For all you Wild Cards fans, past, present, and future…

The next release in Tor’s ongoing series of Wild Cards reissues has been scheduled for February 2014 in trade paperback.

This time it is JOKERS WILD, volume three in the overall series, and the concluding volume of our first triad. Here’s the cover, another stunning piece of work by Michael Komarck (who really should have been on the Hugo ballot again this year, he wuz robbed), featured Wraith, John Jos. Miller’s glamorous librarian/ jewel thief:

JOKERS WILD is one I am especially proud of; it was first of what we call our “full mosaics,” a completely interwoven mosaic novel with no separate stories, but rather seven intertwining storylines taking place simultaneously, written by seven different writers, and woven together by yours truly. No one had ever done anything like this before, and no other anthologist has even attempted it since (although we’ve used the same format again in Wild Cards, every third book or so… it takes a TREMENDOUS amount of work, so we can’t do it every book).

JOKERS WILD takes place in New York City on Septemner 15, 1986, the fortieth anniversary of the very first Wild Cards Day in 1946. The participating writers (and their viewpoint characteres) are Lewis Shiner (Fortunato), Melinda Snodgrass (Roulette), John Jos. Miller (Wraith), Walton Simons (Demise), Edward Bryant (Sewer Jack), Leanne C. Harper (Bagabond), and yours truly (Hiram Worchester). Other featured characters include Yeoman, Dr. Tachyon, Popinjay, the Astonomer and his merry band of Egyptian Masons, Kid Dinosaur, and Fidel Castro and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

If you’re new to the series, though, you should probably read WILD CARDS and ACES HIGH before you get to this one. But you’ll be glad you did. It’s the strongest of the first three, most would agree.

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