George R.R. Martin's Blog, page 25

January has gone past in the blink of an eye.

In the past, I have often written a year’s end round-up of sorts on my Not A Blog just before or after New Year’s.   This year, though… 2020 was probably the worst year I have ever lived through, for the country and the world if not for me personally, and I say that from the perspective of someone who lived through, and remembers, 1968.   So much happened, and so much of it was dire, but all the rest dwindles in importance in the shadow of hundreds o...

For those of you out there curious about Wild Cards, Jason Powell has written a great introduction to the series for Tor.com.

((But be warned.   There are some spoilers)).

You can find it at:

Catching Up With George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards

Signed copies of pretty much all the Wild Cards book are available from Beastly Books.   Some of them have multiple signatures.

Read and enjoy.

No, I am not talking about STAR WARS.

I’ve spent the morning watching Joe Biden being sworn in as president.

Joe is not the orator that Obama and JFK were, but I found his speech profoundly moving.   He said all the right things.

I do not envy him.   Very few presidents have faced the sort of challenges he does.   Lincoln, perhaps.  FDR, taking over in the deep of the Great Depression.  No one else.   The road ahead will not be easy.   The sort of problems that America faces cannot be solved eas...

My old friend Phyllis Eisenstein died on December 7, in Chicago.   The cause of death, I am told, was Covid-19, but Phyllis had been hospitalized for most of the year, following a cerebral hemorrhage last January.

I have been trying to write a memorial to her since her passing… trying, and struggling with it.   The holidays interfered, as they will, and of course I have so much on my plate… but mainly it was just hard.    There was so much to say, and it seemed that only days had passed since I ...

A few weeks ago, while up in my mountain fastness, I rewatched MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, the Woody Allen film about a struggling writer visiting modern Paris (played by Owen Wilson) who finds himself travelling back in time to Paris of the 20s, where he finds himself bumping into Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Dali, Picasso, and the other artists and writers who made that such a special time.   It’s a lovely, entertaining movie about nostalgia.  I have enjoyed it before and I expect I will enjo...

What is happening in Washington right now is shocking and dismaying… but I can’t say I find it entirely unexpected.

There have been all too many days, these past couple of years, when I feared that the United States was going the way of the Weimar Republic.

And now the moment of coup is at hand.   Rioters breaking into the Capitol, even the floor of the House and Senate.   One of them trying to haul down the American flag and replace it with a Trump flag.  Congressmen and senators being forced t...

The deuces are back.  Puddleman and Chuckles, Cash Mitchell, Gary Bushorn, Father Henry Obst, the Jokertown Boys, the Myth Patrol, and all their friends will be returning… with Croyd Crenson and Demise, and some brand new characters that Wild Card readers need to meet.  Come January 5, Tor will be releasing a brand new edition of DEUCES DOWN, one of the scarcer volumes in the Wild Cards series… with three brand new stories, published for the first time.

The wild card virus, as all readers of the...

Heres something beautiful and fun to help us all look forward to the future a little bit more.

Artist Arantza Sestayo has delivered gorgeous visions of Westeros and beyond, which will feature in the A Song of Ice and Fire 2022 Calendar. Here is the cover, showing 1 of 13 new illustrations.

On sale 7/27/21 at your favorite bookstore.

Pre-order now: https://bit.ly/2KYE7Ch

Arantza Sestayo was born in San Sebastián, Spain and currently resides in Valencia. She has worked in the fantasy genre for 20...

I have been an editor almost as long as I have been a professional writer (I have been a writer since forever, but I was not a pro until I made my first sale to GALAXY in 1970).

The first anthology I ever edited was NEW VOICES IN SCIENCE FICTION, featuring original stories by the finalists for the very first John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.  (I was one of those finalists.  I lost, but editing the book made up for that).   That came out in hardcover in 1975.  I would ultimately edit si...