| Al Dearborn | |
| Biographical Information | |
| Real Name | Al Dearborn |
| Gender | Male |
| Class | Ace |
| Wild Card Traits | Subconscious probability manipulation |
| Social Information | |
| Citizenship | Citizen of the United States |
| Occupation | Air force pilot |
| Affiliations | National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy |
| Allies | Woody Enloe, Casey Guinan, Dr. Wilson Rowe, Edgar Thayer |
| Origin | |
| First Appearance | Wild Cards |
| Creator | Michael Cassutt |
Al Dearborn is a fictional character from the Wild Cards series of books.
History[]
Al Dearborn was from Chicago and had grown up in a privileged North Shore family. His father had been a senior executive at Sears prior to the wild card, at which point his wild card had turned, resulting in the loss of his job and his money. Dearborn was lucky enough to win an appointment to the naval academy at Annapolis. After graduating in 1951, he became a naval aviator.
He won his wings of gold too late to shoot it out over Korea, but served with the fleet in the Mediterranean, then did a year of graduate work in nuclear engineering, before coming to Tomlin in 1958 to attend the test pilot school as a navy exchange pilot. He had just graduated and joined the X-11A project when they had the accident that sparked a wild card hunt and destroyed the home-grown American space program.
Dearborn stayed at Tomlin flying on a few other programs where he missed out on three other accidents. Eventually he got attached to the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, often referred to as the Quicksilver program, that followed. He made three sub-orbital flights in the Quicksilver before the program was cancelled due to it's high cost. He was later returned to the cockpit of the Quicksilver when an underworld figure put up a large sum of money to erect a relay station on the surface of the moon, but was forced to abandon his seat on the mission due to injuries sustained in a runway crash.
Wild Card Traits[]
Dearborn is an ace with the power to subconsciously (or more likely, unconsciously) manipulate luck so that the odds are always in his favour.
Appearance[]
Al Dearborn's hair is gray and ragged, like a military crew cut gone to weed. His pale blue eyes have a web of lines around them that made him, at forty, to be more like sixty.
Personality[]
Originally a cheerful man, Dearborn became somewhat jaded by his strange fortunes that kept him from his goals. He turned to alcohol and developed a drinking problem in the 1960's, yet his love of flying provides motivation for him to stop drinking for extended periods.
Trivia[]
- Al Dearborn's original first published appearance was in Card Sharks, although he was later included in the 2010 Tor Books preprint of Wild Cards.
Selected Reading[]
- Wild Cards Volume I: Wild Cards - "Powers"
- Wild Cards Volume XVI: Deuces Down - "Storming Space"