A Trio of Wild Cards (short stories, mosaic novel)

There was a relatively brief fad in science fiction and fantasy for shared world books. A number of writers would get together, define a setting, and all write stories in the shared settings. These had varying degrees of success, and most are gone and forgotten.

One notable exception is the Wild Cards series, originally led by George R. R. Martin but eventually spread around to a number of other folks. The first volume came out in 1987. Since then they've moved from publisher to publisher, still holding to the same theme and exploring it in mostly interesting ways. Volume 22 is expected shortly.

These books were an attempt to show superpowers and their use in the real world. That's a common trope these days, but at the time it was pretty new. The background they developed for this involved an alien race called the Takisans, a hereditary tyranny by a small group with psychic powers. In looking for a method to extend and improve those powers, they developed a mutagenic virus that became known as the wild card. The virus was too dangerous to turn loose on their home world so they tested it on a lost Takisian colony - us - shortly after World War II. The virus was deployed by spraying it over New York City, but the deployment wound up being relatively small. Nor was it particularly virulent. If you didn't get it in the initial deployment, you probably didn't get it. If you did, your chances weren't good. 90% of those infected died, usually of some horrible deformity caused by the virus. 9% got the deformity but didn't die. 1% survived with some sort of power. The stories were set from shortly before deployment and moved forward to the then-current date.

The first few sets of books were written as triplets. There would be two books of short to mid-length stories written by various people, then a 'mosaic novel' that would tie together the threads introduced in the short pieces. This pattern has been followed for most of the books since then.

I was and am a huge fan of George R. R. Martin, so bought read the  series as the books came out. They were enjoyable, but by volume eight or nine the quality seemed to be falling off and I stopped reading them.

Recently I read a volume of NESFA Press' collection of Roger Zelazny's short works. It included several stories he wrote for the first Wild Card series and were quite enjoyable. A few days later we were heading out on vacation, so I dug out the first three Wild Card books for airplane reading - Wild Cards, Aces High, and Jokers Wild. They're not large books, and by our first night back home I'd finished them.

The verdict? They're airplane reading. The series as a whole is mostly fluff, with a few exceptions here and there. The short stories are uneven, running from the very good (Zelazny, Martin) to the mediocre to the downright bad. The mosaic novel Jokers Wild is better, and does a good job of tying together the threads of the first two books. It provides a satisfying conclusion to the first arc, but unfortunately doesn't make the poor threads any better. The re-read matched my memory of them, and reminded me that the writers I liked best got less involved as the series went on. They were a fine way to pass time in airports and lines, but I've probably got much better things sitting in the to-be-read pile at home. I'll neither be re-reading the rest nor seeking out the ones I don't have.

My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse (fiction)

After reading the massive third volume of Manchester's biography of Churchill, I needed something light and was in the mood for British wit and satire. Fortunately the perfect book was already on the shelf.

My Man Jeeves is a collection of six short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Half are about upper-class British twit Bertie Wooster and his brilliant butler Jeeves, the other three not. All are funny, but Wodehouse was at his best with Wooster and Jeeves. The writing is marvelous, the situations absurd yet believable, and the dry wit is still an example to which many aspire but few even approach. At only 124 pages this is a collection you can toss off in a couple of evenings or lunch hours (I did). Well worth the time, and given that it's available free from Project Gutenberg you can't go wrong. Bertie can be quite wearing in large doses, but these short bits are a fine way to get introduced without having to commit to an entire novel. Recommended.

Gun Machine, by Warren Ellis (novel)

Warren Ellis' first novel, Crooked Little Vein, had problems. It was somewhat confused, the descriptive prose had problems, and it kind of petered out rather than having a climax. But the dialog was great, the characters involving, and overall it was good enough that I said I'd read the next thing he wrote. That was a good decision, because most of the things I complained about are much better in his second novel, Gun Machine. The things I liked about Vein are also better in Gun Machine. How much better?

I started it about 4:00 this afternoon and finished in under three hours of reading time. Yeah. Better.

The non-spoiler plot summary: Police are called to investigate a naked man with a shotgun in a New York City apartment. Things go very badly. As part of this, the police break into an apartment and find it's full of guns. Hundreds, maybe thousands of guns. Each one seems to have been used in an unsolved homicide, one apiece. They're not just lined up, they're carefully arranged in some clearly incomplete pattern.

Some of the guns are over a century old.

Ellis handles all of this cleverly, sensibly, and coherently. There are apparent red herrings everywhere, yet each turns out to be either literally true or completely fair. Point builds on point logically and compellingly. The resolution is satisfying and self-consistent - something I didn't think he (or anyone else) would pull off given the situation lain out.

The pacing is brilliant. After a bit of scene setting, the action slowly ramps up to a huge climax that several times had me going "no, no, he's not going to do that" followed by him doing exactly that - but not always in the way expected, or for the reason expected.


Ellis fills this book with a fascinating and varied cast of characters. Even the minor ones are fully realized. One doesn't expect a lot of character development in the course of a single relatively short (310 pages) police procedural, but some of the major ones progress in interesting and believable way. The dialog is excellent, and with the exceptions of a few Britishisms, it all rings true.

This isn't to say there aren't problems. Ellis' descriptive prose is weak and sometimes clumsy, possibly because he's mostly been writing comic books (really really good ones) and has been able to rely on the artist to provide that sort of description. But given the improvement from Vein to Gun Machine, I suspect we'll see further improvement in his exposition as well. Hell, for all I know that exposition got better as the book went along and I was just too wrapped up in the people and plot to notice it.

How much did I like it overall? I wish his next book would be published tomorrow. Strongly recommended.

Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone by Ian McDonald (novel)

I bought Ian McDonald's Scissors Cut Paper Wrap Stone because of the cover. Usually this results in disaster; this time was a happy exception. I picked it up in paperback in 1994, and that's the cover you see below. The story has been sticking in my head for years, and after the clunker that was my previous read, something quick and tasty was called for. This was a good choice.

Scissors is a very short novel, only 136 pages.  Loosely, its the story of a man on a pilgrimage to a variety of sites in Japan, with looks back at why he is making the pilgrimage and how those events still follow him.

In someone elses hands this might have been an action-story brick of a book. Instead McDonald pares the past events to their bare essentials and focuses on their meanings. It's a pretty chilling backstory, and reading it in linear order would have made for an entirely different book.

The good parts? There are interesting characters, well-done parallels and non-parallels between past and present events, and some wonderful prose. The story carries you along quite nicely, with enough foreshadowing to keep you digging for the next nugget and with rewarding reveals when you do.

On the other hand, parts of this story have not aged well. The resolution was as plausible as the premise in '94. In 2013 the premise is a bit harder to swallow, and some of the more important parts of the resolution simply wouldn't work. If this had been my first exposure, those plot issues might have overshadowed the books virtues. But if McDonald were writing this today, he'd probably have chosen different mechanisms to reach the same resolution. I am glad to have re-read it, and still appreciate it as quality prose and construction. If those qualities are high on your list, you should forgive what time has done to the plot and enjoy it as what it is.

Helluva cover, too.

PLANETARY by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, et. al. (graphic novel)

The Planetary series consisted of 26 regular issues and three specials. Together they form one of my favorite extended graphic novels; nearly all of it is still in print. The regular series is available as four trade paperbacks at very reasonable prices. None of the specials are required to follow the story. I loved these on first encountering them, and am wonderfully happy to have them in longer-lasting trade editions.

The background: the Planetary Organization finds secrets and keeps them. It has compiled a history of how things really happened. The secrets are revealed only to few, and for purposes that vary with the people involved. If you need to know, you'll be told. It's not conspiracy theory and revelation, although there are certainly echos of that. It's about keeping things from getting lost until we are ready for them, or need them, or both.

Ellis and Cassaday take this notion and run with it brilliantly. The first few issues introduce the main characters and lay out a few mysteries. We get we get a series of revisits to things which the world considers fictional - Doc Savage, Japanese monster movies, Tarzan, "Them!", and so forth. Names are changed to avoid copyright lawsuits protect the innocent  but you'll usually know within pages who is meant. We learn the truth behind each, usually in self-contained issues that work well as chapters in the collection. These stories are loving homages to the original material both as story and as visual art. They explain away things that we now know couldn't have possibly been true, show why we don't know about them, and do so in a manner that builds a consistent and coherent backstory.

Don't be misled by the fairly independent stories of the first part of the run, it's a series that demands and rewards reading in the original order. Skipping the second collection and reading the third would be a major mistake.

By the middle of the second collection the backstory comes more and more into the foreground. Even as it does, the series continues to revisit tropes and stories we've known and loved, though less often. The long-form story concludes in a satisfying series of events, and an additional story serves as both epilogue and emotional resolution.

Through the entire run Cassaday displays a pretty amazing ability to incorporate the style of bygone artists and authors while giving the reader something that does not jar visually - except, of course, when it's supposed to jar. (The Batman crossover is especially good on that point.) Similar attention to detail and swings in style are accomplished by the colorists and letterers.

Cassaday and Ellis clearly know their material, and wrap the old and new together in a way that resonates visually and emotionally for the reader. A chunk of the fun is seeing their take on these stories, and yes, if you don't know what they're riffing on you might not enjoy that segment as much. But even the ones that went by me on first read were enjoyable and coherent, and since them I've found much of the original material. On this re-read I enjoyed them even more.

In short, I highly recommend PLANETARY. Buy the first trade paperback; if you're not hooked at that point you're not going to enjoy the other three. If you are hooked, you'll probably want the Batman crossover Night on Earth. With respect to reading order Night on Earth and the other specials carefully presented such that it could take place pretty much anywhere after the first trade collection. Night on Earth was and is one of my favorite "done in one" comics and is still in print. The other two specials are not, and for good reason. In missing them, you're not missing much.