards novel Joker’s Wild. Father Squid has enlisted the aid of Black Tongue, the deadly Joker hero from the previous novel but, by the time anyone in Fort Freak are taking the crimes that seriously, Father Squid and Black Tongue are also victims of the kidnappers, who are forcing Jokers to fight in gladiatorial combat for high stakes bets and for bootleg videos.

As usual, the novel features a whole load of characters from the entire history of the Wild Cards series, either as full on inclusions in the plot line...  such as Rusty, Drummer Boy, fan favourite Croyd Crenson (aka The Sleeper) and the aforementioned Father Squid... cameo appearances such as Dr. Finn the Centaur or Jube, the alien posing as a Walrus faced joker on Earth (Goo Goo Ga Jube... get it?)... or just as mentions/references by other characters... like Fortunato, Dr. Tachyon or The Great And Powerful Turtle. If you’re picking up one of the Wild Cards books for the first time on this one then, obviously, all these little nods to the past won’t mean a heck of a lot to you but, to long term readers of the series, it’s like catching up with an old friend and hearing about acquaintances long lost again... bound to bring a smile to the face.

While the novel is a lot of the usual fun and full-on barrage of beautiful little ideas that this series is best known for by its fans, there’s also a sense of urgency and almost desperation to the tale as it hurtles full throttle to its painful conclusion. A couple of regular characters from the series are... well, presumed lost (not necessarily dead... it’s a bit complicated to explain without giving away spoilers) and, given the series’ propensity to hemorrhage main characters on a regular basis, I’m already very much mourning their loss in the Wild Cards universe.

That being said, I was still expecting something of a wrap up to the story and, while it’s true, the climax of the novel when a very, very small cavalry rush to the aid of the Jokers, is absolutely taut and full of blood n' thunder, nothing prepared me for the ending of this tome which suckered me right into an epilogue which I thought was going to bring closure but, instead, put me on one of the most horrible cliff hangers since reading Patricia Cornwell’s Scarpetta book Flesh And Blood at the end of 2014 (reviewed here). Now the cliffhanger is taut enough but what it implies to me is that, the next book in the series is going to be positively dripping with the blood of the regular characters before I even open it up... soaked into every page if what I’m guessing is happening comes to pass. Now, it may not be true that I perceived the ending quite right because it’s been a very long time since I read the books in the series dealing with a specific character but, if I’m right, regular readers of the series who haven’t read this yet will want to look away from the next line after this...

... possible spoiler warning...

... I might be wrong or misinterpreting the last paragraph or so but it looks to me like The Astrologer might be back... which will be the biggest single threat to the world of the Wild Cards universe - Aces, Jokers and Nats alike - for a good few decades.

End of spoiler...

So yeah, I absolutely cannot wait to find out just what happens next in the volume scheduled for 2016 called High Stakes. Meanwhile, if you’re a fan of the books then Lowball is another absolute classic. Like the others in the series, the fragmented nature of the contributions in no way diminishes the flow of the story and absolutely every segment feels like it belongs as just the next part of the story and, as usual, every chapter is a winner. So if you like the Wild Cards universe then you need to grab this one while it’s still around (given the fragmented nature of the series’ release from various publishing houses over the years). If you’re not a regular reader... well you’ll still love the Wild Cards universe but I’d advise you to start from the very first ones and work your way through. The rewards for long term readers in terms of post modernistic referencing and the entertainment gleaned from that are... not something you'd want to miss out on.

Wild Cards Vol. 21: Fort Freak

Like Them On Acebook

Wild Cards 21: Fort Freak
Edited by George R. R. Martin
Tor Books. ISBN: 9780765325709

There’s something about picking up the latest Wild Cards book that always feels like I’m getting reacquainted with an old friend I’ve not seen in a while. Like just a couple of people I know, I first got into the Wild Cards mosaic novels (lots of writers contributing short stories or sometimes just chapters to talk about one specific story arc or series of events, depending on the tone of the volume in question) when the first in the series arrived back in 1987. Now the publishing history of these books have made them very hard to stick with for most people (I’m the only person I know who still reads them) because it’s been, well, pretty erratic to say the least.

With the original “cycle” finished after the first twelve books, or so we all thought, even the second half of that initial run could only be bought in imported US editions. Then with multiple publishing companies, large gaps between these so-called cycles (which are just all continuations of the same alternate reality anyway) and the next ones and also gaps between individual titles, including an ultra rare volume which only shelved a very, very short time (a week maybe?) and with only 600 copies printed before the publishing house of that one went under (and which had a crucial link between different generations of Wild Cards explained)... it’s no wonder some of the original readers (at least the ones I know) didn’t stick with these (I bought my copy of that particular single-writer volume from the writer himself, his last spare copy, on ebay and he was good enough to personalise it for me).

Still, having said that, they’re now back in the habit of publishing one new mosaic novel a year so there must still be something of an audience for these out there. I’m very glad because the Wild Cards novels never fail to move me and the warmth of the collected writers always shines through.

Set in an alternate reality where the adventure hero Jetboy failed to save the human race from the alien Black Queen virus back in the forties (Jetboy’s famous last words were, “I can't die yet. I haven't seen The Jolson Story”), the stories deal with the lives of the surviving population of the planet who are, since that fateful day, split into three groups: nats (unaffected), Aces (superpowered heroes) and Jokers (deformed mutants, some of whom also have powers). There are also “deuces” and “suicide kings” but I won’t go into details here... discover all this stuff for yourself.

This volume is a collection of interpenetrating stories from the Jokertown police precinct and mostly features brand new characters and the two linking stories in this involve a snake powered joker inadvertently the target of corrupt Jokertown cops and a Ramsheaded police sergeant, Leo, who has a few months left before retirement and he’s delving into an old, unsolved cold case from the 80s in his spare time. This story also features a cameo from Bubbles, one of the new generation aces recruited by the government from the Big Brother style reality show American Heroes (covered in more detail in the last four novels in the series) but readers who have been with the series a long time will be interested in the inclusion of some of the characters from the past.

A part of one of the investigations taking part in the Jokertown museum obviously allows for references to such past characters as Doctor Tachyon, Golden Boy and The Great And Powerful Turtle... but in addition to this there are a couple of very minor appearances from Jube, the walrus bodied joker newsstand guy who takes his name, presumably, from The Beatles’ song I Am The Walrus (you know... goo goo ga jube) but who long in the tusk readers might recall is actually an alien masquerading as a joker. There are also much more meatier and recurring roles throughout the novel from fan favourite Croyd Crenson aka The Sleeper, originally created by classic scifi writer Roger Zelazny for his stories and chapters in the original opening novels and kept alive as a character by the writers long after Zelazny’s death... and some very significant inclusions by two characters which a lot of fans of the series will appreciate.

Father Squid, the squid faced ex-soldier priest who founded the principal Joker cathedral in Jokertown is back and his history has been added to. I won’t say too much but he turns out to be very linked in to Leo’s investigation of his cold case, the slaughter of everyone (almost everyone) in a Jokertown diner decades in the past. You’re going to be heartbroken, but also guessing the extent of Father Squid's involvement in this case until right at the end, long after you think you know the answer. A warning for long time readers though... it’s pretty heavy.

More heartbreaking, though, is a character devoted fans will know as The Oddity. The Oddity used to be three people... one of the three’s “card turned” (a euphemism for the emergence of the previously dormant black queen virus), as the stories always went, when the lady and two guys in question were having a sexual threesome and their bodies and minds fused together to make one, hard to look at and painful to move, abomination and self proclaimed vigilante protector of Jokertown, The Oddity. Only something bad is about to happen... another series regular, the chief medical practitioner of the Jokertown clinic Bradley Finn (who also happens to be a centaur) discovers that the reason The Oddity has been going a bit “haywire” just lately is because one of the three people inside his/her personality has fallen victim to Alzheimers. Something must be done and Finn has the solution... but it’s a painful solution and fans of this character will certainly find one door closing and another opening in what may possibly be the final appearance of this character, at least in the way we’ve known The Oddity over the years.

As with all the Wild Cards novels, this one is incredibly well written and never forgets to inject the little details that make the world that is the background for these stories come alive in your mind’s eye. It also never forgets that all the characters have a warm, beating heart and these books are always a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride. You may think the genre format of these things doesn’t allow for the kind of warmth and emotional hit you’d get from novels in other genres but you’d be very wrong and certainly don’t let that put you off delving into the Wild Cards universe.

If you’ve never read a Wild Cards novel before, do the smart thing and seek them out from their very beginnings (a major reprint of the novels is already underway) and read them before some smart TV producer finally realises what an excellent set of mini-series' these novels and characters would make (I’m still keeping my fingers crossed that some day we’ll see a Chrysalis action figure on toy shop shelves). If you’re already a fan of this series, however, then you certainly won’t need my recommendation to tell you to pick this one up in a hurry. It’s another triumphant piece of literature that truly exceeds any genre limitations perceived by people unfamiliar with these kinds of stories. Truly another artistic success.