By Carrie Vaughn One of my favorite things to do as a science fiction and fantasy author is go to conventions. Most aspiring SF&F writers, me included, are told that conventions are good places to network. Whatever “networking” means. I …
Continue reading "The Convention Scene" Continue Reading
by Walton Simons The Jumper books, as they were originally conceived, are now perhaps more appropriately known as the Rox triad, a trilogy of books comprising One-Eyed Jacks, Jokertown Shuffle, and Dealer’s Choice. Repercussions of the Jumper storyline were also included in the …
Continue reading "Why I Don’t Hate the Jumper Books" Continue Reading
When strongest power doesn’t mean strongest mind by Matteo Barbagallo Part 1 With the beginning of 2023, many of us must have heard or seen somewhere that sentence concentrated in the words “new year, new me”. It’s a powerful statement, …
Continue reading "One hell of a Trip!" Continue Reading
by Max Gladstone Situated near the border of Jokertown, on Forsyth St across from the Houston Street Playground, Xavier Desmond High offers the finest in well-meaning (and under-resourced) public education to the youth of Jokertown and New York City at …
Continue reading "Xavier Desmond High" Continue Reading
by William F. Wu When I think back to reading comic books when I was a kid and a teen, sometimes I recall supporting characters whose roles started rather small and later were expanded. I don’t mean significant sidekicks and …
Continue reading "Bit Players" Continue Reading
By David Anthony Durham A big part of writing for Wild Cards is character creation. Finding a person you connect with. A backstory that speaks to you. Dreams and aspirations. Flaws and virtues. And then… you upend all of that with the …
Continue reading "A Tale of a Tail" Continue Reading
In a time when delusions of conspiracy are driving humanity to new lows of incivility, lies, and greed; when a suicidal war in Eastern Europe threatens to engulf the world; when propaganda and anti-social media have trumped science and truth; …
Continue reading "NO Fooling…" Continue Reading
by Mark Lawrence When, to my great surprise, George RR Martin’s email appeared in my inbox inviting me to join the Wild Cards universe, I hadn’t ever read any of the books. So, the first thing I did was go …
Continue reading "CUT & SHUFFLE" Continue Reading
by Christopher Rowe Apparently, it happens in a different way for pretty much every Wild Cards writer. Some of us (a lot of us but not me), were there at the beginning, when a bunch of people in New Mexico decided they …
Continue reading "A Pair of Aces" Continue Reading
by Emma Newman An unexpected side-effect of living through a pandemic I debated whether it was too soon to write anything about Covid-19, because for heaven’s sake, surely none of us ever want to hear that word or think about …
Continue reading "Side Effects" Continue Reading
by Stephen Leigh WILD CARDS was instrumental in allowing me to discover the writing software I’d always desired. Honest. Here’s the story, if you’ll forgive a bit of necessary background first. When I was first starting out (when dinosaurs still …
Continue reading "WRITING RIGHT" Continue Reading
by Peter Newman I’ve been thinking about what makes Wild Cards different from other worlds populated by super powered characters. There’s less spandex for one thing. And everyone in Wild Cards knows that the underpants go, well, under the pants. But it’s …
Continue reading "It’s a Matter of Time" Continue Reading
by Cherie Priest Now let us sing of the apocalypse, brought to you by an alien virus, conniving extraterrestrials, and colossally bad luck. The good news: it didn’t kill everybody, and a few folks came out the other side with …
Continue reading "Sick Monsters" Continue Reading
by Bradley Denton My primary Wild Cards character, Freddie “Amplifier” Fullerton, the World’s Loudest Boy, has starred in one Wild Cards story so far (“Naked, Stoned, and Stabbed,” Tor.com, October 16, 2019), and he’s slated to appear in the upcoming …
Continue reading "A Brief History of Loudness" Continue Reading
by Melinda M. Snodgrass Confession time. I didn’t read comics growing up. My parents wouldn’t let me, so it wasn’t until that now famous Super World game that I became interested in all this superhero stuff. Even now most of my knowledge …
Continue reading "STORIES, LARGE AND SMALL" Continue Reading
By Diana Rowland Mangle and his crew—two men and two women—gathered around a folding table in the basement of his mama’s dry cleaners. He’d borrowed a fancy black suit from the rack upstairs, dead set on impressing his new gang. …
Continue reading "BUSTED" Continue Reading
by Max Gladstone Why does The Sleeper sleep? Why does the Amazing Bubbles blow bubbles, why does Morpho Girl transform, why does Wally Gunderson have iron skin, why does the Understudy mimic other peoples’ powers? The most basic and irrefutable …
Continue reading "What Makes a Plastic Man?" Continue Reading
by Mark Lawrence GRRM reminded me that this blog post was due in three weeks and immediately a low grade panic set in. Not that I couldn’t think of anything to say in the general area of superheroes and Wild …
Continue reading "Supers" Continue Reading
by Leanne C. Harper New York to Guatemala, rather a long, strange trip, even in the Wild Cards universe. When we started talking about taking Wild Cards global, intertwining the ancient and new intrigued me. I wanted to go somewhere …
Continue reading "Wild Cards in Guatemala" Continue Reading
by Stephen Leigh “Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives.” — James Joyce # I think many of us would revise our current world if we could. Personally, I’d love to …
Continue reading "Revising Your World" Continue Reading
by David D. Levine I’ve often said that working on the Wild Cards project is about as close as I’m ever likely to get to working in television. We have a bunch of existing characters and situations, and we are …
Continue reading "A Writer Prepares" Continue Reading
by John Picacio I don’t know much about playing online poker at sites like qarchive.org, but I do know a bit about breaking curses. They’re both tricky propositions. You’ve gotta keep your eyes on the details. And it always helps …
Continue reading "DRAWING A ROYAL FLUSH" Continue Reading
by Melinda M. Snodgrass So you might have heard that role playing games had a little something to do with how Wild Cards was born. That is true, and I won’t go into it all again. Instead I’m going to …
Continue reading "PLAYING PRETEND" Continue Reading
by Walter Jon Williams That an RPG run by George R.R. Martin became the stimulus for Wild Cards is well known. George spent years obsessed by Chaosium’s Superworld, and his set of gamers— Victor Milán, Royce Wideman, John Jos. Miller, Melinda Snodgrass, Gail Gerstner-Miller, …
Continue reading "THE OTHER GAME" Continue Reading
by Max Gladstone Picture if you will Action Comics #1: a man wearing blue tights under red undies lifts a green 1937 DeSoto over his head, and smashes it against a cliff. A red cape billows from his shoulders. Crooks flee. Though …
Continue reading "Pictures and Words" Continue Reading
CRAIG W. CHRISSINGERAuthor John Jos. Miller, 67, died January 5, 2022 at his home in Albuquerque NM. Miller was best known for his work in the long-running (since 1987) Wild Cards shared-universe series of original anthologies and novels, edited by …
Continue reading "John Jos. Miller (1954-2022)" Continue Reading
by Bob Wayne I’ve told my comics and sf anecdotes over the years to my friends at convention panels and meals. George suggested that the Wild Cards readership may also want to see a few of them. So let’s start …
Continue reading "EC and Me" Continue Reading
by Cherie Priest At almost any given author Q&A, somebody will raise a hand to ask if I work in the silence of a hermetically sealed office, or if I have a preferred Spotify channel to manage my tunes. The …
Continue reading "A Secret Chord" Continue Reading
by Peadar O Guilin Continuity matters in a movie and it’s not hard to understand why. When a car appears in the background of The Lord of the Rings, or Dorothy’s hair changes length between one shot of The Wizard of Oz and …
Continue reading "BEING THERE" Continue Reading
by Christopher Rowe There used to be a very exclusive annual party held in a very exclusive location. It was most often put on in an enormous high-tech satellite in geostationary orbit 22,300 miles in the sky, and to receive an invitation you had …
Continue reading "The Hardhat of Two Worlds" Continue Reading
by Paul Cornell It’s widely known that the Wild Cards universe began with a circle of friends and a role-playing game, when George R.R. Martin ran Superworld for his local writer buddies in New Mexico, starting in late 1983. There’s a good …
Continue reading "SECRET ORIGINS" Continue Reading
by Emma Newman As a new member of the Wild Cards consortium, I have only written for one volume so far, Knaves Over Queens, and that was an origin story for Stonemaiden. When Stonemaiden touches a living, organic creature, it turns …
Continue reading "Weaving Her In" Continue Reading
Sad Game of Thrones has ended? Never fear, Wild Cards may just have you covered!
Continue Reading
By Steve Perrin Many long time Wild Carders remember Cyclone, the Ace’s Ace, the ace who wore a distinctive costume and flew magnificently over the heads of other aces and always managed to thrust himself to the fore whenever publicity …
Continue reading "Cyclone RIP RIP" Continue Reading
Okay, it’s April 2, time to fess up. Yesterday’s Wild Cards post, the leaked footage and all, was our April Fools prank. I hope we fooled some of you, and gave you a few moments of fun… or horror. But …
Continue reading "Just Foolin’" Continue Reading
Seems that some footage of the upcoming Hulu Wildcards TV show has leaked so we get to see just where they’re at! Check out this video of all the action and a few words from Showrunner Andrew Miller: Everybody (well, …
Continue reading "Leaked Hulu Footage!" Continue Reading
by Michael Cassutt [Trigger warning: this post, allowing for some authorial meandering, will eventually deal with the subject of slurs and derogatory language.] You read that correctly: the L is absent. We aren’t talking about the global complexities of creating …
Continue reading "WORD-BUILDING IN WILD CARDS" Continue Reading
by David D. Levine This doesn’t come up often, but my college degree is in architecture. I’ve never used it professionally (I graduated in the middle of a recession, couldn’t find work as an architect, and stumbled into high tech, …
Continue reading "Building a Joker Moon" Continue Reading
by David Anthony Durham One of the many challenges about writing for Wild Cards is that you’re not only required to create and write about your own original characters, you’ve got to include other people’s characters in your stories as …
Continue reading "Killing (Spoiler)" Continue Reading
By John Jos. Miller Long-time readers of Wild Cards probably already know that Daniel Brennan (Yeoman) was my first point-of-view character in the series, and is also one of the few characters from the original role-playing game to make it …
Continue reading "Why Yeoman?" Continue Reading
By Laura J. Mixon Greetings, fellow Wildcardians! Last fall I appeared on these pages to dish on my own origin story as a Wild Cards writer. My post was about two stories I wrote for the Card Sharks trilogy, and …
Continue reading "Fireworks" Continue Reading
by Walter Jon Williams Wild Cards is set in an alternative history, which means— pretty much by definition— that it exists as a kind of distorted reflection of our history. So in Wild Cards we see episodes out of our …
Continue reading "THE SCARE" Continue Reading
Dear Miss Wild Cards, I’ve noticed lately that Mick Jagger’s muzzle is getting awfully grey when he’s in lycanthrope form. Do you suppose the Stones might be looking for a younger singer sometime in the near future? I can …
Continue reading "Ask Miss Wild Cards" Continue Reading
by Michael Cassutt It’s said that you can find anything in the world somewhere on Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley, from vintage autos to clothing of every period – Elizabethan England, anyone? – from several movie studios to …
Continue reading "STOLEN SPACE" Continue Reading
By Marko Kloos One of the best things about being a Wild Cards writer is that you get to make up your own characters from scratch. That is also one of the most difficult things about being a Wild Cards …
Continue reading "COMING UP ACES" Continue Reading
April FOOLS yah all! As fun as a Wild Cards inspired line of clothing would be we were just having a bit of fun with you guys. We hope you didn’t get too excited. 😉
Continue Reading
by Max Gladstone I’m here because of Roger. I don’t mean here-on-the-Wild Cards-blog-here, I mean, quite likely, here-writing-science-fiction here. When I was a kid, my uncle gave me a battered cardboard box of science fiction paperbacks from the1970s or …
Continue reading "House of Cards" Continue Reading
Our writing community here in New Mexico, and the world of SF and fantasy in general, took a blow yesterday afternoon when our friend Victor Milan died after two months of suffering and struggle in a series of Albuquerque hospitals. …
Continue reading "Another Ace Falls" Continue Reading
By David Anthony Durham I’ve written a couple of blog posts about the process of creating my main Wild Cards characters, Infamous Black Tongue (IBT) and Bacho (who will debut in the forthcoming Texas Hold ‘Em). For this post, I …
Continue reading "The Supporting Cast" Continue Reading
by Bob Wayne My background is different from most of the Wild Cards contributors. I’ve written some comics (including the Time Masters series with fellow Wild Cards writer Lewis Shiner), but most of my time has been spent on the …
Continue reading "Wild Cards and Comics" Continue Reading
by William F. Wu Wild Cards is special in many ways. Looking back, I find that even the choices I’ve made for protagonists are unique among my work. I’ve written stories about two and a half protagonists for Wild Cards, …
Continue reading "Triple Dualities" Continue Reading
By John Jos. Miller One of the things that’s the most fun about writing in the Wild Card universe, other than torturing other writers’ characters, is that sometimes you get to ride your favorite hobby horse. If not taken to …
Continue reading "Wild Card and Sports" Continue Reading
Aces! Jokers! Once more into the breach… or close the wall up with our English dead. Which is another way of saying that I’ve just finished editing and assembling our latest Wild Cards book, KNAVES OVER QUEENS, the twenty-seventh volume …
Continue reading "Aces Over England" Continue Reading
by Gregory Noveck I’ve always wanted superheroes to be real. Sometimes, in a more pragmatic frame of mind, I specifically wish super powers were real, the heroing bit not so much. My 70s and 80s childhood was replete with comic …
Continue reading "Worlds of Wild Cards" Continue Reading
Every April first, someone plunks my magic twanger and I can’t help myself. So, sadly, I must confess that Wild Cards is NOT coming to Broadway. (But wouldn’t it be swell if it did? After I finished writing that blog post, I …
Continue reading "APRIL FOOLS!" Continue Reading
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY just broke the story here http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/book-deals/article/72958-book-deals-week-of-march-6-2017.html so now that we’ve gone public, I’m jazzed to be able to announce a huge new deal for WILD CARDS. Our uber-agent, Kay McCauley of Aurous, has just come to agreement with the good …
Continue reading "WILD CARDS Rocks On!" Continue Reading
… for the long-awaited Tor reissue of ACE IN THE HOLE, volume six in the Wild Cards series. Look for it on the shelves of your friendly neighborhood bookstore, among the trade paperbacks, or from whichever online bookseller you prefer. …
Continue reading "Publication Day" Continue Reading
My Favorite Wild Cards Character (that I didn’t create) The Sleeper By Walter Jon Williams When George R.R. Martin assembled the original nest of writers for the Wild Cards project, he cast a wide net. Some were old friends, …
Continue reading "The Sleeper" Continue Reading
We’re calling the latest Wild Cards volumes the America Triad. First one up was MISSISSIPPI ROLL, which we completed and turned in back in October. Then came LOW CHICAGO, which was delivered in December. And now comes the third and …
Continue reading "Wild Cards Take Texas" Continue Reading
This is a cartoon Carrie Vaughn drew after writing her first story for the Wild Cards universe.
Continue Reading