With three new books and a TV series on the way, we are delighted to announce that our official reread of George R.R. Martin’s acclaimed Wild Cards series will begin on Wednesday, March 1st!
Begun in 1986, the Wild Cards world unfolds in numbered anthologies, all of them featuring short stories by notable sci-fi/fantasy authors; the shared world is guided by GRRM and Melinda Snodgrass. Each month, our resident expert Katie Rask will explore the stories and characters that drive the shared universe, one book at a time, beginning with 1987’s Wild Cards.
The series is primarily set in an alternate history version of the United States, in which some humans have contracted the alien “Wild Card virus,” which causes mutations ranging from utter incapacitating physical conditions (Jokers) to superpowers (Aces). Wild Cards, the original anthology, features stories by Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams, and Martin himself, and explores a world grappling with unimaginable disaster, unthinkable loss, and new, extraordinary powers.
And that’s just the beginning.
For further explanation of the Wild Cards series, check out this helpful video featuring George R.R. Martin, Melinda Snodgrass, Max Gladstone, and Mary Anne Mohanraj!
You can also visit the official Wild Cards website for more info, news, sample stores, character bios, games, author interviews, and more!
Want even more Wild Cards? You can always read (or reread) Wild Cards stories here on Tor.com:
The Atonement Tango
by Stephen Leigh
The Thing About Growing Up in Jokertown
by Carrie Vaughn
High Stakes
by George R.R. Martin
Discards
by David D. Levine
Prompt. Professional. Pop!
by Walter Jon Williams
Nuestra Señora de la Esparanza
by Carrie Vaughn
The Elephant in the Room
by Paul Cornell
The Button Man and the Murder Tree
by Cherie Priest
When We Were Heroes
by Daniel Abraham
Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan
by Carrie Vaughn
The Rook
by Melinda Snodgrass
Please join us next week, on Wednesday, March 1st, to discuss all this and more!
Always been interested in this series but there are so many that it just seemed daunting to a completist like myself. Looking forward to the reread.
Can’t wait — probably my favourite novel series and one that I’ve actually re-read a lot of myself (which I don’t often do).
(I don’t remember seeing it listed as “George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards” before but I get it.)
I’m pretty excited by this! I’ve read a handful of the books before, but never the complete series, so this’ll be a blast!
So which book should I start reading? I have no idea where to start with this…
@@.-@: I’m assuming the reread will start with Book 1, which is also called Wild Cards, so that’s the best place to start.
If you’re not interested in following the reread, then Wild Cards is still the best place to start,but you can also jump in with Book 18, Inside Straight, which is a Next Generation-style reboot of the series (keeping the same continuity but focusing on new characters and moving ahead 10 years or so).
Holy smokes! There are *eighteen* of these suckers? I was about to board this train, but I don’t know if I want to devote so much of my life to a re-read :) I stopped probably ten or fifteen years ago and just assumed they had petered out by now.
Now that I think of it, I kind of miss the great and powerful Turtle, and that tantric sex guy too.
@6: Sorry vinisentient but there are not eighteen of those suckers, there are 23. :-) And I read that the next three books are already in the making. Make the life devotion, the later books are really great.
@@.-@: I would also suggest to start with book 1 (Wild Cards) which was re-released a while ago and should be easy to find in book stores. Some of the later ones are unfortunately out-of-print (still need 12 & 16). Other good starting points would be, as suggested book 18 (Insight Straight) or book 13 (Card Sharks), although you do jump into an already defined universe, things are well explained.
Looking forward to the re-read on TOR and might even go along and re-read a few of them as well.
Yay! Love the Wild Cards universe. And just to throw another opinion into the “where should I start reading” debate, I love the short stories, little slices of ordinary life, or as ordinary as it gets in jokertown.
Can’t wait to read this reread! When I last proposed it back in 2013 (wow, where has the time gone?) the consensus was that there wasn’t a demand for a reread of this series. I’m glad things have changed with the addition of a few more installments.
Please let there be a “Croydwatch” in each installment…
I’d suggest starting with Inside Straight if you do not have the earlier books since.. only 1-5 are in still in print. While you can find copies of many of the books used.. 13-15 the “new Cycle” are extremely hard to find and are in low, low print. Black Trump, book 15, typically goes for 50-100 bucks by itself..
Honestly, I don’t understand why there isn’t a cheap digital release of all the books in a bundle up to Inside Straight.. or why the reprinting is so long and arduous.
Fun fact though: Neil Gaiman originally developed the Sandman concept for the WildCards series and went to Martin with the idea, which Martin said would never work. Gaiman eventually ended up at DC/Vertigo and.. thus could use countless elements of DC’s own Sandman lore, DC’s history and characters which.. honestly made the series all that much better.
I would have much prefered Wild Cards as a series over game of thrones. Loved the books when I read them in college.
I haven’t read them in years but I loved this series. It was definitely one of the better shared worlds from an era when there were a lot of them.
I’ve reread the first 8 or so books twice.
Still haven’t read High Stakes but I will be.
Love the series. Miss the earlier characters: Yeoman, the Turtle, etc
Honestly, I don’t understand why there isn’t a cheap digital release of all the books in a bundle up to Inside Straight.. or why the reprinting is so long and arduous.
I come to this belief unencumbered by anything resembling actual knowledge or facts, but if I had to make up something I’d bet it’s because anthologies are harder to clear, legally, than single author works. Presumably contracts from before 1990 didn’t have any sort of electronic distribution rights and after that much time it may be that the right to republish in any form has lapsed too. So reprinting one of the volumes would mean sorting out with every author their terms etc. That’s a pain the keester and I bet the motivation to do it is way lower on a reprint of an old book.
@10: We’ve got two volumes reprinted this year in the US, so hopefully that means Tor are going to start accelerating things. It also suggests that the American sales are picking up, since otherwise they wouldn’t either be continuing the reprints, buying new books or doing the reread :) Unfortunately sales seem to have stalled in the UK, and it doesn’t look like Gollancz have plans to reprint any more books in the series after #8.
@11: Universal has picked up the TV rights with George’s co-editor Melinda Snodgrass attached as executive produer, so the show may end up on NBC itself or SyFy (or they could sell it to another network altogether).
I’m actually 64% of the way through Double Solitaire (Book #10, I believe), and working my way through them. The only one I don’t have is the aforementioned Book #15, and until it comes out digitally, I don’t plan on getting it.
SoMe damn good writing in this series. I
@14 I can’t speak to all the reasons why certain books in the series do or don’t get reprinted. The really rare books came along before my time.
But, with regard to negotiating with the individual authors in any given book, that’s not an issue. All WC contributors sign a consortium agreement before doing anything else, and the WC Consortium has agents that negotiate on behalf of the entire group, not per-author, if that makes sense.
Volumes 1 through 6 are currently available for the Kindle.
Volume 7 is being released for the Kindle on June 13, which implies that they MAY be preparing the later books, too. (I can dream that each volume between 8 and 17 will be released once a month, just in time for the reread.)
Volume 17 is still for sale as a new dead tree book, but not as an ebook.
Volumes 18 through 23 are currently available for the Kindle
Other than that, you’re looking for used dead tree books, most of which are available through Amazon.
(I’m sure there are other sources; I just didn’t check them.)
“With three new books and a TV series on the way, we are delighted to announce that our official reread of George R.R. Martin’s acclaimed Wild Cards series will begin on Wednesday, March 1st!”
Did it start today? I haven’t seen it (and am looking forward to it).
@20: Tomorrow! Sorry for the last-minute change of plans, but due to the site problems caused by yesterday’s massive Amazon outage, we had to change the schedule around. The first Wild Cards Reread post will be up tomorrow at 9 AM (EST)–I’ll add the link in here once it’s live.
Thanks, and sorry about the delay!
Hi, everyone: the first reread post is now up and can be found here...
Enjoy!