George R. R. Martin

George Raymond Richard Martin is an American novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and television producer. Born September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, he is best known for his epic fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire", the basis for HBO's "Game of Thrones" and its prequel "House of the Dragon". Martin earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1970 and a master's degree in 1971. He worked as a chess tournament director and journalism instructor before turning to writing full time. His early career focused on science fiction and horror short stories, several of which won major awards. "A Song for Lya" (1974), "Sandkings" (1979), and "The Way of Cross and Dragon" (1979) each earned Hugo or Nebula awards, and "Sandkings" remains one of the most-anthologized stories in modern science fiction. His novels from this period include "Dying of the Light" (1977), the vampire novel "Fevre Dream" (1982), the rock-and-roll horror story "The Armageddon Rag" (1983), and the linked short-story collection "Tuf Voyaging" (1986), which follows an interstellar ecological engineer. From 1986 through the early 1990s, Martin worked in Hollywood as a writer and producer on "The Twilight Zone" revival and "Beauty and the Beast". During this period he also edited the long-running "Wild Cards" shared-universe anthology series, which he continues to oversee. The first volume of "A Song of Ice and Fire", titled "A Game of Thrones", was published in 1996. The series continued with "A Clash of Kings" (1998), "A Storm of Swords" (2000), "A Feast for Crows" (2005), and "A Dance with Dragons" (2011). HBO's television adaptation ran from 2011 to 2019. Martin co-wrote "Fire & Blood" (2018), a fictional history of House Targaryen, which became the source material for "House of the Dragon". Martin lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he owns the Jean Cocteau Cinema and Beastly Books.