Games

The Wild Cards series is being relaunched in the UK by Gollancz with all-new cover artwork. Wild Cards will be released in November, followed by Aces High the following month. The third book, Jokers Wild , will be released in March 2013. The series will then jump to the newer volumes, with Inside Straight coming out in June 2013. Sales will determine if the other earlier books in the series will be reprinted at a later date. I must admit, these covers are quite nice. They're not Michael Komarck, but there's some nice understatement to them (er, giant dinosaur aside) and good use of the card motif. It will be interesting to see the covers for the later books.

This weekend I attended Eastercon 2012, the largest annual British science fiction and fantasy convention. This year it was held at a hotel adjoining Heathrow Airport. For the first time in its history, the convention was sold out in advance, likely due to the presence of George R.R. Martin (although having authors such as Joe Abercrombie, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Chris Wooding, Lisa Tuttle, Pat Cadigan and Cory Doctorow didn't hurt either). Finally! Time and budgetary constraints meant I could only attend for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, though I did manage to catch the Game of Thrones TV panel, featuring actors Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) and John Bradley West (Samwell Tarly). Gethin Anthony (Renly Baratheon) and Natalia Tena (Osha) could also be found around the convention, though they didn't take part in the panels. This was followed by a Wild Cards panel where GRRM talked about the long-running shared world setting with John Jos. Miller, Pat Cadigan, Paul...

The Wild Cards superhero anthology series - co-created by George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass in 1987 and featuring numerous talented SFF writers - has been optioned as a 'modest-budgeted' film project by SyFy Movies, the newly-established film arm of the SyFy Channel. In the Wild Cards universe, an alien virus infects Earth in 1946. 90% of humans are unaffected, 9% are turned into mutated monsters and cretins (known as Jokers) and 1% become superhumans, capable of amazing feats (Aces). The Wild Cards series - currently consisting of 22 books - charts an alternate history of the world over the course of decades, reflecting the appearance of the Jokers and Aces. The movie project will feature a contemporary setting, though whether the film will feature a modern origin story for the Wild Cards mileu or will simply slot into the pre-existing continuity is unclear. So far, only the option has been announced and the project faces many hurdles before it gets to the big scre...