The Hartmann story would be the major unifying thread of these next three books—the overplot, we called it—but there would be other conflicts going on as well. Both John Miller and Leanne Harper had given us a glimpse into New York’s criminal underworld, and it seemed inevitable that John’s Asian mob and Leanne’s old line Mafia family would come into conflict. So that became a second major plot thread, the focus of the middle book of this triad, volume five in the overall series, which would eventually be titled Down & Dirty.
The fourth book, the one you’ve just finished, would be built around a global junket led by Senator Hartmann, its stated purpose to investigate the impact of the wild card virus on other parts of the world. That would serve to reintroduce Hartmann and Puppetman and get the overplot rolling, while simultaneously allowing us to tell some stories we would never have been able to tell had the series remained tightly based in New York City.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. With Wild Cards, nothing ever was. I have sometimes likened Wild Cards to a big band or symphony, but writers are not accustomed to following a conductor. In this band, sometimes two people would leap in to play the same solo, determined to drown each other out. At other times, while most of the band was attempting Beethoven’s Fifth, there would be one oboe off in the corner stubbornly playing Mozart instead, and another guy on the harmonica doing the theme song to “My Mother, the Car.” As editor, sometimes I felt as if I were herding cats. Big cats, and me with neither a chair nor a whip . . . thought I did have a checkbook, which works better than a whip on writers.
The triad which began with Aces Abroad was indeed much more tightly plotted than the first . . . though not nearly as tightly was some of the later triads would be. Wild Cards was more interwoven than any shared world series that preceded it (or that followed it, for that matter), but that meant we were exploring virgin territory, so none of us really knew the way. No, not even Your Humble Editor, though editors are usually infallible, as is well known. Looking back on Aces Abroad all these years later, I think that perhaps I should have cracked my checkbook-whip a little more often at several points in the proceedings. Having Hartmann kidnapped twice during the same tour was a bit much, really, and I should have insisted that my writers juggle with the balls they already had up in the air before allowing them to toss up so many new ones. It is all very well when the plot thickens, but if it gets too bloody thick you’re likely to throw your wrist out stirring.
Still, it all worked out in the end, more or less. And if perhaps there were too many new characters being introduced, well, many of them would go on to greatly enrich the series in later books. It was here we first met the Living Gods and Ti Malice, here that Mackie Messer first cut a bloody path into our hearts, here that the Hero Twins and the Black Dog and Dr. Tachyon’s darling grandson Blaise made their debuts, and Kahina and the Nur al-Allah as well. Polyakov came on stage for the first time, as did Ed Bryant’s aboriginal shaman Wyungare . . . though the new character destined to play the largest role down the line was not actually new at all.
That was Jerry Strauss, introduced in the first book as the Projectionist, before becoming a Great Ape for a decade and a half. It was only after he was restored to humanity in Aces Abroad that our readers, like Dr. Tachyon, found themselves slapping their heads and remembering that the wild card never affects animals. As the Projectionist and the Great Ape, Jerry was just a bit player, but later as Nobody he would become somebody. So to speak.
Aces Abroad was a book for goodbyes as well. Lew Shiner’s heroic pimp Fortunato had been a Wild Cards mainstay since the first volume. In those early days he was one of our two most popular characters, judging from the mail we got, and what our readers told us at conventions. (Dr. Tachyon was the only character to equal Fortunato’s popularity, but the readers who loved Tach inevitably hated Fortunato, and vice versa. “The wimp and the pimp” dichotomy, we called it.) Lew had sent Fortunato off to Japan after his climactic battle with the Astronomer in Joker’s Wild, to give the character some closure. But Gail Gerstner Miller threw him a curve ball when she had Peregrine turn up pregnant by Fortunato . . . and then we brought the tour to Japan, right to his doorstep. That managed to coax one last Fortunato story out of Lew . . . after which the pimp shuffled permanently offstage, leaving the wimp to reign in solitary splendor for a time.
Aces Abroad also marked the end for my own Xavier Desmond, the “Mayor of Jokertown,” whose voice I used for the interstitial narrative. Writing the interstitial segments was always one of the most challenging assignments in doing a Wild Cards book. Not only did you need to tell a good story of your own, you also had to tie together all the other stories, bridge any gaps your fellow writers might have left, and patch up holes in the overplot. Later in the series, I would farm out the interstitials to various other brave souls, but in the beginning I did them all myself. “The Journal of Xavier Desmond” was the best of my interstitials, I think, and one of the most powerful things I ever wrote for Wild Cards.
All in all, the second Wild Cards triad got off to a flying start when our aces and jokers boarded the Stacked Deck for their trip around the world, little realizing what storms lie ahead for the characters, writers, and editor alike—the madness that was Down & Dirty and the monstrous runaway growth of book six.
But those are tales for other Afterwords.
George R.R. Martin
January 2, 2002
Editor GEORGE R. R. MARTIN was born September 20, 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey. He began writing very young, selling monster stories to other neighborhood children for pennies, dramatic readings included. Later he became a comic book fan and collector in high school, and began to write fiction for comic fanzines (amateur fan magazines). Martin’s first professional sale was made in 1970 at age 21: “The Hero,” sold to Galaxy, published in the February, 1971 issue. Other sales follow.
Four-time winner of the Hugo Award, two-time winner of the Nebula Award, and six-time Locus Award winner, Martin is the author and editor of over two dozen novels and anthologies, and the writer of numerous short stories. His New York Times best-selling novel A Storm of Swords—the third volume in his epic fantasy series “A Song of Ice and Fire”—was published in 2000. Martin lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
“Martin has assembled an impressive array of writers . . . Progressing through the decades, Wild Cards keeps its momentum to the end . . . I’m looking forward to the next episodes in this saga of mutant Americana.”
—Locus
“Well written and suspenseful and a good read . . . The authors had a lot if fun rewriting recent American history.”
—Aboriginal Science Fiction
“Commendable writing . . . a zany premise . . . narrated with rueful humor and intelligence.”
—Publishers Weekly
Wild Cards IV Aces Abroad
Edited By George R. R. Martin
Assistant Editor Melinda M. Snodgrass
Written by:
Stephen Leigh John J. Miller Leanne C. Harper
Gail Gerstner-Miller Walton Simons
Edward Bryant Lewis Shiner Victor W. Milán
Melinda M. Snodgrass Michael Cassutt
Illustrations by Tom Mandrake
ibooks
new york
www.ibooksinc.com
Wild Cards: Aces Abroad Page 55