The cover is once again by the amazing Michael Komarck, who just keeps getting better and better. You really should nominate him for a Hugo some year, he's way overdue.
After the wide-ranging global storylines of the Committee triad, FORT FREAK returns to New York City, the epicenter of the Wild Cards universe, to tell the stories of the cops and crooks of the historic 5th precinct of the NYPD — the Jokertown precinct.
The lineup this time around includes stories by Wild Cards veterans Melinda Snodgrass, Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Kevin Andrew Murphy, and Victor Milan, and introduces newcomers (new to Wild Cards, at least) Cherie Priest, David Anthony Durham, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Ty Franck, and Paul Cornell. You can check out a sample of Cherie's interstitial, the literary mortar that holds all the bricks together, on my website.
So mark June 21 on your calendars, and place your preorder now with Amazon or your favorite local bookstore. Come meet Ramshead, the Rook, Tabby, SlimJim, Abigail the understudy, Sgt. Squinch, Ratboy and Flipper, Tinkerbill, the Infamous Black Tongue, Natya, Maggie Graves, Puff, Beastie, Dr. Dildo, and the other colorful denizens of Fort Freak and environs. Old-timers like Father Squid, the Sleeper, and the Oddity are also expected to turn up to enliven the proceedings.
And while you're reading, we'll be working on LOWBALL.
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grrm- George R.R. Martin
- George R. R. Martin
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Comments
Are you willing to sign Kindles during your brief ADWD tour?
James B Gillette' Six Years with the Texas Rangers will remind you a bit of the Nights Watch.
Herman Lehman's Nine Years Among the Indians will remind you of the Dothraki.
Both are quick and excellent reads if you like small folk biographical stuff.
(btw, Semly's POV & Melissandre's POV in ADWD... i just can't wait!!!)
I've read almost complete Wild Cards during April and May of 2009. during a very difficult time for my family and me and I must say that the series has helped me go trough them with much less pain than otherwise. I have read all the books in the series except the Suicide Kings and I am looking forward to reading new sequence.
I am a great admirer of your work. In fact, it was I who suggested you to your Serbian publisher. To my deepest sorrow, I was not chosen to translate your work, since I was translating the Wheel of Time novels at the time (and I still do), but now I am kinda relieved because the responsibility that comes with that task is equal to that of translating Tolkien and I am not sure I could bear it. :) Thank you for your writing. I just wanted to know that you have helped some people on the other side of world.
Ivan
I think you mentioned once or twice that you spend some days just sitting in you house and playing video games. With the ASoIaF games coming out soon, could you perhaps devote a blog post to telling us what games are your favorite and what is your involvement in the production of the games? What are the features you like the most in strategies and cRPGs, if you play them? What is the best story in a videogame you've ever witnessed? Did you play Fallout or Planescape? How do you imagine a perfect "A Song..." game?
(Actually, Ty and Parris stole all my videogames to keep me from playing. When I do play, I tend to play obsessively, and weeks and months whizz by in the blink of an eye).
When I did play, I enjoyed the old DOS based strategy games like ROMANCE OF THE THREE KINGDOMS and BANDIT KINGS OF ANCIENT CHINA, as well as all of Sid Meier's games, PIRATES and RAILROAD TYCOONS and all. Also loved MASTER OF ORION. The first one, never played the second or third.
The most recent videogame I've played was HOMEWORLD. Which had amazing graphics, for its era. Better than most SF tv shows.
Are you/Will you be doing some kind of supervision of the production of the upcoming games though? I mean, when it's branded an ASoIaF product, we can except nothing short of a superior quality, right?:)
And yeah, maybe it's not that bad to have people keeping you from playing after all, I know most of my friends (and I guess the vast majority of the blog readers as well) would kill me for recommending you videogames to play, as they seem to have a better idea of what you should do with your time(:P). Well, I at least hope you will play YOUR games, that could be treated as a part of your job anyway, so I hope people won't complain too much this time.
At first I was quite skeptical of the idea of RPGs that are based on novels but then, when the Witcher came out in 2007 (and its sequel which was released just a few days ago and now it has a whooping 94/100 average on metacritic) I totally changed my mind and I'm eagerly waiting for more.
The Witcher (based on the works of A. Sapkowski, I guess there are 2 of his books already available in English as of now; might be worth picking up) setting kind of reminds me that of ASoIaF, the game being more of a tale of a political struggle than that of saving the world, not shying away from the issues such as racial prejudice, sex, corruption, drug abuse, moral ambiguity and so on, all that while remaining a true to its core dark fantasy game which isn't sounding pretentious. True, its world is tangibly more magic/monsters heavy making it easier for a video game conversion, but it shows that making a great RPG out of "A Song..." is entirely doable if it only follows the right tracks that was set. Got excited for that!
As for the strategies, yeah, Homeworld was a revolution of its era, and pretty much the last real revolution we've witnessed. That is not to say there aren't also some great strategy games that came out afterwards, such as the Total Wars series, (there's even a fan-made "Westeros" mod for it:O) Europa Universalis or Sins of a Solar Empire as they are the true gems. Yet my biggest problem with strategies is that they eat out way too much of your time and you never really know when to stop it, so it indeed may be wise to stay away from them. RPGs are way safer as they are more like a book - you might totally sink into another world for a week, but after that you could honestly say you've finally beaten it...and start it all over again,(:)) but the point is, they have a storyline which has its ending, so you might as well try them from time to time (with caution, and as soon as you're done with Kong, that is:)).
Greetings and sorry for my clumsy English.
Eternal fan!
P.S. loving GoT on HBO
http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Cards-De
Evil Hero
will the Wild cards books and the Great Ecological ngineering Haviland Tuf ever be out as audio books?
Thanx a again
EvilHero
I have my reviewer's copy of the latest book in hand and I cannot wait to get started. I was introduced to the series some twenty-one years ago when I was working in the Marvel Bullpen, and I have devoured the whole run with each succeeding volume, so I wanted to say thanks to you and the other writers who have provided me with such smashing entertainment where other series have sputtered and fizzled out. Please keep it coming! And are we ever going to see what happened to Tachyon in the wake of the situation on Takis and the birth of his daughter? I GOTS TA KNOW!!!