Background

George Martin was born on September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey. His father was Raymond Collins Martin, a longshoreman, and his mother was Margaret Brady Martin. He has two sisters, Darleen Martin Lapinski and Janet Martin Patten.

Education

Martin attended Mary Jane Donohoe School and Marist High School. He began writing very young, selling monster stories to other neighborhood children for pennies, dramatic readings included. Later he became a comic book fan and collector in high school and began to write fiction for comic fanzines (amateur fan magazines). Martin’s first professional sale was made in 1970 at age 21: "The Hero," sold to Galaxy, published in February 1971 issue. Other sales followed.

In 1970 Martin received a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, graduating summa cum laude. He went on to complete a Master of Science in Journalism in 1971, also from Northwestern.

Career

As a conscientious objector, Martin did alternative service 1972-1974 with VISTA, attached to Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation. He also directed chess tournaments for the Continental Chess Association from 1973-1976 and was a Journalism instructor at Clarke College, Dubuque, Iowa, from 1976-1978. He wrote part-time throughout the 1970s while working as a VISTA Volunteer, chess director, and teacher.

Martin sold his first short story, "The Hero," to the science-fiction magazine Galaxy, which published the work in 1971. Continuing to write short stories, he released a collection of his tales as A Song for Lya and Others in 1976. His debut novel, Dying of the Light, came out the following year. Martin also served as an editor on numerous book projects, including New Voices in Science Fiction (1977) and the Wild Cards series.

Martin became a full-time writer in 1979. He was a writer-in-residence at Clarke College from 1978-1979.

While he became well regarded in the fantasy and science fiction worlds, Martin had yet to achieve huge commercial success by the 1980s. He did, however, attract some attention from Hollywood. He worked as a story editor for a remake of the old favorite Twilight Zone in 1986 and then became involved with the series Beauty and the Beast, which began airing the following year.

Writing for television posed certain challenges for Martin. "Whenever I would turn in a script, the producers would always say to me: George, this is wonderful, but it would cost five times our budget to produce it," he said in a National Public Radio interview. Weary of the limitations of television, Martin embarked on a new writing project in the early 1990s - a fantasy series inspired by medieval England's Wars of the Roses.

The first installment of A Song of Ice and Fire may not have been an overnight success, but the strong word of mouth boosted sales as the series progressed. By the fourth volume, 2005's A Feast for Crows, Martin found his work at the top of the best-sellers list.

The books were introduced to an even larger audience with the HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones, which debuted in 2011 and garnered numerous awards en route to becoming one of the biggest and most influential television shows in history. Also in 2011, Martin published the fifth title in the series, A Dance with Dragons. Eager fans from around the world snapped up the new book, creating yet another best-selling novel.

Although Game of Thrones wrapped its celebrated run on HBO in 2019, Martin was far from finished with his fantasy world, with the installments The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring yet to be published.

Achievements

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  Martin, who primarily writes in the fantasy, horror, and science fiction genres, has been called "the American Tolkien" by Time journalist Lev Grossman and was included in the magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world once. He became a best-selling author in 2005 with the fourth title of the series, A Feast for Crows, paving the way for a widely celebrated TV adaptation that premiered as Game of Thrones in 2011.
  
  The series A Song of Ice and Fire is undoubtedly the best work of George R. R. Martin so far. The books have sold more than 70 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 47 languages, with the last two reaching the top of 'The New York Times' Best Seller lists.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Fire & Blood: 300 Years Before A Game of Thrones

    (With all the scope and grandeur of Gibbon’s The History o...)

    2018
  • A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

    (Taking place nearly a century before the events of A Game...)

    2015
  • A Dance with Dragons

    (In the aftermath of a colossal battle, the future of the ...)

    2011
  • Fevre Dream

    (Set in 1857 along the muddy Mississippi, Fevre Dream intr...)

    2011
  • Rogues

    (A thrilling collection of twenty-one original stories by ...)

    2014
  • A Feast for Crows

    (Few books have captivated the imagination and won the dev...)

    2005
  • The Ice Dragon

    (In the world of A Song of Ice and Fire the ice dragon was...)

    2014
  • A Clash of Kings

    (For when rulers clash, all of the lands feels the tremors...)

    1999
  • The Hedge Knight

    (Set one hundred years before the events in George R.R. Ma...)

    2006
  • A Storm of Swords

    (Here is the third volume in George R. R. Martin’s magnifi...)

    2002
  • A Game of Thrones

    (Winter is coming. Such is the stern motto of House Stark,...)

    1996
  • Wild Cards IX: Jokertown Shuffle

    (George R. R. Martin's Wild Cards classic adventure, in tr...)

    2019

Religion

When Martin was asked about his religious views, he replied: "I suppose I'm a lapsed Catholic. You would consider me an atheist or agnostic. I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn't the end and there's something more, but I can't convince the rational part of me that makes any sense whatsoever."

Politics

While Martin was eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War, he was against America's involvement in Vietnam, later terming it a "terrible mistake," and avoided military service by obtaining conscientious objector status. Instead, he did alternative service with VISTA, attached to Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation, between 1972 and 1974.

Views

While often compared to J. R. R. Tolkien, Martin writes a grittier, earthier type of fantasy fiction than the man who created The Lord of the Rings. Martin's Westeros is mainly populated by humans who live morally complex lives and follow their own agendas. And his plots are masterfully handled, much like the game of chess he so enjoys. As one critic wrote, "Martin is a literary dervish, enthralled by complicated characters and vivid language, and bursting with the wild vision of the very best tale tellers."

As an author, Martin has also shown no mercy to his characters, killing off main characters and other favorites unexpectedly. Martin feels that he has "a certain moral obligation" to reflect the reality of war in his fantasy tales: "People die in wars. People get maimed in wars, and many of them are good, likable people who you would like to not see die," he once explained.

Quotations: "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one."

"Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him."

"Love is poison. A sweet poison, yes, but it will kill you all the same."

"Laughter is poison to fear."

"Death is so terribly final, while life is full of possibilities."

"Sleep is good, he said. And books are better."

"It is one thing to be clever and another to be wise."

"A ruler who hides behind paid executioners soon forgets what death is."

"Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night."

"Archmaester Rigney once wrote that history is a wheel, for the nature of man is fundamentally unchanging. What has happened before will perforce happen again."

Membership

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  (director of Central region 1977-1779, vice president 1996-1997)

  Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America , United States

  1977 - present

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  Writers Guild of America West , United States

Personality

George R. R. Martin is a supporter of the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico.

Interests

• chess

• Politicians

  Abraham Lincoln

• Writers

  Roger Zelazny, J. R. R. Tolkien

• Sport & Clubs

  The New York Jets, the New York Giants, the New York Mets, American football, baseball

• Music & Bands

  Grateful Dead

Connections

In 1975 George R. R. Martin married Gale Burnick. They divorced in 1979, with no children. Now Martin lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his second wife, Parris McBride.

Father:

Raymond Martin

Mother:

Margaret Martin

Spouse:

Parris McBride

Sister:

Darleen Martin

Sister:

Janet Martin

ex-spouse:

Gale Burnick

Friend:

Roger Zelazny

Friend:

Lisa Tuttle

Friend:

John Hodgman

References

• George R. R. Martin - Twitter
• George R. R. Martin - Official website