Mississippi Roll - George R R Martin (ed)

 What attracted me to this was the shared setting with Fevre Dream - a Mississippi steamboat actually mentioned in that novel.  Actually, that was an earlier incarnation of the steamboat here, built by an ancestor of the captain here.  And as part of the Wild Cards series of more than twenty novels and stories by forty-plus writers, all edited by Martin, who created the central premise: that is, an alien virus released over New York in the aftermath of World War II, which either kills those infected (Black Queens), mutates them into monsters (Jokers), or grants them super powers (Aces or, less 'super', Deuces).

Wilbur Leathers is in New York on his honeymoon when the virus was released in September 1946.  He is not infected, nor is his wife, and they achieve his post-war dream, a new version of the family steamboat, a new Natchez, steaming up and down the Mississippi.  Five years later he's struggling to pay the bills - and he owes some very unpleasant people.  On their behalf Marcus Carpenter comes aboard and demands payment.  A fight breaks out.  Carpenter pulls a gun.  Leathers finds himself suddenly outside his body - then inside Carpenter's.  Wilbur is the actual steam now, broiling Carpenter from the inside out.

Wilbur is still aboard the Natchez sixty-five years later.  He has learned how to use steam to manifest himself but he cannot speak (though he can pick up the tools with which to write) and he cannot leave the boat and go ashore.  But, all in all, it's not such a bad afterlife.  The Natchez is doing better now, partly because of its famous steam ghost.  This particular trip is up to the Tall Stacks Race in Cincinnati - and there are several complications.  A significant number of Joker refugees from Kazakhstan have been smuggled aboard, 'illegal immigrants' being sought by the authorities for deportation to an island off Northern Ireland.  And the consortium which now owns the Natchez is planning to turn her into a floating fixed-mooring casino.  With her boilers stripped out and sold for scrap, what then happens to steam-ghost Wilbur.

This is the storyline which is then developed by six writers (part of the Wild Cards Trust).  In practice, the Wilbur story is written in eight episodes or parts scattered through the book (but double parts at the beginning and end) by Stephen W Leigh.  Five other stories, by other authors, are set within this framework, self-contained in so much as they focus on different sets of characters, but all linked to the main story.  The quality of these varies, naturally, but all are good.  My personal favourite was the last one, 'Under the Arch' by David D Levine - but would I have enjoyed it so much without being led to it by the others?  I also really enjoyed the end twist.

This sort of gaming-as-series-fiction is a side-alley of sci fi I haven't come across before.  I will certainly look out for more of Wild Cards in particular.