“Have you ever retired a human by mistake?” - Rachel, Blade Runner

By Lisa Fary

There is a lot of history to Wild Cards.  So much that I almost didn’t pick up Inside Straight, the 18th book in the series.  There’s too much history, too much nuance that I won’t pick up. Luckily, it’s not necessary to have read the entire Wild Cards series, or any of the series, to enjoy and follow Inside Straight.

Here’s the rundown on the Wild Cards-verse:  in the 1940s, an alien virus, the Wild Card, was released on Earth.  90% of those who contract it draw the Black Queen - they die instantly.  Of the 10% who survive, 99% draw the Joker - they physically mutate, often grotesquely so, and sometimes develop other abilities.  The remaining 1%, the Aces, stay normal on the outside, but develop more traditional superpowers.  From there, the Wild Cards series tells an alternate history of the world, one profoundly changed by virus.

Inside Straight brings a cast of all new Wild Cards characters into the fray and throws them into reality television and the blogosphere. The framework is the reality show American Hero, an American Idol /Big Brother type of gameshow featuring Aces and a few Jokers competing for a million dollars and the title.  Outside of the show, there is a violent crisis in the Middle East.  Bridging the two is a contestant’s blog.

The old characters are there, either in person like Peregrine, Digger Downs, and The Living Gods, or in memory, like Fortunato.  Doctor Tachyon is no where in sight, neither is The Sleeper.  Several reviews I’ve read of Inside Straight complain about the lack of the old characters; however, I think they’re missing the point. After all, the old characters can’t stay around forever.  If the series is going to continue, there have to be new Aces and Jokers in the backdrop of the modern world.

The nuance does help, though.

When Jack Braun, an original Ace, shows up, his backstory story is nonexistent, but once he’s identified as The Judas Ace, the reader should get the picture.  Having read the first Wild Cards books, I see poetic justice in this meathead get his ass handed to him by the superpowered, Are You Smarter than A Fifth Grader? set.

A thread that ran through the book was the backstory of John Fortune, and how his father, Fortunato, a tantric-sex powered pimp, died saving him in a previous book, which I haven’t read.  Even though the thought weighs heavily on Fortune, who brings it up constantly, it’s not a key aspect of the story.  However, I couldn’t help but feel like the book would be better if I knew exactly what the hell had happened.

Like any reality show, a gaggle of characters are shoved in front of you.  Also like reality TV, only the ones who go the distance matter, so it’s not that weird that the novel moves forward without exploring every single one of them.  There’s Jonathan Hive, the blogger who turns into bugs.  Tiffany, a dirt poor, white trash girl from West Virginia whose skin turns to diamond.  Drummer Boy, a six armed Joker who is basically a super strong human drum set.  There’s also Earth Witch, the shy Latina who moves dirt with her mind, and who quickly became my favorite Ace. And several others who move in and around the stories comprising Inside Straight.

Inside Straight’s exploration of what makes a hero and what it means to be a hero does get heavy handed at times and reeks of that old geek proverb, “With great power comes great responsibility.”   That seems to be a lesson that has to be told over and over again, not just in alternate universes like Wild Cards or comics, but in reality.  So, in that way, it’s never irrelevant.

Bottom line, I couldn’t put Inside Straight down.  Even though it has a hokey cover with the Sphinx and a glowy white dude with a sword, not to mention the SciFi Channel stamp of “quality”, pick it up.  Inside Straight is one of those books that can’t be judged by it’s very lame cover.

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.

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