Wild Cards

I started reading Wild Cards soon after it came out, in 1988, primarily because science fiction legend Roger Zelazny was one of the people involved with it. Under the guidance of George R.R. Martin, who has since become well known for another book series, Zelazny and others wrote stories of an alternate Earth that was infected by an alien virus, one that (sometimes) gives superpowers to ordinary people. And sometimes....not.

It's a very rich and interesting world where superheroes and supervillians and all sorts of people in between exist. I continued to read until the 6th book in the series a few years later. When I stopped, it probably was for no reason other than other things to take up my time while I was waiting for the 7th to come out.

When Martin announced earlier this week that the series would be adapted for television, the big surprise was that it took so long. It's superheroes, it's anti-heroes, it's Mr. Game of Thrones, who was saying "No"?

But I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to clarify something that EVERY SINGLE SITE I've checked - none of whom include people who have read any of the books, clearly - is getting wrong.

That alien virus was developed by an alien race called the Takisians. Their home planet is Takis. They look human, can speak English, you wouldn't look twice at them except, perhaps, for the flamboyant fashions they prefer - at least if they are noble Takisians, not the serfs that make up most of the population.

These noble Takisians, many of them anyway, have psychic powers of various types and levels. One noble family develops a virus that enhances them - or should. They hadn't tested it yet.

And then they found Earth. In the year 1946, the virus is released, and it works. Using a broad definition of the word.

• Ninety percent of the time, infected humans die, often in messy ways, like dissolving away or bursting into flame. This is called "drawing a Black Queen." 
• Nine percent of the time, infected humans end up horribly deformed. These people are called Jokers. (Yes, it's rude to call them that - the civil rights of Jokers is a recurring plot point.)
• One percent of the time, infected humans gain extraordinary powers. These people are Aces.

Which you will get depends on...well, nobody is exactly sure, although the manifestation of the effects often depend on each individual's self-image. You can even get an Ace power, like flying, combined with a Joker deformation - like bat wings. Because it's so unpredictable, the virus is dubbed the Wild Card virus. And those are the cards that are dealt.

Let me take a moment here to say that the individual stories vary in terms of what generational story they represent. JetBoy, one of the first characters introduced, has a story that could be called a Heroic tragedy of failed sacrifice. The story of Croyd, the Sleeper, is definitely about the futility of effecting change, even as the virus changes him over and over. There is room for all of the generations and all the stories, throughout. Sometimes they bind together into larger narratives, which similarly may be stories of Redemption or Sacrifice or Self-Actualization or Futility.

But that's not my point here.

As mentioned, ninety percent of those infected draw the Black Queen. This has somehow been inferred, BY EVERY SITE I WENT TO, that most of the world is dead.

This is not the case.

The Wild Card virus is not that infectious. If you catch it, it gets to work altering your DNA, expanding your internal psychic potential, and letting the cards fall where they may. It doesn't make more copies of itself. It doesn't spread from person to person, at least not easily, and almost everyone who was ever infected caught the virus when it was first dispersed into Earth's atmosphere.

What this means is that there was a wave of deaths in Manhattan, where the virus was first released. Enough was blown into the atmosphere to spread around the world, leaving pockets of Jokers and Aces where it touched. Most people, though, never catch it. These remaining normal people, a population about the same size as we have today, have to figure how to live in a world with people who can increase gravity around them or teleport people by pointing their finger; where Mick Jagger is a werewolf and there really is a Lizard King; where the homeless encampment down the way includes a guy always covered in slimy mucus and another with tentacles growing out of his face.

That's all I want to say. Except that I am glad that more people will find out about Croyd and Dr. Tachyon (a Takisian who tries to stop the virus but...doesn't) and The Great and Powerful Turtle and Walrus and the Swarm and all the other fun characters to be found there.