While enthusiasts of A Song of Ice and Fire may still be eagerly anticipating the long-overdue next installment in the saga, renowned sci-fi/fantasy author George R.R. Martin has added an unexpected entry to his extensive list of works: a peer-reviewed physics paper recently released in the American Journal of Physics, which he coauthored. The study formulates a mathematical model to describe the dynamics of a fictional virus that serves as the focal point of the Wild Cards series, a collaborative universe curated by Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass, involving contributions from around 44 authors.
Wild Cards originated from the Superworld tabletop role-playing game, specifically from a long-lasting campaign led by Martin during the 1980s that featured several original sci-fi authors involved in the series. (At one point, an unknown Neil Gaiman proposed a Wild Cards tale revolving around a protagonist dwelling in a dream world. Martin declined the proposal, which later evolved into Gaiman’s acclaimed work, The Sandman.) Initially, Martin envisioned writing a novel centered around his character Turtle, but ultimately determined that a shared universe anthology would be more fitting. Martin believed superhero comics had an overly complicated origin for the multitude of superpowers and wished for his universe to have a singular source. Snodgrass proposed the idea of a virus.
The series essentially presents an alternate historical narrative for the United States following World War II. An airborne alien virus, engineered to alter DNA, was unleashed over New York City in 1946 and subsequently spread across the globe, infecting tens of thousands of people. Dubbed the Wild Card virus, it affects every individual in a distinct manner. Approximately 90 percent of those infected die, while the others mutate. Of those who survive, 9 percent experience adverse transformations, known as Jokers, while 1 percent develop superhuman abilities referred to as Aces. Some Aces possess powers so trivial that they are labeled as “deuces.”
Discussion around the scientific elements of the Wild Cards virus has generated considerable speculation on the official website, catching the attention of Ian Tregillis, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He believed it could serve as an intriguing educational exercise. “Being a theoretical physicist, I couldn’t resist the temptation to explore if a straightforward underlying model could clarify the context,” Tregillis remarked. “As any physicist would, I started with rough estimates on the back of a napkin but eventually dove deep into the analysis. I eventually suggested—only half-jokingly—that crafting an actual physics paper might be less cumbersome than another blog entry.”
A Physicist Enters a Fictional Universe …
Tregillis willingly indulged in a suspension of disbelief, particularly since the notion of a virus granting humans superpowers that violate the laws of physics is fundamentally unresolvable. He concentrated on deciphering the origin of the Wild Cards universe’s 90:9:1 distribution rule, adopting the perspective of a theoretician within that universe who aims to develop a consistent mathematical framework explaining the viral behavior. The primary objective was to “illustrate the diverse flexibility and usefulness of physical concepts by transforming this ambiguous and seemingly insurmountable problem into a manageable dynamic system, thereby providing a wealth of conceptual and mathematical tools for students,” Tregillis and Martin stated in their paper.
The paper tackles the issue of categorizing Jokers and Aces as mutually exclusive groups with a numerical distribution resembling the outcome of a hundred-sided die. “Yet the canon is filled with characters that challenge this classification: ‘Joker-Aces,’ who display both physical mutations and superhuman capabilities,” the authors asserted.
They also propose the existence of “cryptos”: Jokers and Aces with mutations that remain largely hidden, such as producing ultraviolet stripes on someone’s heart or endowing “a resident of Iowa the ability to telepathically communicate with narwhals by sight alone. The former individual would remain oblivious to their Joker status; the latter would be an Ace but never realize it.” (It could be argued that the ability to communicate with narwhals may classify someone as a Deuce.)
Ultimately, Tregillis and Martin proposed three foundational principles: (1) cryptos exist, but the total number of them is “unknown and unknowable”; (2) observable outcomes would follow the 90:9:1 distribution; and (3) viral outcomes would be governed by a multivariate probability distribution.
Their established model presupposes two seemingly random variables: the severity of transformation—how drastically the virus alters an individual, either through the severity of a Joker’s deformity or the strength of an Ace’s powers—and a mixing angle to consider the presence of Joker-Aces. “Card turns that land sufficiently close to one axis will subjectively appear as Aces; otherwise, they will manifest as Jokers or Joker-Aces,” the authors explained.
The derived formula accounts for the various potential pathways a system might evolve (also known as a Lagrangian formulation). “We converted the abstract scenario of Wild Card viral outcomes into a simple and concrete dynamic system. The time-averaged behavior of this system yields the statistical distribution of results,” Tregillis noted.
Tregillis recognizes that this might not be suitable for beginner physics students, considering it involves multiple stages and encompasses several concepts that younger learners may not fully grasp. He does not recommend including this exercise in core curriculum, but rather suggests its application in senior honors seminars to inspire students to tackle open-ended research inquiries.
This report originally appeared on Ars Technica.
