George Raymond Richard Martin, was born George Raymond Martin on September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, U.S.A. The son of Raymond Collins Martin and Margaret Brady Martin, and brother to two younger sisters, Darleen and Janet.
George R. R. Martin is an American novelist, screenwriter, television producer and short story writer. He is most known for writing in the genres of fantasy, horror, and science fiction.
As a youth he read and used his imagination to travel and experience other places. Martin wrote and sold monster stories for pennies to other neighborhood children. He wrote stories about a mythical kingdom populated by his pet turtles; the turtles died frequently in their toy castle, so he decided they were killing each other off in sinister plots
.
In his teens he became interested by Marvel Comics, he later stated; Maybe Stan Lee is the greatest literary influence on me, even more than Shakespeare or Tolkien
.
Martin joined the comics fandom of the era, writing fiction for various fanzines; he bought the first ticket to the world's first Comic-Con, held in New York in 1964. In 1965, Martin won comic fandom's Alley Award for Best Fan Fiction for his superhero story Powerman vs. The Blue Barrier.
In 1970, Martin earned a B.S. in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois, graduating summa cum laude; he went on to complete his M.S. in Journalism in 1971, also from Medill. In the mid-1970s, Martin met English professor George Guthridge from Dubuque, Iowa, at a science fiction convention in Milwaukee. Guthridge helped Martin in finding a job at Clarke University (Clarke College). Martin wasn't making enough money to stay alive
from writing says Guthridge. From 1976 to 1978, Martin was an English and journalism instructor at Clarke, and he became Writer In Residence at the college from 1978 to 1979.
Martin is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA); he served as the organization's Southwest Regional Director from 1977 to 1979, and as its vice-president from 1996 to 1998. In 1976, for Kansas City's MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), Martin and his friend and fellow writer-editor Gardner Dozois conceived of and organized the first Hugo Losers' Party for the benefit of all past and present Hugo-losing writers on the evening following the convention's Hugo Awards ceremony. Martin was nominated for two Hugos that year but lost both awards, for the novelette "...and Seven Times Never Kill Man" and the novella The Storms of Windhaven, co-written with Lisa Tuttle. A number of Martin's earlier works are science fiction tales occurring in a loosely defined future history, known informally as "The Thousand Worlds" or "The Manrealm".
Martin started writing science fiction-horror hybrids in the late 1970s to disprove a critic claiming that science fiction and horror were opposites and incompatible. Martin considered Sandkings (1979) the best known of these. Another was the novella Nightflyers (1980), whose screen and television rights were purchased by Vista, which produced a 1987 film adaptation, Nightflyers, while not a hit at theatres, Martin believes that the film saved his career, and that everything he has written since exists in large part because of it.
Martin published a vampire novel titled Fevre Dream (1982) set in the 19th century on the Mississippi River. Critic Don D'Amassa wrote: This is without question one of the greatest vampire novels of all time
. Martin followed up Fevre Dream with another horror novel, The Armageddon Rag (1983). The unexpected commercial failure of The Armageddon Rag essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time
, he recalled, and made him consider going into real estate instead.
Producer Philip DeGuere Jr. offered to adapt The Armageddon Rag into a film, it did not happen, but when DeGuere became the producer for the revival of The Twilight Zone, Martin was offered a job as a writer. Working for television paid a lot better than writing literature, so he decided to move to Hollywood to seek a new career.
In 1987, Martin published a collection of short horror stories in Portraits of His Children. He continued working in print media as a book-series editor, overseeing the development of the ongoing multi-author Wild Cards anthology book series, which takes place in a shared universe in which a small slice of post–World War II humanity gains superpowers after the release of an alien-engineered virus. An important element in the creation of the shared-world Wild Cards was a campaign of Chaosium's role-playing game Superworld (1983) that Martin ran in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
In 1991, Martin had grown frustrated that his TV pilots and screenplays were not getting made and that production limitations like budgets and episode lengths were forcing him to cut characters and trim scenes. This pushed Martin back towards writing books, where he did not have to worry about compromising his imagination. Admiring the works of J. R. R. Tolkien in his childhood, he wanted to write an epic fantasy.
His epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, was inspired by the Wars of the Roses, The Accursed Kings, and Ivanhoe. Though Martin originally conceptualized it as being three volumes, it is currently numerous. The first, A Game of Thrones (1996), followed by A Clash of Kings (1998) and A Storm of Swords (2000). A Feast for Crows (2005), the fourth novel in this series, became The New York Times No. 1 Bestseller. A Dance with Dragons (2011), became an international bestseller. Fire & Blood (2018), though part of the series, diverges into the history of House Targaryen. Three more novels are planned in the series: The Rise of The Dragon (2022), The Winds of Winter and the final volume A Dream of Spring.
HBO Productions purchased the rights for the A Song of Ice and Fire series in 2007 and began airing the fantasy series, titled Game of Thrones (2011–2019), on their premium cable channel on April 17, 2011. George R. R. Martin was heavily involved in the production of the television series adaptation of his books. Martin's involvement included the selection of a production team and participation in scriptwriting; the opening credits list him as a co-executive producer of the series. The show has won multiple Hugo Awards, and Emmy Awards.
In August 2022, a prequel spinoff to the Game of Thrones series House of the Dragon began airing on HBO. Based on parts of the novel Fire & Blood, the series is set about 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones. Martin also wrote worldbuilding aspects, for the well received action role-playing video game titled Elden Ring (2022), developed by FromSoftware and directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki.
Martin's work has been described as having complex story lines, fascinating characters, great dialogue, perfect pacing; fantasy for grown ups, dark and cynical. Martin's characters are multifaceted, each with intricate pasts, aspirations, and ambitions. They are often unsatisfied, in many cases holding on to idealisms in spite of an otherwise chaotic and ruthless world. Many have elements of tragic heroes or antiheroes. For many fans, it is this level of realness and completeness, including many characters' imperfections, moral and ethical ambiguity, and often sudden consequential plot twists that is endearing about Martin's work. Martin has been described as the American Tolkien
by literary critics.
Martin and wife Parris McBride are supporters of the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico. In early 2013, he purchased Santa Fe's Jean Cocteau Cinema and Coffee House, which had been closed since 2006. He had the property completely restored, including both its original 35 mm capability to which was added digital projection and sound; the Cocteau officially reopened for business on August 9, 2013. In 2019, he opened a bookstore named Beastly Books, after Beauty and the Beast, next to Jean Cocteau. Martin has also supported Meow Wolf, an arts collective in Santa Fe.
Martin actively contributes to his blog, Not a Blog , on his own website. Martin's official fan club is the "Brotherhood Without Banners", which has a regular posting board at the Forum of the website Westeros.org, which is focused on his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy series. At the annual World Science Fiction Convention every year, the Brotherhood Without Banners hosts a large, on-going hospitality suite that is open to all members of the Worldcon.