George R.R. Martin's Blog, page 22

The upcoming World Fantasy Convention has just announced the winners of this year’s Lifetime Achievement Awards:

MEGAN LINDHOLM and HOWARD WALDROP.

I could not possibly think of two more worthy winners.

Megan Lindholm, writing under the name Robin Hobb, is one of the premiere fantastists of the last thirty years.   Her Farseer novels, featuring Fitz and the Fool, are classics of high fantasy.   If you have not read them, you don’t know what you are missing.   She has also done some great work u...

There’s a brand new Wild Cards original from a brand new Wild Cards author up on Tor.com.

“Skin Deep” is from Alan Brennert.   Who is not a new author at all, of course (( though he was back in the mid-70s, when he was a Campbell Award loser just a few years after me )) but he IS brand new to the world of aces and jokers.   I first had the honor of publishing Alan when I was doing NEW VOICES, the Campbell Award anthology that was my first foray into editing.  A decade or so later, he and I worke...

I am so far behind in my Not A Blogging.   This post should have been posted back in June,  but…  better late than never, right?

ANYWAY… I was on the road for ten days back in June, to Evanston (where I went to school, 1966-1971), Chicago (where I lived after school, 1971-1976), and Dubuque (where I taught school, 1976-1979).   It was the first time I’d left home and/or cabin in a year and a half, since the start of the pandemic and the quarantine.   I have to say, it was great to get away from ...

(And the jokers too)

Hey, Wild Carders.   Jason Powell has another of his excellent essays up on Tor.com, this one about the history of rock n roll in the world of the Wild Cards.   Check it out at:

https://www.tor.com/2021/06/28/music-making-mutants-rock-n-roll-in-george-r-r-martins-wild-cards-series/

I moved from Iowa to New Mexico in late 1979.   A few months later, Roger Zelazny took me down to Albuquerque to First Friday, the monthly writer’s luncheon at the Albuquerque Press Club, where I met the bestselling mystery writer Tony Hillerman, one of the founders of the group.  Tony was a delight, a great lunch companion and a born storyteller… and, as I soon learned, a marvelous writer.   Once I tried one of his Joe Leaphorn novels, I was hooked.   I read as many as I could get my hands on, ...

Is it a bad moon?

Or a new moon, full of hope?

You will need to read our new Wild Cards book, JOKER MOON, to find out.

Our latest volume, number thirty in the overall series, contains stories by Christopher Rowe, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Walton Simons, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Michael Cassutt, Leo Kenden, Steve Perrin, Caroline Spector, David D. Levine… and the last story from the late great Victor Milan, completed by his friend John Jos. Miller.

Theodorus was a dreamer.   As a child, he dreamt of air...

Look who gets to join in with the a massive VIP crowd rubbing elbows with the X-Men.  Featured this month in Marvels X-Men #21 myself and my beautiful wife Parris get to be drawn into the the amazing Hellfire Gala event.  What fun,  pick up your issue today.  And a big thanks for including me, what an honor being drawn into a Marvel comic book.  I can’t wait to see what we look like and read the issue!

Heinlein said it best.   You can never pay back the people who helped you when you were first starting out, so all you can do is pay it forward, and try to help those who come after.

Those words, and the sentiment behind them, have always resonated with me, and I have done my best to Pay It Forward.  One of the ways I’ve tried to do that is with the scholarships I sponsor — to Clarion and Clarion West, Odyssey, and the Taos Toolbox, to IAIA here in Santa Fe, and through the Stagecoach Foundatio...

The Candle is back, in “Ripple Effects,” Laura J. Mixon’s great new novella on Tor.com… for all the Wild Cards fans out there, and for everyone who does not know they are Wild Cards fans yet.

Check it out.   It’s free.

Ripple Effects