George R.R. Martin
Paperback | Pages: 432 pages Rating: 3.7 | 11147 Users | 935 Reviews
Present Books As Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1)
| Original Title: | Wild Cards |
| ISBN: | 1596872829 (ISBN13: 9781596872820) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Wild Cards #1 |
| Literary Awards: | Locus Award Nominee for Best Anthology (1987) |
Chronicle Toward Books Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1)
A kind editor pointed GRRM my way when he decided to have a Wild Cards book set in the UK and wanted more British authors on board. Actually as a dual national I'm half American, but I've spent 90%+ of my life here. Anyway, Wild Cards is a franchise spanning 30+ years in real time and 60+ years in book time, and sprawls over 23 (& counting volumes). The good thing is that although all that alternate history and the cast of characters are there to be used, most of the books (all of which comprise a collection of short stories) stand well on their own, as do the stories within them. And the underlying idea of the whole thing can be delivered in a couple of lines. In 1940(ish) an alien virus is released. It infects a few thousand or tens of thousands then fades away, with new outbursts down the years. 90% of those catching it die, 9% are horribly deformed, and 1% are largely untouched but gain super powers. Simple! So, in preparation for writing my 15,000 word story for Knaves Over Queens, book 27, I read book 1. It's set in the 40s, 50's and 60s, following the aftermath of the first outbreak and the progress of some of those new "super heroes" along with the social impact of their activities and of the far more numerous "Jokers" (those who end up sick and deformed) who form a persecuted underclass and mostly live in ghettos. There is a focus on real American political events of the period, re-imagined through the lens of the virus. The political ramifications and events are not discarded but build through the series, giving it a persistent and realistic history that is absent in other superhero franchises where the board is reset regularly and consequences largely forgotten. The political focus can make this first book rather dry, especially for younger readers for whom time has moved the events from recent(ish) history to something more distant and academic. I found the quality of the short stories to be enormously variable. This is true of many anthologies, and I guess of many collections of books you might randomly pull off the shelf. It's been a while since I read it so I can't go into detail. I remember GRRM's own contribution as being very entertaining, and that the story by the late Roger Zelzany (whose books I like a lot) left me somewhat disappointed. But that's part of the joy of collections, the authors can experiment and you never know what to expect. You get highs with the lows and it's definitely worth giving it a try. You're not committing to a 30 book series here, since armed with the basics you can dive into any of the volumes as you please. It's an exciting and highly imaginative project with some very different takes on the whole superhero (& villain) idea. Well worth it. And of course the volume my story appears in is a must read! Join my 3-emails-a-year newsletter #prizes .....Be Specific About Appertaining To Books Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1)
| Title | : | Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1) |
| Author | : | George R.R. Martin |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 432 pages |
| Published | : | December 1st 2007 by iBooks (first published December 1st 1986) |
| Categories | : | Fantasy. Science Fiction. Fiction. Short Stories. Comics. Superheroes. Anthologies |
Rating Appertaining To Books Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1)
Ratings: 3.7 From 11147 Users | 935 ReviewsRate Appertaining To Books Wild Cards (Wild Cards #1)
WILD CARDS I just barely made three stars (2.5) for me. I liked a few stories in it (there was even a four-star tale here and there; counterbalanced by a few one-star efforts), but the overall achievement was merely "okay." Many of the shorts were solid in execution, but the book itself was quite hit-and-miss in the overall spirit of the "Golden Age of Heroes" and actually depressing, stamping a rather dejected impression on me in the larger sense. Will I read more in this series? It seems to beI have explained in the past that I am not a massive fan of short story collections but there is an exception to every rule. In my opinion, The Wild Cards novels are the best ongoing series of short stories available today. When I heard that Tor Books was re-releasing the first novel I felt compelled to immediately start re-reading my old copy.How best to describe the concept of Wild Cards? The quick answer would be imagine an alternative Earth where an alien virus has been released and as a
I picked this up on Audio and ended up DNF-ing it not because the narrator wasn't good, but because the story was just not for me. It's set in an alternative history and the style of writing felt quite jarring and irritating to me from the start and I found it hard to connect with the characters. Maybe this is because the book has many authors and it's a culmination of many ideas, but for me this style really didn't work and I found myself not wanting to listen to the audio quite quickly and
A kind editor pointed GRRM my way when he decided to have a Wild Cards book set in the UK and wanted more British authors on board. Actually as a dual national I'm half American, but I've spent 90%+ of my life here.Anyway, Wild Cards is a franchise spanning 30+ years in real time and 60+ years in book time, and sprawls over 23 (& counting volumes).The good thing is that although all that alternate history and the cast of characters are there to be used, most of the books (all of which
You never know what youre getting with an anthology, but I was pleasantly surprised with this one. Its coherent, with a strong throughline and a unique and thought-provoking take on both superheroes and especially post-WWII America. In short, I liked itquite a bit. However, after mulling on it overnight, I had to deduct a star just because I also feel its ultimately takes an extremely degrading approach to women. The majority of the authors and characters are male, which I have no problem with,
This is an excellent treatment of the pulp scifi genre. I especially like the way it embraces pulp without being self-referential. Breaking the story up between different writers also helps add to the feeling that the world of the Wild Card virus is a dynamic world, with numerous goings-on that can relate to each other in all kinds of ways.The stories are by turns intensely interpersonal, or action oriented, but they all juxtapose noir with the giddiness inherit to shared scifi - "Look at all
The introduction was ok, but for me everything fell apart after that point. The first story after that of Jetboy was extremely painful for me so I tried to jump ahead to the one from GRRM, but I didn't enjoy that one any more than the first.
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