Busted Flush (Wild Cards) - Hardcover

Wild Cards Trust

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765317826 ISBN 13: 9780765317827

Publisher: Tor Books, 2008

Synopsis

In 1946, an alien virus that rewrites human DNA was accidentally unleashed in the skies over New York City. It killed ninety percent of those it infected.  Nine percent survived to mutate into tragically deformed creatures.  And one percent gained superpowers.  The Wild Cards shared-universe series, created and edited since 1987 by New York Times #1 bestseller George R. R. Martin ("The American Tolkien" --Time magazine) along with Melinda Snodgrass, is the tale of the history of the world since then—and of the heroes among the one percent.

Now a new generation of heroes has taken its place on the world stage, its members crucial players in international events. At the United Nations, veteran ace John Fortune has assembled a team of young aces known as the Committee, to assist at trouble spots around the world–including a genocidal was in the Niger Delta, an invasion of zombies in hurricane ravaged New Orleans, and a freak nuclear explosion in a small Texas town.

About this title

About the Author

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN’s “Song of Ice and Fire” series, beginning with A Game of Thrones (Bantam, 1996), are among the top-selling fantasies of the last ten years.  He lives in New Mexico.

Contributors to this volume are:

Melinda Snodgrass

Caroline Spector

Carrie Vaughn

Walton Simons & Ian Tregillis

John Jos. Miller

Victor Milan

Stephen Leigh

Kevin Andrew Murphy

Reviews

The sequel to 2008's Inside Straight, a revamp of the shared Wild Cards universe, features crises ripped directly from today's newspaper headlines and summer blockbusters. A burgeoning gas shortage has sparked an invasion into the Middle East; New Orleans is hurricane-beset and zombie-ravaged; someone has set off a nuclear explosion in Texas; and genocide rages in Nigeria. The conflicts between the compellingly human superheroes on the U.N.'s Committee shape this fast-paced alternate history. Veteran contributor and now assistant editor Melinda M. Snodgrass pens standout chapters featuring British triple-agent Double Helix, who drives the plot while posing as both seductive Committee member Lilith and Middle Eastern assassin Bahir. While those unfamiliar with the Wild Cards mosaic novels will flounder, the clever twists on today's political landscape and the unique powers of several new aces will lure back past readers. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Wild Cards revival continues in a second round of the TV show American Hero, a playoff contest between superheroes created by a mostly lethal alien virus and set in a realistically tangled and bloody world. Some players are troubleshooters, others cause trouble and shoot back, and a govement agency wants to get its hands on newcomer Drake, who can generate nuclear explosions out of his body. Drake’s jailbreak is one plotline in this installment of the multi-authored (one scribe or scribe-team per chapter) series, and it ropes in a Barbarian Days festival in Cross Plains, Texas, home of Conan creator Robert E. Howard. Others include an action-packed civil war in Nigeria and the effort to rescue humans and, this time, zombies from another New Orleans–bound hurricane. Somehow, characters remain the foci of a busy book that mixes the comic and the grim to good effect. For readers who can’t get enough, there’s an interactive Wild Cards Web site, too. --Roland Green

Edition details

• Publisher: Tor Books
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0765317826
• ISBN 13: 9780765317827
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400
• Editor: Martin George R. R.