Joker Moon (A Wild Cards novel book 28) edited by George R.R. Martin (book review).
‘Joker Moon’ presents a fresh perspective, as it doesn’t feature any writers or their characters from the previous book. OK, the Green Man has a brief cameo, but that’s about it. The initial settings are in India, Russia, Egypt, South Carolina, USA, and the Moon. Several writers intertwine their story threads in a Wild Cards mosaic, frequently causing events to overlap or occur simultaneously. While George R.R. Martin is the main creator/editor, Melinda Snodgrass is responsible for much of the work.
With the first thread, ‘The Moon Maid’ by Mary Anne Mohanraj, we are back in 1948, and haughty Oxford University astronomy student Aarti’s turn of the card turns her into a joker with double the size of her head and skin cratered like the Moon. Even her own family shuns her, but upon her return to India, she discovers that her paintings have the power to alter the Moon’s landscape. She sees the moon as her territory and is building up a temper about anyone else going there, and she can do something about it. She generates avatars of herself there, and woe betide you if you anger her, which is practically anyone.
In the 1980s, Theodorus Witherspoon, the son of a wealthy family in the deep south of the USA, undergoes a transformation. Basically, he has a human body on a snail’s body and weighs a couple tons. He’s also a fan of space travel and one of the few humans to have a trip in Dr. Tachyon’s spaceship. We also drop in on his joker’s ace friend Mathilde Maréchal as we follow her career to become an engineer and work for him. Being the fifth wealthiest man in the world, Theodorus decides to make a joker colony on the Moon, hence the title of the book.
Of course, you can’t keep anything secret for long, although it’s the move of icy asteroids to the Moon that gets out before the Joker base is built. One subplot that can only be noted because its total spoiler is when Dr. Bradley Finn is accused of presidential assassination when he narrowly missed being hit himself. The solution in ‘Fatal Error’ was by Victor Milán and John Jos. Miller is a superb follow-through. Unfortunately, writer Victor Milán passed away soon after the book’s publication, so we honour the nine characters he crafted.
The third common thread is Soviet. The Russians refer to the Wild Card virus as the Star Gift, utilise it in their space program, and even send a few jokers into space. We follow the life of the Flat Man, aka Space Ghost, aka Yuri Serkov, who has to keep his energy form in order to stop being exposed to radiation. However, the Lead Man and Many Toes, the other two jokers dispatched to the space station, enjoy protection from the radiation. Here we see other events as well, including a landing on the Moon with Grigori Kolesnikov and two other jokers. Leo Kenden’s story ‘Luna Incognita’ underscores the dearth of innovation and inadequate equipment during the mid-1980s.
Upon reflection, the presence of Takisian spaceships on Earth has led to both advancements and slowdowns in space technology. It took a race to power a spaceship to the Moon, despite claims it never happened. Cash Mitchell was that ace whose ability is, although not described that way, to shift inertia and mass. In ‘Have Spaceship, Will Travel’ by Michael Cassutt, Theodorus Witherspoon drawing all the strings together is probably the longest story here with involving characters.
Even though it spans decades, we haven’t seen a decent mosaic in a while.
I loved the odd surprise of some of the early aces and jokers popping up from time to time, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering the time period this is set in. If there is an oddity, it’s why this moon refuge hasn’t come up in the earlier books.
GF Willmetts
December 2024
(pub: TOR, 2021. 354 page enlarged paperback. Price: $18.99 (US). ISBN: 978-1-250-16802-3)
check out website: www.tor.com
