George R.R. Martin's Blog, page 21

Sunday Sorrows

Well, at least the Jets did not lose this weekend.

They had a bye.

The less said about the last two Giants games, the better.   It does not help that half the team seems to be injured, including half the offensive line and most of the top wideouts.   We had a rookie who was flashing some great moves at receiver, to be fair, but now he is hurt too.

The past few years — maybe longer than than, the months and years have been flashing by in a blur and I have lost track — I have pretty much forgotten...

The Dragons Are Coming

Yes, I know, most of you have already seen this.   (What can I say?  I am busy.   Juggling so many balls, so many projects, posting stuff on my Not A Blog is not my highest priority, so things may always be a little bit behind here).

For the handful who have been off the internet the past few days, however… HBO has released the first official teaser/trailer for HOUSE OF THE DRAGON.  Here ’tis.

Enjoy.

(And yes, I love it too.  Ryan and Miguel and their team are kicking ass and taking names).

Overtime! Overtime!

Gasp.  And gasp again.

Hey, hey, what do you know.   The Giants WON!  And the Jets WON!   On the same day.  Both in overtime.

Of course, the NFL and DirecTV had both games on at the same time, which meant I had to record them both and spend all day switching back and forth between them, while falling further and further behind.   I also had to avoid looking at the scores at the bottom of the screen, lest one game spoil the other, or vice versa.  Both teams entered the day at 0-3, and I had every...

Turn That Card Again

November 9 is going to be a big day for Wild Cards fans.

That’s the day that Tor is going to be releasing not one but two classic hard-to-find Wild Cards novels as reissues.   These are not the usual mosaics, but solo novels by two of the mainstays of the series, John Jos. Miller and the late great Victor Milan.

I have already blogged about John’s novel DEATH DRAWS FIVE (take a look downstream if you missed it).  Volume seventeen in the overall series, it was initially released by iBooks a week ...

Collecting Stuff

I have a lot of stuff.

I can’t deny it.   I got the bug when I was still a kid.   The collecting bug.   Books, comic books, magazines, trading cards, toys… all sorts of weird stuff.  And y’know, it piles up over the years… and I have seen a LOT of years now.

Thankfully, I am not the only one with this odd affliction.   Ryan Condal, the showrunner on HOUSE OF THE DRAGON, collects movie and television props, and he and his friend David Mandel of VEEP and CURB YOUR ENTHUSIAM fame have a wonderful ...

Three and Seventy

I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

((with thanks to T.S. Eliot))

Thursday Night Football

Well, that was a kick in the balls.

I really thought that the Giants and the Jets would be much better this season.   They had (I thought) strong drafts and good offseasons.

A week and a half into the new season, they are a combined 0-3.

Life is meaningless and full of pain.

Who Is That Strange Dude?

There’s a lot of strange stuff on YouTube.   I never know what I’m going to stumble on.

Sometimes I stumble on myself.   As in this interview from 1991 (or so it says), where I pontificate about science fiction and fandom.

(In those days, five years before A GAME OF THRONES was published, science fiction was what they asked about when they interviewed me.   When they bothered to interview me at all).

I have absolutely no memory of this interview.   Where I was, who was intervieweing me, why…  n...

Death Draws Again

DEATH DRAWS FIVE is one of the rarest of the Wild Cards series.

The series started with a twelve-volume run at Bantam Spectra, then moved to Baen Books in the early 90s for three books.   (Not the brightest decision I ever made as editor, but that’s a long story for another day).  The Baen books — the Card Sharks triad — were among our strongest, I thought, but for various and sundry reasons they did not sell nearly as well as the Bantam twelve, and afterward Wild Cards was without a publisher. ...

Let’s Go Mets

The year was 1986.

Was that a lifetime ago, or last week?  Sometimes I am not sure.

For me, it was a pretty good year.   I had my first job in television, writing for the CBS revival of THE TWILIGHT ZONE.   I had gone through a very rough time financially the preceding couple of years, but now things were turning around.   In the NFL, the Giants were looking damn good and winning a lot of games.   And in baseball… in baseball, we had the Mets.   After teasing us in 1984 and 1985, the Mets caught...