Westeros

San Diego Comic-Con remains a place for launching trailers for series and films, as SyFy reveals its first trailer for

Nightflyers, a science fiction horror series “from the mind of George R. R. Martin” thanks to its being a loose adaptation of his award-winning novella of the same name.

You can see the trailer below:

Cast definitely seems larger than what’s in the novella, and there’s some very different motivations for the Nightflyer’s mission, but you can pick out moments that are drawn from the original story as well. As Martin has recently stated in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, the show is not part of the broader Thousand Worlds far-future history in which the story was set, and in fact will take place within our solar system.

UPDATE: We have the Netflix trailer for the series below, and it makes some things a fair bit clearer while including a number of additional glimpses of the show.

While Linda and I were in Spain for Celsius 232, George R.R. Martin was in New York City for ThrillerFest, where among other things there was an interview and Q&A (we’ve embedded the video!) with editor Anne Groell. Topics discussed include the new Nightflyers TV show from SyFY, the history of The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood, and more.

At the close of the festival, Martin was named that year’s Thriller Master, the lifetime achievement award from the International Thriller Writers association. Here’s a press release, and the video of the awards ceremony below!

In an exclusive, Deadline Hollywood reveals that Warner Animation Group (part of the Time-Warner multimedia conglomerate which also happens to own HBO) has struck a deal with George R.R. Martin to produce an animated version of The Ice Dragon, his 1980 fantasy novella.

Despite marketing claims otherwise, The Ice Dragon is not part of the A Song of Ice and Fire universe, although Martin has obviously made references to it in his more recent writings, much as he’s made nods to others of his past stories and characters.

Martin is noted to have a producer credit, which is fairly standard for such adaptations.

SyFy has released the first look video for their forthcoming Nightflyers science-fiction horror series, based on George R.R. Martin’s novella “Nightflyers”. Watch it below, including comments from GRRM himself about the story:

Certainly seems like the producers have gone for a very cinematic look, and have spared no expense in terms of the sets they’ve built to represent the ship.

As previously reported, SyFy has moved forward on a series order for Nightflyers, based on George R.R. Martin’s award-winning science fiction horror novel focused on a scientific mission to explore a mysterious, space-faring object. Last week, Irish press shard the news that production had begun at Troy Studios in Limerick shortly. Casting calls for extras—an interesting detail in and of itself, as the original novella only features a limited number of characters—went out late last month.

Thanks to the forthcoming show, the Nightflyers novella that started it all is being republished—not once, but twice. On May 29th, Tor will be publishing the Nightlyers & Other Stories collection that was first published in 1985. The five other stories are “Override” (the second of “Corpse Handler trilogy” of stories), “Weekend in a War Zone”, “Nor the Many-Colored Fires of a Star Ring” (the 2nd of two “Star Ring” stories), “And Seven Times Never Kill Man”, and “A Song for Lya” (these last, with “Nightflyers”, fall within the Thousand Worlds setting, the most substantial future history Martin created).

And then, most surprisingly, Bantam will be publishing Nightflyers: The Illustrated Edition on May 29th as well, which (per GRRM) will be expanded version of the novella (which has a complicated history) with 15 interior illustrations and 2 endpapers from artist David Palumbo. Palumbo has recently come into Martin’s orbit as an artist, providing the cover for the reprint of the Wild Cards book One-Eyed Jacks.

Great news for fans of George R.R. Martin’s science fiction: Nightflyers will be going to series at SyFy, although the official announcement has not been made as the deals are still being worked out regarding broadcast rights both in the U.S. and overseas.

This follows news from back in May that SyFy was noted himself, this show is based on the rights he sold many years earlier that led to a low-budget film that did not find much success (you can see the poster for that film above). GRRM has no role in the production, as he is exclusively under contract with HBO, but he’s hoping for the best and in particular hopes that the show will look as good as SyFy’s The Expanse.

We’ve been referring to this for a couple of months as something in the works, but Linda and I are now very happy to join in making the official announcement of the launch of Martin Studies International Network.

What’s that, you may ask? See the press release below to learn more:

While we’re away up north (north to us, anyways) for our vacation, Linda and I are getting back to doing semi-regular videos about A Song of Ice and Fire, to compliment the Game of Thrones post-episode videos she’s producing for our Episode guides.

The first one—shot on the OnePlus 5 (my first Android phone, after 5 years of my trusty Nokia 920) to make the process more convenient while we’re up here—ends with an unexpected guest star as we discuss.. well, Fire and Blood, which is coming to readers sooner than expected in part because the first volume is practically finished already. Find out how that works below:

Keep an eye on our channel for more videos in the coming days.

Answering the questions following his mysterious blog post from a few days back, George R.R. Martin has revealed that Fire and Blood is closer to publication than many thought. A book focused on the history of the Targaryens in Westeros, drawn in large part from material originally created for The World of Ice and Fire but which was largely redacted or severely compressed from that book, the amount of material is so sizable that it will appear in two volumes.

Per George:

And for those who wonder about the state of The Winds of Winter...:

Last week we shared reports that an adaptation of Nightflyers—based on the rights to the film made in the 1980s based on George R.R. Martin’s award-winning SF horror novella—was in the works. Now The Wrap reports that SyFy has gone ahead and ordered a pilot to produced based on the script by Jeff Buhler.

As Martin has noted, his overall deal with HBO means he has no involvement in this adaptation, but it’s clear that Martin’s work is a hot property in Hollywood right now. In his most recent “Not a Blog” post, Martin provided an update on progress on a number of adaptations:

The Hollywood Reporter has reported that SyFy, the SF/F genre television specialist which has had a rather colorful repetoire of original programming over the years (B-movies such as Sharknado, paranormal “reality” series such as Ghost Hunters, dramas such as Battlestar Galactica and The Magicians), has moved to adapt George R.R. Martin’s award-winning horror-tinged science fiction novella, “Nightflyers”, into a television series.

Martin’s overall development deal with HBO means that he will not be involved in developing or producing the series. Instead, Jeff Buhler (writer for the remake of Jacob’s Ladder currently in post-production) will write the initial script and act as executive producer. Buhler will be joined by a number of others noted in the article from THR, including Robert Jaffe—who wrote the adaption for the 1987 film based on GRRM’s novella—as a producer.

George R.R. Martin has provided new information on an anthology slated for October, Book of Swords, which will contain a never-before-published piece of “fake history” that was originally created for The World of ICe and Fire. We reported on it last week, but waited on reporting more as we knew GRRM was going to provide more information at his “Not a Blog”. Of particular interest to ASoIaF fans are the following:

George R.R. Martin’s friend and regular editorial collaborator, Gardner Dozois, has been working away at an anthology titled Book of Swords since 2015, inviting a host of authors to contribute. One of the invited authors, Matthew Hughes, posted a list of some of the authors that were then on board. The list included Ken Liu (whose contribution, “The Hidden Girl”, was optioned for film last year), Ellen Kushner, Scott Lynch, Robin Hobb, Daniel Abraham, K.J. Parker, Garth Nix, C.J Cherryh, Elizabeth Bear, and Cecelia Holland.

Hughes suggested there’d probably be some other significant authors, and as fans have now discovered, one of those names is George R.R. Martin himself. We don’t have a table of contents to share as of yet, but we’ll say that there’s a great deal of speculation among fans related to The World of Ice and Fire and Dunk & Egg.

We’ll see if we can’t shake that table of contents loose.

An official website for the Wild Cards superhero shared-world novels, whose origins lay way back in 1983 with a roleplaying game campaign that George R.R. Martin devised, has now been launched.

Of note are a number of initial blog posts from Martin and other members of the Wild Cards Consortium discussing various aspects of the shared world, from its inception and on down to recent days. It’s a good looking site, featuring a cover gallery, interviews, videos (including a 1988 recording of a Worldcon Wild Cards panel!), sample stories, and more.

The latest entry in the series is High Stakes, which was published this August.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has some exciting news for fans of the Wild Cards series: Universal Cable Productions (the studio behind shows like Mr. Robot, The Magicians, Battlestar Galactica, and more) has acquired the rights to adapting the series to television. Development work begins immediately, with Melinda M. Snodgrass (an originator of the Wild Cards series, and GRRM’s right-hand so to speak) attached to executive produce alongside Gregory Noveck.

Interestingly, GRRM notes that due to his development deal with HBO, he will not be working on the series.Of course, he cautions that as with all things, development is never certain to produce a series. Finally, Martin notes that he’s pretty sure that no matter when the series takes place, if it goes forward Croyd Crenson (“The Sleeper”, a beloved character created by the late, great Roger Zelazny) will almost certainly make an appearance.

Finally, it seems that there’s some fluidity in what the potential series will draw on from the many, many novels spanning decades. Martin asks fans to share their thoughts of which characters they’d like to see on the screen in the comments section of his post.