Not A Blog

The San Jose Worldcon has announced this year's list of nominations for the Hugo Awards and the John W. Campbell Award.

LOCUS has the full list of finalists at:

http://locusmag.com/2018/03/2018-hugo-and-campbell-awards-finalists/

The Hugo is the oldest and most prestigious award in SF and fantasy. If you want your voice to be heard, there's still plenty of time to join the San Jose Worldcon and cast your vote. There's Attending memberships, if you actually plan to attend, and Supporting memberships, if you can't, but either way you get a Hugo ballot.

Congratulations to all the nominees. Some of you will carry home a silver rocket come August. More of you will be Hugo Losers, but that's almost as good. (I've lost lots of them myself).

Sad to say, Wild Cards did not get any love this year (sob)... but I was very pleased to see that our Wild Cards editor, Diana Pho, is one of the finalists for Best Professional Editor. You go, Diana. Win it for Jetboy!

This is going to be an epic year for all you Wild Cards fans out there.

Let's see. In June we have LOW CHICAGO, coming out from Tor in the US, and KNAVES OVER QUEENS, scheduled for release from Voyager in the UK. But that's not the end of it. On October 23, look for TEXAS HOLD 'EM.



TEXAS HOLD 'EM is the final book in the America Triad, and the twenty-seventh volume of the overall series... but no, it's not necessary to have read the first twenty-six to enjoy this one. In fact, it's not even necessary to have read MISSISSIPPI ROLL and LOW CHICAGO (though we hope you will).

The table of contents:

Caroline Spector "Bubbles and the Band Trip"
Max Gladstone "The Secret Life of Rubberband"
William F. Wu "Jade Blossom's Brew"
Diana Rowland "Beats, Bugs, and Boys"
Walton Simons "Is Nobody Going to San Antone?"
Victor Milan "Dust and the Darkness"
David Anthony Durham "Drop City"

That gorgeous cover is by Michael Komarck, who has been doing stunning work for Wild Cards since Tor relaunched the series. I hope you guys remembered to nominate him for a Hugo, he certainly deserves one. (And I hope to remembered to nominate Wild Cards for Best Series too. Thirty-one years, twenty-seven books, we're all pretty proud of the work we've done, and will continue to do).

TEXAS HOLD 'EM is available for preorder now.

On other Wild Cards fronts, check out the latest post on the WC blog at http://www.wildcardsworld.com/blog/ where Miss Wild Cards answers your questions. And keep an eye out for new Wild Cards stories over at Tor.com. If you haven't read Vic Milan's "EverNight" yet, you should... and we have new original WC tales coming up from Caroline Spector and Bradley Denton, Max Gladstone, and Marko Kloos. All FREE!

The British are coming! The British are coming!!

The British Wild Cards, that is. Aces, jokers, deuces, and a few knaves too.

Oh, and an Irish guy as well.

They will be here on June 28. That's when HarperCollins Voyager has scheduled the hardcover release of the latest Wild Cards anthology, KNAVES OVER QUEENS, edited by yours truly (with the able assistance of Melinda M. Snodgrasss, as usual) and featuring all new stories by veteran Wild Carders Kevin Andrew Murphy, Caroline Spector, Melinda Snodgrass, Paul Cornell, and Marko Stross and newcomers Charlie Stross, Peter Newman, Emma Newman, Mark Lawrence, and Peadar O Gulian.



The one is something new for Wild Cards: the first time that the British edition of one of the books will be published in advance of the American edition. But it's only fitting in this case, since KNAVES OVER QUEENS harkens back to our very first volume (WILD CARDS, of course), and tells the story of the entire history of the Wild Cards universe in the UK and Ireland, starting back in 1946 and going right up to the present day.

The lineup this time around:

KEVIN ANDREW MURPHY: “A Flint Lies in the Mud” and “But a Flint Holds Fire,"
PEADAR O GUILIN: “The Coming of the Crow,” “Cracks in the City,” and “Feeding on the Entrails,”
CAROLINE SPECTOR: “Needles and Pins,"
PAUL CORNELL: "Night Orders,"
CHARLES STROSS: “Police On My Back,”
MARKO KLOOS: "Probationary,"
PETER NEWMAN: “Twisted Logic,”
MELINDA M. SNODGRASS: “Ceremony of Innocence,”
EMMA NEWMAN: “How to Turn a Girl to Stone,”
MARK LAWRENCE: “The Visitor."

June will be a huge month for Wild Cards, actually, since we also have LOW CHICAGO scheduled for hardcover publication that month from Tor, on June 12. LOW CHICAGO will be available only in the US edition, and KNAVES OVER QUEENS will be available only in the UK, so completists and first edition collectors are going to have a challenge (yes, there will eventually be a British edition of LOW CHICAGO and an American edition of KNAVES OVER QUEENS, but those will be a bit down the line). Fans of the Wild Cards universe will have a great time, though. Just thing of all those great new stories!

Keep reading, friends. You can't die yet, you haven't seen the Jolson Story.

Katie Rask has done a lovely tribute to Vic Milan and two of his iconic Wild Cards characters over at Tor.com:

https://www.tor.com/2018/02/28/a-wild-cards-tribute-to-victor-milan/

Do check it out, and feel free to jump in with your own thoughts about Vic's contributions to Wild Cards, which were numerous and important.

Meanwhile, over on our official Wild Cards website, we've added some new blog posts from Max Gladstone, Melinda Snodgrass, and David Anthony Durham. You'll find them at:

http://www.wildcardsworld.com/blog/

In other Wild Cards news, the reissues continue apace, and I've just delivered a new and expanded version of volume nine, JOKERTOWN SHUFFLE, to Tor. We've added two brand new stories to the original text from the 1991 Bantam edition: a Ramshead tale by Cherie Priest, and a Lady Black story from Carrie Vaughn. JOKERTOWN SHUFFLE has been out of print in English for more twenty years, so we're pleased to make it available to a new generation of readers... but be careful, if there was ever a Wild Cards book that required trigger warnings, it's this one.

((Comments permitted, on Wild Cards only. Stay on topic)).

Vic Milan has left us... but his words and his work live on, so long as he is being read.

Tor has asked me to announce that his new story, "EverNight," is now available to purchase in ebook on Amazon and other retailers. Here are the links:

https://www.amazon.com/Evernight-Tor-com-Original-Victor-Mil%C3%A1n-ebook/dp/B079Y7NC1N/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1519227187&sr=8-1&keywords=evernight+victor+milan

http://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250198167

For those looking for his recent books, the first three volumes of his DINOSAUR LORDS series are available via mailorder from the Jean Cocteau Cinema:

http://jeancocteaucinema.com/product-category/author/m-p/milan-victor/

All the dinosaur books are autographed.

Some of his fans have emailed to ask if there will be more dinosaur books coming. My understanding is that he had done an outline for three more volumes, and had written some portion of the first of those, but did not have a contract to continue the series. How much material he left behind, or whether he would have wanted someone else to finish the books, I cannot say. If I learn more, I'll be sure and let his readers know.

He does have one more Wild Cards story coming out in TEXAS HOLD 'EM, scheduled for release in hardcover in October. It features a new character, Dust, and Candace Sessou, the protagonist of "EverNight," and I know Vic was very pleased with it.

Our writing community here in New Mexico, and the world of SF and fantasy in general, took a blow this afternoon when our friend Victor Milan died after two months of suffering and struggle in a series of Albuquerque hospitals.

I first met Vic not long after I moved to Santa Fe in 1979. Outgoing, funny, friendly, and incredibly bright, he was one of the cornerstones of the New Mexico SF crowd for decades, a regular at Bubonicon in Albuquerque, the perennial masquerade host at Archon in St. Louis, a fan, a lover of ferrets and collector of guns, a gamer (I can't tell you how many times we stayed up till dawn playing Superworld, Call of Cthulhu, and other RPGs with Vic, and laughing at the outrageous antics of the characters he created). But above all, he was a writer.



He wrote all sorts of things, in and out of our genre: westerns, historicals, men's action adventure, more books than I could possibly list... but it was in science fiction that he did his best work. CYBERNETIC SAMURAI and CYBERNETIC SHOGAN were two of the best known from the old days. More recently, he was finding new readers by the score all around the world with his DINOSAUR LORDS series.



He was also a Wild Cards writer, of course; one of my aces. In a sense he was the father of Wild Cards. It was Vic who gave me the Superworld game as a birthday present back in 1983, and it was those long long nights of playing Superworld that eventually inspired me to start Wild Cards.

Vic was an integral part of the series right from the very start, and the characters he created were among our most popular. Among them were the Russian ace Molniya, the Harlem Hammer, the twisted German psychopath Mackie Messer, Dr. Pretorius, Ice Blue Sibyl, Flipper, Dust, the Darkness... and above all, Mark Meadows, aka Cap'n Trips, and his "friends" Jumpin' Jack Flash, Starshine, Moonchild, Aquarius, Cosmic Traveller, Monster... and the Radical. The long saga of Mark Meadows began in volume one, and was brought to a close in volume twenty, SUICIDE KINGS. It was a long strange trip indeed, and every step of it was exciting, thanks to Vic.



Sadly, Vic's health has not been good in the past few years, and it finally gave out on him. But his warmth, his wit, and his talent will be long remembered by everyone who knew him, and his words will live on after him.

And, as irony would have it, he has another story coming out tomorrow on Tor.com. It's a Wild Cards story called "EverNight," set in the catacombs of Paris and featuring Candace Sessou, the Darkness, a character he introduced in SUICIDE KINGS. The link will not go live until 9 am EST tomorrow, but once it does you can read the story here, for free:

https://www.tor.com/2018/02/14/wild-cards-evernight-victor-milan/

It saddens me that Vic did not live long enough to see his story on Tor.com, or appreciate the gorgeous piece of John Picacio art that adorns it (he was a huge fan of John's)... but I hope that many of you will read "EverNight." If you like it, do leave a comment. I think that would have pleased him.

I believe that Vic may have another book or two in his DINOSAUR LORDS sequence coming out, but I am not sure of that. I do know that he will be represented in two more Wild Cards books. He has a story in TEXAS HOLD 'EM, due out in October, and a collaboration in the book we're doing now, JOKER MOON. Would that I could say that there will be many more after that, but I fear those will be the last.

Fare thee well, Vic. It was an honor knowing you.

The final covers are in on the new two Wild Cards books in the pipeline, and I thought I'd share.

LOW CHICAGO is the second volume in our "America" triad, and will be the twenty-fifth volume in the overall series (at least in the US). This one will feature stories from Wild Card veterans John Jos. Miller, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Kevin Andrew Murphy, Mary Anne Mohanraj, and Paul Cornell, plus newcomers Marko Kloos, Saladin Ahmed, and Christopher Rowe. Featured characters this time around will include John Nighthawk, Noel Matthews, Natya, Will O' Wisp, Croyd Crenson, Abigail the Understudy, Khan, Meathooks, and Hardhat. The cover art is by Michael Komarck.

LOW CHICAGO is scheduled for a hardcover release on June 21.



Only month later, in August, Tor will be reissuing ONE-EYED JACKS, the eighth volume in the original series, which has been out of print for more than twenty-five years. The original lineup for that one featured Melinda M. Snodgrass, Walton (Bud) Simons, Chris Claremont, William F. Wu, Lewis Shiner, Victor Milan, Stephen Leigh, and John Jos. Miller... but we're also adding two brand new stories, by Carrie Vaughn and Kevin Andrew Murphy, so the 2018 version of JACKS will be even better than the 1991 edition. The cover for this one is by David Palumbo.

ONE-EYED JACKS will be released on August 28 in trade paperback.



We also have a couple new posts on the Wild Cards blog, from Walter Jon Williams and William F. Wu. Check them out at http://www.wildcardsworld.com/blog/

((Comments open, for discussion of Wild Cards ONLY. Off topic comments will be deleted)).

The Wild Cards reread has resumed over at Tor.com, as Katy looks at DOWN & DIRTY, volume five in the series... originally published in 1988.

Check it out at https://www.tor.com/2017/12/07/death-disguises-centaurs-and-cat-ladies-wild-cards-v-down-and-dirty/ and share your thoughts... the comments section is open for discussion.



You can also read my own reflections on editing this particular volume over at the Wild Cards website.

And signed copies of DOWN & DIRTY and many of the other Wild Cards books are available through the Jean Cocteau.

((Comments open: on Wild Cards only, please. Stay on topic)).

... was yesterday for MISSISSIPPI ROLL, the latest volume in the Wild Cards series.

At least in the USA and Australia. The rest of the world will need to wait a little longer.

MISSISSIPPI ROLL features the work of Stephen Leigh, John Jos. Miller, Carrie Vaughn, Cherie Priest, David D. Levine, and Kevin Andrew Murphy, edited by yours truly with the assistance of Melinda M. Snodgrass. You'll be rolling on the river from New Orleans to Cincinnati with old favorites like Carnifex, the Midnight Angel, Hoodoo Mama, Ramshead, Sewer Jack, Wild Fox, and the Jokertown Boys, and making the acquaintance of Steam Wilbur and the haunted steam packet Natchez. Although this IS the twenty-fourth book in the Wild Cards series, still going strong after thirty years, let me stress that it is not necessary to have read the first twenty-three to understand it. MISSISSIPPI ROLL stands perfectly well on its own, and the story it tells is complete in one volume



MISSISSIPPI ROLL can be preordered from your favorite local bookstore or online bookseller. Amazon has it at https://www.amazon.com/Mississippi-Roll-Wild-Cards-novel/dp/0765390523

Collectors who would like an autographed copy can order one from the bookstore at the Jean Cocteau Cinema at http://jeancocteaucinema.com/product-category/author/ (Signed by yours truly, you will need to track down the writers yourself).

Keep your steam up, boys and girls!

Ah, distinctly I remember, it was in the bleak December...

And here we are again.

The good thing about December 1, though, is that we're only four days from the publication date of MISSISSIPPI ROLL, the latest Wild Cards original.



And to bide the time till the Natchez hits the river, here's another Wild Cards video from Tor, assembled from the interviews they did at MidAmericon II. This time the subject is aces.



Keep reading... and watch out for talkative ravens.

((Comments welcome: on WILD CARDS))