George R.R. Martin's Blog, page 40

I’ve written a lot of things during my career: science fiction, fantasy, horror, various hybrids of all of the above.   And once upon a time, like many writers, I wrote a novel about the times and events I’d lived through… a story about my own generation, the Boomers, about our dreams and our disillusionments.   It was centered on the music.  Of course it was.   Rock n roll was as central to my generation as the Vietnam War, the counterculture, television, and the sexual revolution.   All tho...

Very pleased to announce that I am being inducted into the Hall of Fame!

No, not the one in Canton, nor the one in Cooperstown.  Not the halls in Cleveland or Seattle either.

Come October, I am being inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

The announcements just came out:

https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2019/06/new-jersey-hall-of-fame-to-induct-george-rr-martin-martha-ste wart-laurie-hernandez-and-more.html

https://www.njarts.net/uncategorized/southside-johnny-the-smithereens-to-be-among-n...

If you’re not fortunate enough to live in the Land of Enchantment, you’ve missed out on all of the wonderful author events we have at the Jean cocteau Cinema.  But of late, we’ve started recording the events for streaming and later viewing.

Here are three of our most recent events, with

— LEE CHILD (Thrillermaster, and creator of Jack Reacher),

— ALAN BRENNERT (from my days on TWILIGHT ZONE, author of DAUGHTER OF MOLOKAI).

— MARLON JAMES (author of BLACK LEOPARD, RED WOLF)

Author Events

Auto...

Back in 2017, I announced that I would be sponsoring an annual scholarship to the Clarion Writers Workshop in San Diego.   I named it the ‘Sense of Wonder’ scholarship.  This is what I said then:

” I’ve made my life in the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, and an awful lot of people helped me along the way.    I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.   But if I may echo something that Robert A. Heinlein once said, you can never pay back the people who helped you when you were startin...

I am a lucky guy in a lot of ways… one of them being that I get to work with some of the greatest SF and fantasy artists in the world.

ASFA has just announced this year’s finalists for the Chesley Awards, and I’m thrilled to note that Wild Cards and A Song of Ice and Fire both have artists among this year’s finalists.

Michael Komarck has been doing spectacular Wild Cards covers for Tor for years now, with way too little recognition, so it’s great to see that his cover for LOW CHICAGO is a fin...

Memorial Day started as a day of remembrance, originally for soldiers slain in the Civil War.    In more recent decades it has come to mark the beginning a summer, a holiday celebrated in thousands of back yards across the nation with hot dogs and potato salads.   In the science fiction community, it has also become a traditional date for conventions, taking advantage of the three-day weekends.   There are a dozen or more Memorial Day cons around these days… but some of them go way back.

It w...

I am pleased to announce that KYLE DE WAAL is the winner of this year’s Miskatonic Scholarship to the Odyssey Writers Workshop in New Hampshire, given each year to a student working in the area of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.

Here’s the press release from Odyssey:  

George R. R. Martin. . . created the Miskatonic Scholarship to provide financial support to a promising new writer of Lovecraftian cosmic horror attending the Odyssey Writing Workshop.  Martin said that, reading the works of H....

I was surprised last night when Air New Zealand went to the internet to invite me down for a visit… to help me finish my book.

I cannot say I was not tempted.  New Zealand is a beautiful place.   As it happens, I have already visited there a number of times.   I’ve been to Auckland and Wellington and Christchurch and Rotoroa… and Hobbiton, of course.   I’ve gone whale watching (we never saw a whale, but there were hundreds of dusky dolphins), checked out the Te Papa, the Weta Workshop, the a...

The last night, the last show.   After eight epic seasons, HBO’s GAME OF THRONES series has come to an end.

It is hard to believe it is over, if truth be told.   The years have gone past in the blink of an eye.  Can it really have been more than a decade since my manager Vince Gerardis set up a meeting at the Palm in LA, and I sat down for the first time with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for a lunch that lasted well past dinner?  I asked them if they knew who Jon Snow’s mother was.   Fortunat...

Aside from the idiocy on the internet, what else has been going on of late?

Well, I went to LA to moderate the Q&A at the premiere of the new TOLKIEN biopic in Westwood.  The picture is lovely, by the way, and I had a great time.   Got to meet Nicholas Hoult and the lovely Lily Collins, the stars of the film, as well as director Dome Karukoski.   Afterwards I flew home to Santa Fe, and we did the New Mexico premiere at the Jean Cocteau.

The JCC followed that up with two nights of magic, comed...