George R.R. Martin's Blog, page 33

Writing, Reading, Writing

I have to confess, after half a year of pandemic, quarantine, and social distancing, I am showing signs of cabin fever… half of which is quite literal in my case.  Yes, I am in an actual cabin in the mountains.   No, I have no fever.   Yay!   For the present at least, I am healthy… for an out-of-shape guy of 71, at least … and doing all I can to stay that way.

If nothing else, the enforced isolation has helped me write.   I am spending long hours every day on THE WINDS OF WINTER, and making stea...

The Amazing John Picacio

SFWA held its Nebula Awards ceremonies last week, and John Picacio, artist extraordinaire, was one of the winners of this year’s Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award… not for his art, but for his contributions to the science fiction and fantasy community.

I had the honor of presenting the award to John.   Well, that is to say, I had the virtual honor of presenting a virtual award to the virtual Picacio.

For all of you who could not be there — which is everyone, thanks to our friend Covid-19 — here is wha...

Haeems Wins Terran Prize

When astronauts look down on Earth from orbit, they don’t see borders, national boundaries, or linguistic groups; they see one world, a gorgeous blue globe spinning in space, streaked with clouds. I don’t know if humanity will ever reach the stars (though I hope we will), but if we do, it won’t be Americans who get there. It won’t be the Chinese or the Russians or the British or the French or the Brazilians or the Kiwis or the South Africans or Indians or the folk of any other nation either. It ...

Picacio Speaks

Every two weeks or so, we upload new posts on our official Wild Cards blog at https://www.wildcardsworld.com/blog/

Our latest blog post is from the one and only JOHN PICACIO, the latest winner of SFWA’s Solstice Award (which I had the honor to present to him — virtually, of course), and one of the leading artists and illustrators in our genre… and any other genre, for that matter.   John talks about the artwork he has done for the Wild Cards stories on Tor.com, the Ice & Fire calendar he did for...

Locus Award Nomination for STARPORT

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the top ten finalists for this year and we’re pleased as punch to report that STARPORT has been nominated in the Illustrated and Art Book category.  Illustrated by our very own in house Art Director Raya Golden and published by Random House this Sci Fi comedy adaptation of a Television pilot is a fun ride into a lighter alternate universe where aliens have discovered Earth.

Memberships to the Locus Awards can be found by following the link belo...

Beastly Books Reopens

New Mexico has begun to reopen — cautiously, step by step — from its lockdown, and that includes at least one of my own enterprises.

Beastly Books, my bookshop on Montezuma Street, opened its doors again on June 2, for coffee, hot chocolate, and — of course — signed books.   We are not doing any author events at present, except the virtual kind, and we are taking every precaution, with masks, sanitizers, limits on the numbers of people allowed in the shop at one time, and so forth.   We shall se...

Words For Our Times

Bloggity Bloggity

History buffs, baseball fans, and Wild Carders alike will enjoy the newest post on the Wild Cards blog, John Jos. Miller’s “Annotated Long Night at the Palmer House,” touching on all the references, hidden and fictional, in his acclaimed LOW CHICAGO interstitial.

The Annotated “A Long Night At The Palmer House”

When he is not writing Wild Cards stories or watching the New York Mets, John is a huge fan of… ah… strange cinema.   Of late he has been doing some fun blog posts for our friends over ...

The Jean Cocteau Channel

My theatre in Santa Fe, the Jean Cocteau Cinema, has been closed up as part of the coronavirus lockdown in New Mexico.

But I’ve kept my staff on, and they’ve been busy working virtually… on our JCC YouTube channel (among other things).

Check it out at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwZDqU56IzUFXmzpMF4jRRg  — and give us your thumbs if you enjoy what you see.

Among other offerings, the site includes video of most of the other events we’ve done in the past year or, featuring a wide range of terr...

All Aboard for Lamy

We lived in an apartment when I was a kid, in the federal housing projects on First Street in Bayonne, New Jersey.   We did not have much money, and we did not have much room.   One Christmas, I decided I wanted a set of Lionel electric trains.   Santa brought them to me, good guy that he was.  It was years later that I learned that they were hand-me-down trains that had originally belonged to my cousin Richie.  He was a few years older than me, and had outgrown toys.  By then he was more intere...