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Wild Cards
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In 1946 an alien virus was released over New York. Out of every one hundred people infected, ninety died, nine were mutated into deformed creatures, and one gained superhuman powers. The virus became known as the Wild Card because of its random nature, and its victims were said to have drawn the Black Queen, the Joker or the Ace, respectively. In the case of the Jokers at least, the term was often pejorative, and they in return started to call normal people Nats.
Created by George R.R. Martin, Wild Cards is a series of "Shared World Anthologies", short story collections and "mosiac novels" written by a variety of authors, all set in a shared world. The concept of "shared world" first came about in Robert Aspirin and Lynn Abbey's Thieves' World novels, whose success quickly spawned a number of similar projects: Liavek, Merovingen Nights, Damned Saga, The Fleet, Robot City, Witch World, Blood of Ten Chiefs, Man-Kzin Wars, and Warworld, to name but a few. Wild Cards was the first (and only, to my knowledge) which used the background of superheroes; and while I personally enjoyed several of these series, in my opinion, Wild Cards was also the best of these (and not just because of my love of this particular genre). Martin and his friends took the basis for their world from a role-playing game campaign (Superworld), but expanded the concept well beyond that, creating a realistic take on a world where people with incredible powers had been around since the mid-1940s. It's a world full of death, sex, violence, laughter, adventure and grittiness. I highly recommend it.
Aces
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Jokers
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Others
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