Tuesday
Oct072008
Inside Straight
Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 4:01PM
During my recent spate of travel I bought Inside Straight which is a sort of relaunch of the Wild Cards universe. However, I bought it in hardcover (since it's not out in paperback yet) and promptly decided on every plane flight to carry a smaller, lighter paperback or short fiction magazine instead. So once I settled back into home I decided to read it.
I was glad to see that Wild Cards had relaunched. I was introduced to Wild Cards in college when I was running a superheroes role-playing game that turned out to have some parallel themes. (And bringing it full circle, Wild Cards evolved from a role-playing game originally!) It's a shared universe setting where a virus is unleashed on Earth that kills 90 out of 100 infected, horribly deforms another 9, and gives that lucky 100th person superpowers. Most of the books were short story collections (later there were a few novels) and they varied over time in terms of how tightly- linked a single's volumes stories were. This new book is still short stories written by a variety of authors, but it organizes into a single narrative thread more closely than many of the original volumes. (In my memory anyway. It's been years since the last time I reread these books.)
If you've read and enjoyed the previous WC books you should pick up Inside Straight no doubt. I guess it's a tougher question if you aren't familiar with the universe, but that's a little difficult for me to address since it isn't my perspective. I can see how this was a difficult feat for the authors: how to revitalize a series with over a dozen books and make it accessible to new readers and still pleasing to the hardcore fans. Here's my suspicion: it's an impossible job but the authors made a really good attempt. I think it's tilted slightly in favor of the old fans but it's close.
Wild Cards was always a series that played realistically, given the one big fantastic premise. History diverged over time from our history (The Wild Card virus is released right after WWII.), but very few people became crimefighters or donned spandex costumes or whatever. The new series continues that trend, the opening premise is a new reality show called American Hero that pits "Aces" against one another. There are some ties back to the previous stories - the hostess and judges of American Hero are all characters from previous stories, and there are political events afoot that tie to previous stories. This part was done well I think, the tie-ins are present but not mystifying to a new reader.
As the plot begins to develop further it ties more to previous events in the series, and to be honest it ties to a storyline I liked less than most the series offered. That's where I think it would stumble the worst for a new reader, I was having a bit of trouble keeping up with all of the "Oh yeah, that's right. These guys did that back in the past, which now means this has happened now." I'm not convinced the authors provided all of the needed backstory for a few items, I could see some of the plot elements being a bit confusing to a total series newbie.
Also I have to say that the current crop of powers just aren't as interesting. The old stories were remarkable for how varied the characters were - you had pimps using tantric sex for magic, a person who slept most of his life in a chrysalis and woke up every time with a drastically different power (or hideous mutation), or a person who had literally died and returned from the death and could project that experience onto others until they died. The new characters have a few that are intriguing or unusual, but in general it's all a lot more "vanilla" superpowers in this outing.
Still I think that was probably true of the early Wild Card volumes and that the most interesting characters evolved over time. This is the first volume of three books that Tor contracted for and I'd presume the long-term goal is to establish an open-ended series. There's nothing wrong with the new characters per se, they just seem a little bland in comparison - even if the comparison of a 12 volume series to the single volume "relaunch" is a bit unfair.
All in all, I liked Inside Straight and I'm looking forwards to the next volumes. If you haven't read any Wild Cards before I don't know that this is the best embarking point, but I don't think the early books are still in print so it may be your only choice. I think if you enjoy superhero books and especially if the concept of superhereos in an otherwise realistic setting appeals to you that you should probably check out Inside Straight.
I was glad to see that Wild Cards had relaunched. I was introduced to Wild Cards in college when I was running a superheroes role-playing game that turned out to have some parallel themes. (And bringing it full circle, Wild Cards evolved from a role-playing game originally!) It's a shared universe setting where a virus is unleashed on Earth that kills 90 out of 100 infected, horribly deforms another 9, and gives that lucky 100th person superpowers. Most of the books were short story collections (later there were a few novels) and they varied over time in terms of how tightly- linked a single's volumes stories were. This new book is still short stories written by a variety of authors, but it organizes into a single narrative thread more closely than many of the original volumes. (In my memory anyway. It's been years since the last time I reread these books.)
If you've read and enjoyed the previous WC books you should pick up Inside Straight no doubt. I guess it's a tougher question if you aren't familiar with the universe, but that's a little difficult for me to address since it isn't my perspective. I can see how this was a difficult feat for the authors: how to revitalize a series with over a dozen books and make it accessible to new readers and still pleasing to the hardcore fans. Here's my suspicion: it's an impossible job but the authors made a really good attempt. I think it's tilted slightly in favor of the old fans but it's close.
Wild Cards was always a series that played realistically, given the one big fantastic premise. History diverged over time from our history (The Wild Card virus is released right after WWII.), but very few people became crimefighters or donned spandex costumes or whatever. The new series continues that trend, the opening premise is a new reality show called American Hero that pits "Aces" against one another. There are some ties back to the previous stories - the hostess and judges of American Hero are all characters from previous stories, and there are political events afoot that tie to previous stories. This part was done well I think, the tie-ins are present but not mystifying to a new reader.
As the plot begins to develop further it ties more to previous events in the series, and to be honest it ties to a storyline I liked less than most the series offered. That's where I think it would stumble the worst for a new reader, I was having a bit of trouble keeping up with all of the "Oh yeah, that's right. These guys did that back in the past, which now means this has happened now." I'm not convinced the authors provided all of the needed backstory for a few items, I could see some of the plot elements being a bit confusing to a total series newbie.
Also I have to say that the current crop of powers just aren't as interesting. The old stories were remarkable for how varied the characters were - you had pimps using tantric sex for magic, a person who slept most of his life in a chrysalis and woke up every time with a drastically different power (or hideous mutation), or a person who had literally died and returned from the death and could project that experience onto others until they died. The new characters have a few that are intriguing or unusual, but in general it's all a lot more "vanilla" superpowers in this outing.
Still I think that was probably true of the early Wild Card volumes and that the most interesting characters evolved over time. This is the first volume of three books that Tor contracted for and I'd presume the long-term goal is to establish an open-ended series. There's nothing wrong with the new characters per se, they just seem a little bland in comparison - even if the comparison of a 12 volume series to the single volume "relaunch" is a bit unfair.
All in all, I liked Inside Straight and I'm looking forwards to the next volumes. If you haven't read any Wild Cards before I don't know that this is the best embarking point, but I don't think the early books are still in print so it may be your only choice. I think if you enjoy superhero books and especially if the concept of superhereos in an otherwise realistic setting appeals to you that you should probably check out Inside Straight.
tagged BookReview, GeorgeRRMartin, WildCards in Journal, Media Commentary
BookReview, GeorgeRRMartin, WildCards in Journal, Media Commentary 
Reader Comments (3)
Interesting - maybe this will be worth checking out. I really enjoyed the Wild Cards series for the most part, but missed the last book or two in the series. I think it was right after the "jumpers" where I stopped reading.
One recurring theme in the series that bugged me is that the characters always came out of things significantly worse for wear. While interesting at first, it was so consistently applied that I eventually ceased having any interest in seeing what would befall the characters in the next book. I wonder if, by the end of the series, Dr. Tachyon would end up as some one-legged blind syphilitic dog that George R. R. Martin would come out and kick for fun a couple times every night.
I wonder how much of the "vanilla" reform is a reaction to TV's "HEROES" - I've only seen /most/ of the first season of that, but despite the intriguing drama and no-tights setting, most of the powers are the most basic superhero tripe available. "I fly" or "I heal really fast." Oh, and "I steal other people's powers." That stuff is bland, but the execution makes it compelling.
Brian.NET: Yeah, that's a solid point. Of course it's hard to say with just one book and mostly new characters if that will apply this time or not. I didn't *see* anything like that in this book, but who can say what happens in the next one? (And if you stopped with the Jumpers Tachyon did get BETTER from there. Before he got worse again. ;-))
Brian.JP: Jane you ignorant slut. Let me give you a scenario: a video game comes out in October with some new feature. Then three months later another game comes out with a very similar feature? Theft? Of course not. The production times involved had to mean two different teams had the same idea independently. In this case, it takes more than 2 years to get a standalone novel into print. A shared-world novel with a half-dozen different authors, all coming up with new characters and having to coordinate on the plot and everything? There's no way this book was written after Heroes premiered two years ago. Frankly I get a headache just contemplating how long a project like Inside Straight takes to pull together and THEN publishers want a year before the book hits the streets.
I think Heroes vanilla power situation is mainly two-fold. 1) Tim Kring is self-confessed not a comics person so I think he wasn't familiar with the landscape of the genre. 2) Even if it was being developed by major fanboys, the *smart* move Heroes pulled was to deliberately not assume anything on their audience's part and develop everything gradually. Over the course of the two seasons we've seen thus far some of those powers turned out to be subtler than originally thought and we've seen new characters with more interesting powers. Nothing as outlandish as what you get in the "classic" Wild Cards, but I think comparing a serialized TV drama to a set of short stories is really apples and oranges anyway.
I know people who watch Heroes to whom I wouldn't recommend Wild Cards. Heroes has a TV fanbase and it plays at a TV depth. Don't get me wrong I like Heroes a lot, for a TV show. But it's not playing in same leagues as book-length fiction.