George Raymond Martin (photo ©Henry Söderlund), this is his birth name, was born on September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, USA. Years later, he added the name Richard after choosing it as his confirmation name.
Ever since he was a child, George R. R. Martin showed his desire to write stories, and in those years, he read a lot of science fiction, fantasy, and horror from previous years, becoming a fan of Marvel comics. Through the readers’ letters published in the comics, he came into contact with the fandom and various fanzines, where he published a number of stories.
George R. R. Martin earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University in 1970 and a master’s degree in 1971. He obtained the status of conscientious objector when he was drafted to go to Vietnam, instead he worked for the VISTA service, which aims to alleviate poverty.
In 1971, there was also the first publication of a story by George R. R. Martin in a professional magazine: “The Hero”, in “Galaxy”. In the early years of his career, however, he didn’t earn enough to be a full-time writer even after the first awards, such as the Hugo Award for his 1974 novella “A Song for Lya”. As a result, in the 1970,s he worked first as a director of chess tournaments and later as a journalism teacher at Clarke College.
The first saga by George R. R. Martin was that of Windhaven, formed by three science fiction stories written since 1975 together with Lisa Tuttle that were later collected in a single volume. The first novel published, on his own, was “Dying of the Light” (1977), in the science fiction genre.
In 1975, George R. R. Martin got married to Gale Burnick, but the marriage ended in 1979. In that same year, he decided to devote himself full-time to being a writer, also thanks to another success with the Hugo Award for his short story “The Way of Cross and Dragon” and the Hugo and Nebula Awards for the novelette “Sandkings” both of 1979.
In the 1980s, George R. R. Martin wrote works of various genres and started curing the series “Wild Cards”, a shared science fiction universe to which various authors have contributed over time. Believing that his literary success wasn’t enough, he moved to Hollywood, where he started working as a screenwriter for various TV shows such as the 1980s version of “The Twilight Zone” and “Beauty and the Beast”, of which he also became a producer.
After years spent working mainly on television, also with various projects that were not successful, George R. R. Martin got tired, also due to the limits imposed by budget and the rigid length of television episodes. In the early 1990s, he started writing a fantasy saga that was originally a trilogy but was later expanded to better develop the story: in 1996, he published “A Game of Thrones”, the first novel of the saga that enormously increased the author’s fame.
In subsequent years, A Song of Ice and Fire became the focus of George R. R. Martin’s work, even though they were written more and more slowly. In 2011, a TV show adapted from this saga began, which recently surpassed the novels.
Waiting for George R. R. Martin to complete his saga’s novels, among the projects being produced there’s the science fiction series “Nightflyers”, inspired by his 1980 novella “Nightflyers”.
