do not approve of such behavior, and it has always been and will remain our policy to document such behavior only to place it in the context of show continuity, so that viewers can fully understand the complex web of interrelationships that come into play when Discard decisions are made.
Other viewers were somewhat upset by the lack of jokers on the show. Committed as we are to exhibiting the great diversity of our wonderful wild card society, our talent scouts are even now combing America to find those special contestants who can hold their own against anyone and compete confidently in the next great season of American Hero.
We all learned something from this season of American Hero, contestants, judges, and producers alike. Drummer Boy learned that it’s easier to be a rock star than a hero. Cleopatra learned that charm, like beauty, is only skin deep. Any number of contestants learned that diamonds, or at least one particular diamond, aren’t necessarily a girl’s best friend. I learned that insurance doesn’t cover “damage to property caused by insects, vermin, or aces.”
Rest assured that we’ll take our hard-won knowledge and apply it to the next season, making it even bigger, more exciting, and more heroic for you, our viewers.
Our researches are already crisscrossing the country to bring you the most colorful, the most amazing, the most scintillating aces ever to grace a television screen. Look for them in your city or town and please join us in the fall for the second great season of American Hero!
The First Wild Cards Day or, the Game That Ate My Life
by George R. R. Martin
In the books, Wild Cards Day is celebrated every September 15, in memory of September 15, 1946, the day that Jetboy spoke his immortal last words while Dr. Tod loosed an alien virus over Manhattan.
In real life, September 15, 1946, happens to be the day that Howard Waldrop was born . . . and Howard, coincidentally, wrote “Thirty Minutes Over Broadway,” the opening story of the first Wild Cards book, wherein all these events take place.
In the books, September 20 is a day of no special note. In real life, however, it marks the day of my birth, two years and five days after H’ard. September 20 is the true Wild Cards Day. It was on that day in 1983 that Vic Milan gave me a role-playing game called Superworld as a birthday present, thereby unknowingly planting the first seed of the Wild Cards universe.
As I unwrapped that gift, I was still a relative innocent where role-playing games were concerned. Mind you, I had played plenty of games over the years. I had paid my bills directing chess tournaments in the early ’80s, while trying to establish myself as an SF writer. Before that I had been captain of my college chess team, and of my high school chess team before that. Role-playing had not yet been invented when I was a kid, but we had checkers and Sorry! and Parcheesi for rainy days, and Hide and Seek and Ringoleavio and Oh O’Clock for warm summer evenings. Although my parents never owned a house, that did not stop me from building vast real estate empires across a Monopoly board. There were Broadside and Stratego as well, and all through childhood I never lost a game of Risk (I always commanded the red armies, and refused to play if denied “my” color). After a while none of my friends dared to face me, so I’d set up the board in the bedroom and fight wars against myself, playing all six armies, inventing kings and generals to command them, merrily invading, attacking, and betraying myself for hours. And maybe that was role-playing of sorts, now that I come to think of it.
But it was not until I arrived in New Mexico in 1980 that I began to game regularly. Some of the Albuquerque writers had a small gaming group, and they invited me to come sit in on a session. I was pretty dubious at the time. I had seen kids playing D&D at cons, pretending to be Thongor the Barbarian and Pipsqueak the Hobbit while killing monsters and looking for treasure. I had read too much bad sword and sorcery in my youth for that to have much appeal. And there were all these weirdly shaped dice you had to roll to determine whether you lived or died. I would sooner have joined a weekly poker game or an ongoing game of