A physics paper co-written by George R.R. Martin

Ars Technica

Although fans of A Song of Ice and Fire might still be hankering for the long-delayed next book in the series, bestselling sci-fi/fantasy author George R.R.
Martin has instead added a different item to his long list of publications: a peer-reviewed physics paper just published in the American Journal of Physics that he co-authored.
Wild Cards grew out of the Superworld RPG, specifically a long-running campaign game-mastered by Martin in the 1980s, with several of the original sci-fi writers who contributed to the series participating.
(A then-unknown Neil Gaiman once pitched Martin a Wild Cards story involving a main character who lived in a world of dreams.
Eventually I suggested, only half-jokingly, that it might be easier to write a genuine physics paper than another blog post.”

POSITIVE

George R.R, bestselling sci-fi/fantasy author, may still have fans of A Song of Ice and Fire pining for the long-delayed next book in the series. Martin has instead added a new publication to his extensive list: a peer-reviewed physics paper that he co-authored and was recently published in the American Journal of Physics. In order to explain the dynamics of a fictional virus that serves as the focal point of the Wild Cards book series, a shared universe edited by Martin and Melinda M. Snodgrass and involving approximately forty-four authors, the paper comes up with a formula.

The Superworld RPG, a long-running campaign game that Martin mastered in the 1980s and in which many of the original sci-fi authors who contributed to the series played, served as the model for Wild Cards. (A Wild Cards story with a protagonist who lived in a dream world was once presented to Martin by Neil Gaiman, who was unknown at the time. After Martin turned down the proposal, Gaiman’s concept became The Sandman. Martin originally intended to write a novel about his character Turtle, but he ultimately decided that a shared universe anthology would be a better format. Martin wanted his universe to have a single source for all of the superpowers because he felt that superhero comics had far too many sources. A virus, according to Snodgrass.

In essence, the series is an alternate history of the United States following World War II. Tens of thousands of people were infected worldwide in 1946 after an alien virus that was intended to rewrite DNA was released into the atmosphere over New York City. It is known as the “Wild Card virus” because each person is impacted differently. Ninety percent of those it infects die, and the remaining ones become mutated. Of the latter, 1% acquire superpowers and are referred to as Aces, while 9% end up in unpleasant situations and are known as Jokers. Certain Aces have “powers” that are so insignificant and pointless that they are referred to as “deuces.”. “..”.

The science behind that virus has been the subject of much conjecture on the Wild Cards website. Ian Tregillis, a physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was intrigued by the idea and believed it could be a valuable teaching tool. “As a theorist, I couldn’t help but wonder if the canon could be cleaned up with a simple underlying model,” Tregillis stated. I began with impromptu estimations, just like any physicist, but I got ahead of myself. It might be simpler to write a real physics paper than another blog post, I finally remarked, half-jokingly. “..”.

A physicist enters a made-up world.

As the question of how any virus could give humans superpowers that defy the laws of physics is inherently unanswerable, Tregillis naturally engaged in a bit of willing suspension of disbelief. With the mindset of an in-universe theorist eager to construct a logical mathematical framework that could explain the viral behavior, he concentrated on the origin of the 90:9:1 rule in the Wild Cards universe. The ultimate objective was to “put a wealth of conceptual and mathematical tools at students’ disposal by converting this vague and seemingly unapproachable problem to a straightforward dynamic system, thereby demonstrating the wide-ranging flexibility and utility of physics concepts,” according to Tregillis and Martin’s paper.

The authors of the paper said that Jokers and Aces are “mutually exclusive categories with a numerical distribution attainable to the roll of a hundred-sided die,” which is one of the problems they address. However, the canon is full of characters that defy this classification, such as “Joker-Aces,” who possess both a superhuman ability and a physical mutation. “,”.

The existence of “cryptos” is also suggested by them. These are Jokers and Aces who have undergone mutations that are mainly invisible, like giving someone a heart with ultraviolet racing stripes or giving “an Iowan the ability to communicate with narwhals through telepathy.”. While the second person would be an Ace but never realize it, the first would be ignorant of their Jokerism. Communication with narwhals could be interpreted as a sign of deuce. ().

Ultimately, Tregillis and Martin developed three ground rules: (1) there are cryptos, but the number of them is “unknown and unknowable”; (2) the 90:9:1 rule would be used to distribute observable card turns; and (3) a multivariate probability distribution would be used to determine viral outcomes.

Two variables that seem random are assumed in the resulting proposed model: the transformation’s severity—i.e. e. the degree to which the virus alters a person—whether it’s the strength of an Ace’s superpower or the degree of a Joker’s deformation—and a mixing angle to answer the issue of Joker-Aces. The authors stated that “card turns that land sufficiently close to one axis will subjectively present as Aces, while otherwise they will present as Jokers or Joker-Aces.”.

The derived formula (also known as a Langrangian formulation) considers the various ways in which a particular system can evolve. “We created a straightforward, tangible dynamical system by transforming the abstract problem of Wild Card viral outcomes. Tregillis stated that the statistical distribution of results is produced by the system’s time-averaged behavior.

Tregillis admits that because it requires several steps and covers a lot of material that younger students might not fully understand, this exercise might not be suitable for beginning physics students. Furthermore, he opposes its inclusion in the core curriculum. For senior honors seminars, he suggests it instead, as it encourages students to investigate an open-ended research question.

U.S. Journal of Physics, 2025. About DOIs, 10.1119/5.0228859.

scroll to top