Wild Cards I – edited by George R. R. Martin – review

I’m not always a fan of super-hero comics or books; most of the time I honestly tend to prefer super-hero movies.  I’m not sure why that is, but as a general rule, I even love the horrible campy super-hero movies, too.  However, there has been a series of books that I’ve wanted to read ever since I saw one of those back page ads in a battered old paperback anthology I picked up at a garage sale for a few measly cents. The description of the Wild Cards series sounded very intriguing, because the whole idea of a virus triggering superpowers seemed far more likely to me than radiation, and it seemed like a much more interesting origin story.  I never did find any copies of the first books in the series, though they’d always stayed on the list of books that I want to get (a list that is rigorously maintained and updated), and I wasn’t about to buy any of the new books in the series without reading the first one.  So, I waited and found other things to read.

Subterranean Press has released a reprint of the first book with some new stories added.  I have to say that I’m actually glad that I waited, because I’m not sure that I would have appreciated this anthology as much when I was younger.  All of the stories are linked, and they contain recurring characters.  The setting remains the same, and it becomes a brilliant shared world where everyone can play in the sandbox without doing too much damage to anything already established.  The continuity in this first volume is rock solid, which is very nice.  There’s no tinkering with the time-line or alternate realities to try to explain away discrepancies, there just aren’t any discrepancies in this book.  I think that speaks volumes to George R.R. Martin’s skill as an editor, and, perhaps, to whatever guidelines he may have provided to the contributing authors.

This book was actually a pretty hefty paperback.  There are seventeen stories, and all of them focus on a particular character of the author’s choosing with some main characters popping up.  The interesting thing is how the stories take American history and remold it into something that seems utterly plausible and logical, even though it isn’t real. 

The main premise is that after World War II, an alien race decided to conduct an experiment on the people of Earth using a virus that they had developed, due to the humans’ similar physiology.  One of the aliens, who comes to be known as Dr. Tachyon, attempts to stop his brethren from completing their scheme.  The alien ship containing the virus crashes, and the virus itself falls into the wrong hands.  The criminal mastermind who manages to get ahold of the virus unleashes it over New York City.  The result is devastating.  90% of the people who contract the virus die.  The other ten percent fall into two categories:  some of them develop superpowers, while the rest become hideously deformed.  Due to the unpredictable nature of the virus, it’s called the Wild Card virus.  People who are blessed with abilities are known as Aces, and those who are cursed with deformities or devastating powers are known as Jokers.

The world enters an entirely different type of cold war as the US and Russia begin to compete to utilize Aces for government projects.  Rather than the Communist scare, led by Senator Joseph McCarthy, it becomes a Wild Card hunt as laws are passed forcing Aces and Jokers to register with the government and get forced into conscripted positions.  The Civil Rights movement doesn’t just encompass racial and women’s rights–it also includes Wild Card rights.   The idea of the Wild Card virus gives rise to a novel idea to explore human nature and how it works.

Fortunately, the Wild Card virus is not contagious.  However, it can lie dormant in the air and on the earth.  The virus is also genetic, as we learn later in the anthology, when it is revealed that the virus can be inherited.

The first story in the anthology is “Thirty Minutes over Broadway” by Harold Waldrop.    This story is the origin story for the entire anthology.  It begins with the return of a young man known as Jetboy, who was presumed dead when his plane went down in the Pacific Theater during World War Two.  He was a celebrated war hero, and there were comic books and other merchandise produced about him while he was still living.  He plans on retiring once he gets back, because the war is over and there isn’t any need for people like him anymore.  He struggles with being at loose ends for the first time in his life, until Dr. Tachyon crash lands at White Sands, New Mexico and explains his mission to stop the alien virus from being unleashed.  This sets off an entire chain of events that will eventually change the world.  It’s a good story, full of action and suspense, odd characters, and some of the best reimaginings of the best pulp fiction to appear in a revival piece. 

“The Sleeper” by Roger Zelazny is about a boy named Croyd, who is walking home the day the Wild Card virus strikes.  He has an incredibly unusual case and one of the most bizarre powers featured in the book.  After Croyd falls asleep, he wakes up  in a new body with new powers, every time.  This piece is more about trying to adjust to a shifting identity than how the world reacts to him, but it’s a compelling story because of how unique the character is.

Walter Jon Williams’ “Witness” is the story of the Four Aces, a team of four people who got amazing abilities because of the Wild Card virus.  They worked very publicly to help save the world from dictators and other menaces to the American way of life.  It all comes crashing down when Senator Joseph McCarthy decides that Aces are dangerous and must be regulated for the good of all mankind.  The story is heartbreaking as the protagonist, Jack Braun, is forced to make a very unseemly decision in order to save himself and his career in the face of an unreasoning and unrelenting government witch hunt.  It’s a gut-wrenching story that conveys the difficulty of a reimagined dark spot in American history.

“Down Deep” was probably one of my favorite stories in the anthology.  A young female social worker tries desperately to help the homeless of the city.  There’s one woman who is always surrounded by cats, who she tries to help as much as she can.  The reader soon discovers there’s  far more to the homeless woman than just being a “crazy cat lady” when a gang war erupts in New York’s sewers.  What’s even more interesting is that the homeless woman encounters a very unique alligator while she’s saving the day.

This anthology was one of those books that I didn’t want to put down.  My mind was clamoring to find out what happened next, and I could hardly wait to get to the next story.  It was easy to get fully immersed in the Wild Card universe because there is such good storytelling present throughout the book.  I still maintain that I would not have found the anthology as enjoyable or compelling when I was younger.  I needed to have a better perspective on American  history and human behavior before I could really appreciate it.  I also think that this is one of those anthologies that I will be revisiting for years to come, and every time that I reread it, I’m going to find something different in it.  That’s going to keep me coming back time and time again.

I’d recommend this anthology to anyone who likes a good science fiction/fantasy story, especially if they enjoy or study history, and to anyone who enjoys alternate  histories.  Oh, yes, and, of course, anyone who likes superheroes.  This book is defintely written for adults.  There are violent scenes, there is sex, and the book does contain an awful lot of politics in it.  Don’t let the mention of politics mislead you into thinking it’s boring or letting it scare you away. They’re important, but they aren’t necessarily the focus of the book.  More than anything, this book deals with people who have had their entire world turned upside down in the matter of  a single day and how that shapes their lives.

I know, now that I’ve gotten a copy of Wild Cards I, that I am going to be trying to find the rest of the series (which is now more than 20 books), because this is some of the best anthology work that I’ve read in a long time.  It was well worth reprinting, and I’m looking forward to reprints of the rest of the earlier anthologies.