Wild Cards Reading Order - Dazed and Confused

[Garlan the Gallant]

The question is simple but, alas, the Wikipedia and other articles make it confusing...what is the reading order for the Wild Cards series?

Do I only read Tor's re-release of Wild Cards anthologies (Wild Cards I, Aces High, Jokers Wild, Aces Abroad, Down and Dirty)? How do Bused Flush, Fort Freak, Inside Straight, and Lowball tie-in..or are those covered in the anthologies listed above? Do the re-releases cover all of the original novels or do I need to read those as well.

Consider me thoroughly confused.

[DanielAbraham]

There are two on-ramps into Wildcards: Wild Cards 1 (the original anthology which is really, really good) and then Inside Straight (which was built as a way for people unfamiliar with the project to come in without too too much previous knowledge and which I wrote for so I dunno.  I like it anyway.).  

Busted Flush, Suicide Kings, Fort Freak &c follow Inside Straight.  Aces High, Jokers Wild, Aces Abroad &c follow Wild Cars 1.

The full series of book in publication order is at:  
http://www.wildcardsonline.com/books.html

[C.T. Phipps]

Basically, the Tor version is a reboot which new readers can jump on.

[mormont]

It's not a 'reboot', really: it's a continuation. But one of the nice things about Wild Cards is that the timeline is fixed, so as some of the older characters have aged out, it creates an opportunity to do a fresh start with new characters naturally.

As for the reading order, strictly you should start with Wild Cards I then Aces High etc. as that's the publication order. But... fairly quickly you'll catch up with the reissues, which means sooner or later you'll get to a point in the series where there's a book you just can't find easily and you might have to skip it. If that annoys you, start with Inside Straight instead.

[MisterOJ]

I always get a bit bummed whenever I am reminded about the Wild Card series. I read the first five or so books over 25 years ago and loved them. In the past few years, I have wanted to go back and read the series and continue with the books I never read, but so many of them aren't in print anymore. It seems like it would be easy to at least offer them as ebooks.

A quick glance at Barnes & Noble's website seems to indicate that only the first four novels are available in ebook format. Is that right?

[mormont]

The first four volumes have been reprinted and that will presumably mean ebooks are available. The recent ones should also be available in ebook format. There are plans to republish the rest, at which point there'll presumably be an ebook release, but at present they're only available in second hand copies.

They've not previously been available as ebooks because of an unholy mess over the rights, I believe.

[MisterOJ]

15 minutes ago, Emre Mor-mont said:

The first four volumes have been reprinted and that will presumably mean ebooks are available. The recent ones should also be available in ebook format. There are plans to republish the rest, at which point there'll presumably be an ebook release, but at present they're only available in second hand copies.

They've not previously been available as ebooks because of an unholy mess over the rights, I believe.

That makes a lot of sense, actually. I've wondered for ages why they haven't been made available. Seems like there would be a great market for these books today.

[Werthead]

If you can get hold of the UK ebooks, they're much further along. They're up to Book 7 (IIRC). The fate of the reprints after that point is unclear, as Gollancz haven't got 8 onwards on their schedules and Tor appears to be releasing one book per year, which will take forever to catch up.

What someone needs to do, yesterday, is sit down and combine 3-4 Wild Cards volumes at a time into big 1,000-page paperbacks and sell them at a very reasonable rate like Black Library did with their WH40K omnibuses. When you suggest to someone they should start a 22-book series, they'll balk. Selling it as 4-5 big volumes instead is far easier.