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.

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.