The Compleat George R.R. Martin Bibliography

As part of a discussion on the works of George R.R. Martin, and specifically what works of his are not currently readily available in print, I ended up compiling this list of everything that GRRM has ever published (and almost everything that he's publicly admitted writing), which I'm now releasing here because, why the hell not?

This list is inspired by Leslie Kay Swigart's "George R.R. Martin RRetrospective Fiction Checklist", originally published in GRRM: A RRetrospective (2002, later reprinted as Dreamsongs in 2006) but is expanded to both include GRRM's unpublished work and also the work that has followed since.

Obviously, if I've missed anything, let me know and I'll update the list.

Novels

Dying of the Light (1977)
Martin's first novel, set in the Thousand Worlds milieu of much of his short fiction. Dying of the Light was originally called After the Festival and was serialised under that title in the April through July 1977 issues of Analog. The book was retitled with a Dylan Thomas quote. It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1978, but did not win. The book mentions an alien race called the githyanki, a name "borrowed" by Charles Stross for a Dungeons and Dragons race, an association Martin did not learn of until twenty years later.

Windhaven (1981, with Lisa Tuttle)
Martin and Lisa Tuttle met in 1973 and became fast friends. They decided to collaborate in 1975, resulting in the novella The Storms of Windhaven, which won the Locus Award for Best Novella in 1976 and was also nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula. They followed this up with a sequel, One-Wing, in 1980, which was also nominated for the Hugo. At this point a deal was signed for a "fix-up novel" made up of the two stories and a specially-written third part, The Fall, which followed in 1981, along with the book version itself.

Fevre Dream (1982)
This was George R.R. Martin's first big success, a novel about vampires on the Mississippi. This was his first horror novel and was his most commercially successful novel until the publication of A Game of Thrones fourteen years later. The book was nominated for the Locus and World Fantasy Awards but not the then-famously-fantasy-avoiding Hugos.

The Armageddon Rag (1983)
This was the book that nearly destroyed Martin's writing career, bombing heavily on release (despite a World Fantasy Award nomination) and making publishers wary of touching any of Martin's other work. The most notable casualty was his then-in-progress novel, Black and White and Red All Over, which his agent couldn't sell and Martin left unfinished (the completed portion eventually appeared in the Quartet collection in 2001). However, publishing's loss was Hollywood's gain; Phil DeGuere optioned the novel for film and, although it was not made, it did bring DeGuere and Martin into contact and DeGuere remembered Martin which it came time to resurrect The Twilight Zone in 1985.

Hunter's Run (2007, with Gardener Dozois and Daniel Abraham)
Hunter's Run began life as Shadow Twin, a novella co-written between Martin and his long-time friend Gardener Dozois. Dozois and Martin worked on the novella in 1982 but eventually couldn't come up with an ending, sticking it in a drawer. Twenty years later Martin came up with the idea of giving the story to Daniel Abraham to finish. Abraham did so, very successfully, and it was published in 2004. Abraham then revised the entire story as the novel-length Hunter's Run, published in 2007.


A Song of Ice and Fire

A Game of Thrones (1996)
A Clash of Kings (1998)
A Storm of Swords (2000)
A Feast for Crows (2005)
A Dance with Dragons (2011)
The Winds of Winter (forthcoming)
A Dream of Spring (forthcoming)

You may have heard of this one.


A Song of Ice and Fire Universe

The Lands of Ice and Fire (2012, with Jonathan Roberts)
Also known as "A Big Box of Maps", with Martin drawing all of the original maps himself as line drawings and these being transformed into beautiful full-colour pieces by British cartographer-general Jonathan Roberts.

The World of Ice and Fire (2014, with Elio M. Garcia & Linda Antonsson)
The big companion book for A Song of Ice and Fire, originally called The World of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire before the publishers pointed out that this could not be fitted onto any book spine in the known universe. Martin wrote a bit too much material for this book (as in about 200% more words than originally budgeted), which he then mined to produce the novellas The Princess and the Queen, The Rogue Prince, Sons of the Dragon and...

Fire and Blood, Volume I (2018)
...this book, which acts as a history of the first half of the Targaryen regime. Already complete, it is planned for release in November 2018.

Fire and Blood, Volume II (forthcoming)
This second volume, covering the rest of the Targaryen regime, is completely unwritten at the moment and, according to Martin, will not be published until after A Song of Ice and Fire is complete and possibly more Dunk & Egg novellas are published, since it'll be very hard to produce a detailed history of the reign of Aegon V with spoiling those stories.


Unpublished Novels

Black and White and Red All Over (started 1983)
This was Martin's in-progress work when The Armageddon Rag bombed. Martin's agent had been shopping the book around to publishers, but the Rag's failure saw them turn it down with a vengeance. Martin was disheartened, abandoned the book and spent some consolatory time playing roleplaying games (which wasn't a total waste, leading as it did to Wild Cards). The completed portion of the novel was published in the Quartet collection in 2001.

Avalon (started 1991)
Martin was 100-odd pages into writing Avalon, a big SF epic set on one of the most notable planets in his Thousand Worlds setting, when he was distracted by an idea he'd had about a deserter being beheaded in the snow, watched by a young boy and his family. That led to a tangent which, over a quarter of century later, remains unfinished. It's unclear if Martin seriously plans to finish Avalon once A Song of Ice and Fire is completed, but it's also notable that Martin has never published the material he had completed for the book (unlike his other unfinished novel, Black and White and Red All Over), suggesting he may have some plans for it in the future.

Short Stories, Novellas and Novelettes 

For the first two decades of his career, Martin was known predominantly as a writer of short stories, novellas and novelettes (the distinctions between which are really not worth worrying about now) and this is where he won his first awards. This list of stories is, as far as I can tell, exhaustive. Stories which are known to take place in the Thousand Worlds setting are noted with "TW", those published in the massive Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective collection with "DS".

Fanzine and Comic Work
The very first professionally-published work of Martin's was a letter to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, published in Fantastic Four #20 (August 1963). He followed it up with a few more letters over the years, began corresponding with other fans and even attended the very first Comic-Con in New York in 1964. This led to Martin's first published writing, produced for a stream of comic fanzines on a very casual basis with very small distributions. It'd be fascinating to see if any of these stories had survived anywhere. Later on, starting with with 'Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark', the stories have indeed survived. Three of these stories, written in the 1960s, did not appear in print until GRRM: A RRetrospective (aka Dreamsongs) got its first printing in 2003.

• 'Garizan, the Mechanical Warrior' (written 1964, lost)
• 'Meet the Executioner' (1965, comic, published in Ymir #2)
• 'The Isle of Death' (1965, comic, Ymir #5)
• 'The Strange Story of the White Raider' (1965, comic, published in Batwing)
• 'Powerman vs. The Blue Barrier!' (1965, text, published in Star-Studded Comics #7)
• 'Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark' (1965, text, published in Star-Studded Comics #10 DS)
• 'The Sword and the Spider' (1965, comic, published in Dr. Weird)
• 'Only Kids Are Afraid of the Dark' (1966, comic version of the text story, published in Dr. Weird)
• 'The Coach and the Computer' (1966)
• 'The Fortress' (1968, revised for professional sale as 'Under Siege' in 1985, DS)
• 'The Added Safety Factor' (1968)
• 'The Hero' (1968, revised for professional sale in 1971, TW)
• 'And Death His Legacy' (1968, DS)
• 'Protector' (1968, revised for professional sale as 'Warship' in 1979)

Professional Sales
Martin made his first professional sale in 1971 and basically never looked back, churning out dozens of stories through the 1970s and 1980s, winning several awards. In the mid-1980s his short fiction career slowed as he switched to working in Hollywood, editing Wild Cards and then commencing work on A Song of Ice and Fire; startlingly, for a prolific writer of the form, Martin has only published four short stories unrelated to A Song of Ice and Fire since 1991.

• 'The Hero' (1971, TW, DS)
• 'The Exit to Santa Breta' (1972, DS)
• 'The Second Kind of Loneliness' (1972, DS)
• 'Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels' (1973)
• 'Night Shift' (1973)
• 'Override' (1973)
• 'A Peripheral Affair' (1973)
• 'Slide Show' (1973)
• 'With Morning Comes Mistfall' (1973, DS)
• 'F.T.A.' (1974)
• 'Run to Starlight' (1974)
• 'A Song for Lya' (1974, Hugo Award winner, TW, DS)
• 'And Seven Times Never Kill Man' (1975, TW, DS)
• 'The Last Super Bowl Game' (1975)
• 'Night of the Vampyres' (1975)
• 'The Runners' (1975, TW)
• 'The Storms of Windhaven' (1975, with Lisa Tuttle, revised for Windhaven)
• 'A Beast for Norn' (1976, revised for Tuf Voyaging, TW, DS)
• 'The Computer Cried Charge!' (1976)
• 'Fast-Friend' (1976)
• '...For a Single Yesterday' (1976)
• 'In the House of the Worm' (1976, TW)
• 'The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr' (1976, DS)
• 'Meathouse Man' (1976, DS)
• 'Men of Greywater Station' (1976, TW)
• 'Nobody Leaves New Pittsburgh' (1976)
• 'Nor the Many-Colored Fires of a Star Ring' (1976)
• 'Patrick Henry, Jupiter, and the Little Red Brick Spaceship' (1976)
• 'Starlady' (1976, TW)
• 'This Tower of Ashes' (1976, TW, DS)
• 'After the Festival' (1977, serialised version of ''Dying of the Light'', TW)
• 'Bitterblooms' (1977, TW, DS)
• 'The Stone City' (1977, TW, DS)
• 'Weekend in a War Zone' (1977)
• 'Call Him Moses' (1978)
• 'Sandkings' (1979, Hugo and Nebula Award winner, TW, DS)
• 'Warship' (1979, TW)
• 'The Way of Cross and Dragon' (1979, Hugo Award winner, TW, DS)
• 'The Ice Dragon' (1980, revised as a children's book in 2006, DS)
• 'Nightflyers' (1980, revised for ''Nightflyers'', TW, DS)
• 'One-Wing' (1980, with Lisa Tuttle, revised for Windhaven)
• 'The Fall' (1981, with Lisa Tuttle, written for Windhaven)
• 'Guardians' (1981, revised for ''Tuf Voyaging'', TW, DS)
• 'The Needle Men' (1981)
• 'Remembering Melody' (1981, DS)
• 'Closing Time' (1982)
• 'In the Lost Lands' (1982, DS)
• 'Unsound Variations' (1982, DS)
• 'The Monkey Treatment' (1983, DS)
• 'Loaves and Fishes' (1985, written for Tuf Voyaging, TW)
• 'Manna from Heaven' (1985, written for Tuf Voyaging, TW)
• 'The Plague Star' (1985, written for Tuf Voyaging, TW)
• 'Portraits of His Children' (1985, Nebula Award winner, DS)
• 'Second Helpings' (1985, written for Tuf Voyaging, TW)
• 'Under Siege' (1985, revised version of 'The Fortress', DS)
• 'The Glass Flower'' (1986, TW, DS)
• 'The Pear-Shaped Man'' (1987, DS)
• 'The Skin Trade' (1988, World Fantasy Award winner, DS)
• 'Black and White and Red All Over' (1983, published 2001, unfinished novel fragment)
• 'Shadow Twin' (1982, revised in 2004 with Gardner Dozois and Daniel Abraham, revised again in 2007 for Hunter's Run)
• 'A Night at the Tarn House' (2009, in Songs of the Dying Earth)

Wild Cards

George R.R. Martin created the Wild Cards superhero universe for a roleplaying game in the early 1980s, fleshing it out (aided by many writers, but most notably John Jos. Miller, Walter Jon Williams and Martin's co-editor, Melinda Snodgrass) for a shared world anthology series that currently clocks in at 27 volumes (and counting). Martin edited the entire series, but specifically wrote the following stories:

• 'Interlude One' through 'Interlude Five' (1987, in Wild Cards)
• 'Shell Games' (1987, in Wild Cards, DS)
• 'Jube: One'' through 'Jube: Seven' (1987, in Wild Cards: Aces High)
• 'Winter's Chill' (1987, in Wild Cards: Aces High)
• 'Hiram Worchester' (1988, in Wild Cards: Jokers Wild)
• 'From the Journal of Xavier Desmond' (1988, in Wild Cards: Aces Abroad, DS)
• 'All the King's Horses' (1988, in Wild Cards: Down and Dirty)
• 'The Great and Powerful Turtle' (1990, comic strip in Wild Cards #3 for Epic Comics)
• 'Jay Ackroyd's Story' (1990, in Wild Cards: Dead Man's Hand)
• 'The Great and Powerful Turtle' (1992, in Wild Cards: Dealer's Choice)
• 'Jay Ackrod's Story' (1995, in Wild Cards: Black Trump)
• 'Crusader' (2008, in Wild Cards: Inside Straight)

Novella-length excerpts from A Song of Ice and Fire

• 'Blood of the Dragon' (1996, Hugo Award winner)
• 'Path of the Dragon' (2000)
• 'Arms of the Kraken' (2002)

The Tales of Dunk & Egg (prequels to A Song of Ice and Fire)

• 'The Hedge Knight' (1998, collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, DS)
• 'The Sworn Sword' (2003, collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms)
• 'The Mystery Knight' (2010, collected in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms)
• 'The She-Wolves' (forthcoming, working title)
• 'The Village Hero'' (forthcoming, working title)

Other Song of Ice and Fire-related stories

• 'The Princess and the Queen' (2013)
• 'The Rogue Prince' (2014)
• 'The Sons of the Dragon' (2017)

Collections

• A Song for Lya (1976)
• Songs of Stars and Shadows (1977)
• Sandkings (1981)
• Songs the Dead Men Sing (1983)
• Nightflyers (1985)
• Tuf Voyaging (1987, collection of linked stories)
• Portraits of His Children (1987)
• Quartet (2001)
• GRRM: A RRetrospective (2003; reissued 2006 as Dreamsongs)

Editor

Science Fiction Anthologies

• New Voices in Science Fiction (1977)
• New Voices II (1979)
• New Voices III (1980)
• New Voices IV (1981)
• The Science Fiction Weight-Loss Book (1983, with Isaac Asimov & Martin Greenberg)
• The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5 (1984)
• Night Visions 3 (1986)

Wild Cards

1. Wild Cards (1987)
2. Aces High (1987)
3. Jokers Wild (1987)
4. Aces Abroad (1988)
5. Down and Dirty (1988)
6. Ace in the Hole (1990)
7. Dead Man's Hand (1990)
8. One-Eyed Jacks (1991)
9. Jokertown Shuffle (1991)
10. Double Solitaire (1992)
11. Dealer's Choice (1992)
12. Turn of the Cards (1993)
13. Card Sharks (1993) (Book I of a New Cycle trilogy)
14. Marked Cards (1994) (Book II of a New Cycle trilogy)
15. Black Trump (1995) (Book III of a New Cycle trilogy)
16. Deuces Down (2002)
17. Death Draws Five (2006)
18. Inside Straight (2008)
19. Busted Flush (2008)
20. Suicide Kings (2009)
21. Fort Freak (2011)
22. Lowball (2014)
23. High Stakes (2016)
24. Mississippi Roll (2017)
25. Low Chicago (2018)
26. Knaves Over Queens (2018)
27. Texas Hold 'Em (2018)

Collaborations with Gardner Dozois

• Songs of the Dying Earth (2009)
• Warriors (2010)
• Songs of Love and Death (2010)
• Down These Strange Streets (2011)
• Old Mars (2013)
• Dangerous Women (2013)
• Rogues (2014)
• Old Venus (2015)

Film

• Nightflyers (1987) - original story
• Sharknado 3 (2015) - cameo appearance as himself

Television

The New Twilight Zone

• The Last Defender of Camelot (1986) - writer (teleplay)
• The Once and Future King (1986) - writer (teleplay), story editor
• A Saucer of Loneliness (1986) - story editor
• Lost and Found (1986) - writer (teleplay)
• The World Next Door (1986) - story editor
• The Toys of Caliban (1986) - writer (teleplay)
• The Road Less Travelled (1986) - writer (story and teleplay), story editor (DS)

Max Headroom

• Mister Meat (1987) - writer (unproduced)
• Xmas (1987) - writer (unproduced, eventually staged in 2017)

Beauty and the Beast

• Terrible Saviour (1987) - writer
• Masques (1987) - writer
• Shades of Grey (1988) - writer
• Promises of Someday (1988) - writer
• Fever (1988) - writer
• Ozymandias (1988) - writer
• Dead of Winter (1988) - writer
• Brothers (1989) - writer
• When the Blue Bird Sings (1989) - writer (teleplay)
• A Kingdom by the Sea (1989) - writer
• What Rough Beast (1989) - writer (story)
• Ceremony of Innocence (1989) - writer
• Snow (1989) - writer
• Beggar's Comet (1990) - writer
• Invictus (1990) - writer

Doorways

• Doorways (pilot) (1993) - writer (story and teleplay), creator (DS)

Game of Thrones

• Series - writer (story), producer
• Pilot (2010, unaired) - cameo background performer
• The Pointy End (2011) - writer
• Blackwater (2012) - writer
• The Bear and the Maiden Fair (2013) - writer
• The Lion and the Rose (2014) – writer

Z Nation

• The Collector (2015) - cameo appearance as himself

Nightflyers

• Series - writer (original story)

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Dreamsongs, Volume II by George RR Martin

Following on from my earlier review of Dreamsongs, Volume I, this entry covers the second volume of Geore R.R. Martin's collection of short fiction. Whilst Volume I covered GRRM's work from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, Volume II focuses more closely on his work as a scriptwriter and editor (on the popular Wild Cards series of superhero anthologies) and includes what for many people will be the primary draw of the collection, a novella set in the world of GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire novels.


As with Volume I (as this is one huge book broken in two for US publication), Volume II is divided into sections, namely four sections containing stories and a bibliography of GRRM's published work.

The first section focuses on one of GRRM's several signature characters, namely Haviland Tuf, the vegetarian, bald and somewhat eccentric master of the ancient seedship The Ark, who proclaims himself the last of the long-extinct Ecological Engineers. Tuf was designed to be the hero (if that's the right word) of a series of stories set in GRRM's Thousand Worlds mileu, and these stories were collected into the popular 'fix-up' novel Tuf Voyaging. Two stories are presented here. A Beast for Norn (1975, published 1976) is the earliest Tuf story and was revised for its appearance in Tuf Voyaging, so it's the original version that appears here. It's not a particularly original tale and the well-worn SF reader will see the 'moral' coming from halfway through the story, but it's still exceptionally amusing to watch unfold. Guardians (1981) is much stronger, with Tuf a more sophisticated, well-developed character by this time and the story more intriguing, as the colonists on a remote ocean world are being attacked by increasingly savage creatures and Tuf has to find out where they are coming from and how to defeat them.

Around the time that Tuf Voyaging appeared, GRRM was invited to submit scripts for The New Twilight Zone, the resurrected mid-80s version of the classic Rod Serling anthology series. After some rather hectic re-jigging of the credits (including Harlan Ellison storming off the show after one of his scripts was messed around with by the studio) GRRM landed the job of script editor and worked on several episodes of the short-lived show. The Road Less Travelled (1986) was GRRM's only original contribution (the rest being adaptions or developments of other people's ideas), a somwhat curious tale which combines GRRM's trademark melancholy and musings on missed opportunities with a more optimistic ending. This script was filmed by Wes Craven and is reputedly a superb episode, but when it aired it had been butchered with nearly a third of its original material edited out, and due to legal reasons it cannot apparently be released or seen even today. A shame as the script is very interesting indeed. Also included is GRRM's pilot script for Doorways (1991), an alternate-reality show about a girl who passes from world to world and inadvertantly drags a native of our world along for the ride. This was also filmed, but again the filmed version is difficult to find and reportedly not as strong as the original script as several elements had been radically changed. The script included is very atmospheric and disturbing, and the reader may or may note the similarities to another series which aired a few years later called Sliders (purely coincidental, no doubt).

The next section takes us to the world that made George R.R. Martin an SF&F household name long before A Song of Ice and Fire took off. In 1987 GRRM and several close friends and collaborators began work on the Wild Cards universe, which postulates the existence of superheroes following the release over New York City in 1946 of an alien virus. 90% of those affected by the virus die; 9% become 'Jokers', horribly disfigured by the illness; and 1% become 'Aces', superheroes wielding incredible abilities. The Wild Cards series of anthologies became one of the biggest 'shared world' phenomenons of the 1980s, rivalled only by the Thieves' World series, eventually reaching fifteen volumes before petering out. However, the series was resurrected seven years later and several new volumes appeared, with the eighteenth and latest, Inside Straight, due out in the next couple of months in the USA. GRRM presents two of his Wild Cards stories here: Shell Games (1987) introduces another GRRM signature character, the Great and Powerful Turtle, and the role he plays in restoring the self-respect of Dr. Tachyon, the alien genius who created the Wild Card virus in the first place. From the Journal of Xavier Desmond (1988) is the framing story from the fourth volume in the series, Aces Abroad, and is a more familiar story of melancholy and musings, but is nevertheless exceptionally well-written as a dying Joker gets to see some of the world before he passes, and finds much that is worthwhile and beautiful in the world, but also sees some of its darkness as well.

The final section is called 'The Heart in Conflict', based on Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner's statement that, "the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about." This appears to be GRRM's philosophy and lends itself to his 'furniture rule', that a story is just a story and is an SF tale or a Fantasy or a Western purely due to the 'furniture': a guy riding into a frontier town to settle a score or anothe man riding into a castle to challenge the wizard who wronged him or another person flying his spaceship in pursuit of an alien who has a grudge against him. The stories that follow seem to particularly respond to this, defying easy genre categorization or limitations: Under Siege (1984) is a 'remix' of GRRM's much earlier historical story, The Fortress (printed in Dreamsongs, Volume I), this time with added time travel and the suggestion that pinning the hopes of the world on one small group of people might not actually be a good or healthy thing to do. The Skin Trade (1988) is somewhere between a horror story and a thriller, featuring werewolves and private detectives and rich old men harbouring secrets. It won GRRM a World Fantasy Award and deservedly so. Unsound Variations (1982) focuses on GRRM's history as a chess tournament organiser and those not particularly interested in the game may find this tale of obsession a bit odd, but GRRM captures the game as a fictional device quite well and the melding of chess with quantum theory is well done. The Glass Flower (1986) marks GRRM's last visit (for now) to his Thousand Worlds and brings in Kleronomas, one of the signature legendary characters of that setting. The story is rather downbeat and to be honest I found it even depressing. There is a tremendous depth of character in the story, however.

The Hedge Knight (1998) is a prequel to A Song of Ice and Fire, taking place eighty-nine years prior to the events of A Game of Thrones. At this time the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are still unified under the rule of the Targaryen kings and seeing the realm at peace and shorn of the political machinations of court is interesting and somewhat refreshing. The protagonist is Dunk, a hedge knight who risks everything he has to ride in the great tourney at Ashford Meadow, but instead finds himself caught in the grip of history with a squire named Egg joining him for the ride. The first of a planned series of 'Dunk & Egg' stories is nothing short of a masterpiece in itself, expertly timed with terrific character-building and a depth of detail to the setting that is remarkable. If it wasn't for the A Knight's Tale movie a few years later, I imagine that Hollywood would have snapped this up by now. A sequel followed in 2003, The Sworn Sword, although it appeared too late to make it into this collection (the original version of which was published in 2003). A third Dunk & Egg tale will appear late next year (or early the next), in the Warriors anthology edited by GRRM and Gardner Dozois.

The final story is the Nebula Award-winning Portraits of His Children (1986), which is an obvious story to end on but still a fine piece of work. The story comes across as a modern take on Dickens, with an author visited by his creations and haunted by the decisions he made about their fictional lives. It doesn't take too huge an imagination to cast George in this light, enjoying a beer and a lively discussion with Tyrion or comparing notes on living in Brooklyn with the Turtle.

Dreamsongs, Volume II (*****) lives up to the promise of the first volume and is an essential read for any GRRM fan. The book will be published on 27 November in the United States in hardcover. The one-volume UK edition is out now in hardcover and trade paperback.

Dreamsongs, Volume I by George RR Martin

I have been reading George RR Martin's short story collection Dreamsongs for the last two weeks and it is a huge book, 1,185 pages long in hardcover and trade in the UK edition. The US edition has been split in two volumes, and as I have now reached the point in the UK edition where the US version is split, it made sense to review the first half by itself.

This book, originally published in 2003 by Subterrenean Press as GRRM: A RRetrospective, collects together GRRM's short fiction from the 1970s up until the late 1990s. Volume I covers the 1970s period of his work and includes some of his best-known stories, including Nightflyers, Sandkings, A Song for Lya, The Ice Dragon and The Way of Cross and Dragon.

Dreamsongs, Volume I is divided into five sections, each containing several short stories with a commentary by Martin at the start of each section. The sections are roughly chronological, but are also arranged by theme. GRRM's commentaries are biographical in nature, describing what in his life was driving him to write his stories at those times, and are fascinating reading in themselves. Regular readers of his work can pick up on elements and names that would later find their way into his novels or his epic fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire.

The first story, Only Kids are Afriad of the Dark (1965), was written for a comic book fanzine when the author was just 17 and is obviously a bit rough compared to GRRM's later work. Nevertheless, it is fun and colourful, pitting superhero Dr. Weird against the demon prince Saagael with the safety of the world at stake. The Fortress (1968) is a purely historical work and shows a tremendous improvement on the earlier story, even though it was written only three years later (and never published prior to this collection, at least not in this form). The story is about the inexplicable surrender of Sveaborg to the Russians by the Swedes in 1808 and is a compelling account of a minor footnote in military history. And Death His Legacy (1968), a political piece from the same year, is rather more obvious in what the story is about and where it goes, but is nonetheless readable.

The Hero (1968, published 1971) was GRRM's first professional sale and it's easy to see why. The first story in his 'Thousand Worlds' mileu, it is a compelling little tale of war, heroism and what it means to be a soldier. The Exit to Santa Breta (1969, published 1971) is an effective story which is a hybrid of SF and horror (a popular piece of genre-bending with GRRM). The Second Kind of Loneliness (1971) is the first undisputed classic in the book, a tale of solitude and delusion set at the fringes of the Solar System. With Morning Comes Mistfall (1971) is equally good, and can be read as a critique of the need to know, rather than just accept and wonder.



The next batch of stories represents some of GRRM's SF output of the early 1970s, mostly set in his Thousand Worlds setting. A Song for Lya (1973) is one of his best-known SF stories, which starts out as a simple mystery and turns into a fascinating commentary on religion and the human need for company and comfort. It deservedly won George his first Hugo Award. The Tower of Ashes (1974) is less accomplished and perhaps even predictable in its final twists, but nevertheless the story holds the reader's attention and like Lya and the later Meathouse Man it clearly comes from a personal well of emotion that is quite intense. And Seven Times Never Kill Man (1974, published 1975) is more impressive, pitting a technologically primitive people against invaders wielding advanced technology and singularly fails to go all Ewok on us, building to an impressively subversive ending. The Stone City (1973, published 1977) is a remarkable story, taking us out on a journey into the depths of the Galaxy in a haunting way. It is one of GRRM's underrated masterpieces. Bitterblooms (1977) is a very different work that functions on several levels and builds to an eerie if somewhat traditional ending. The Way of Cross and Dragon (1979) is a truly great story, based on a killer premise (Judas is made a saint by a breakaway religious sect in defiance of the Catholic Church) with a terrific ending and one of GRRM's best-ever lines:

The truth will set us free. But freedom is cold and empty and frightening, and lies can often be warm and beautiful.

The next batch of stories shows GRRM's talent for fantasy and shows that he was active in this genre long before A Song of Ice and Fire. The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr (1976) is a great story, featuring the girl who travels between worlds and on each world faces a different threat that stops her from travelling onwards. Some of GRRM's most striking imagery is represented in this story. The Ice Dragon (1979) is even better, featuring GRRM's first real attempt at a work set in an epic fantasy world, but told from the smallest possible point-of-view. There are many future hints of A Song of Ice and Fire in this work, and GRRM is to be commended for not retrospectively shoehorning this story into Westeros (which could be done fairly easily). In the Lost Lands (1979) is a terrific, evil fairy tale which is great fun to read with a satisfying ending.

The final batch in this first volume is based on GRRM's love of genre-bending. Ten years ago Peter F. Hamilton won great kudos for mixing SF and horror in his seminal Night's Dawn Trilogy, but GRRM was at it twenty years earlier. Meathouse Man (1974, published 1976) is a somewhat painful read for anyone who's ever felt that they didn't get relationships or how to handle them (that will be all of us at some point or another then), but for what is often described as the darkest thing GRRM ever wrote there are rays of hope shooting through the story. It is a very powerful work. Remembering Melody (1979, published 1981) is a shorter, sharper work, a piece of psychological horror that works very well. Sandkings (1979), which netted GRRM another Hugo, was probably his most well-known individual story until A Song of Ice and Fire. An SF tale, a morality play, a horror story and a psychological profile all mixed into one, it is easy to see why the story is so well-regarded, although I would argue that there are stronger stories in this collection alone. Nevertheless, it is terrific. Nightflyers (1980) is another great story, a haunted spaceship tale set in the depths of interstellar space with a crew suspicious of one another and their unseen, unknown captain. However, the ending is mildly dissatisfying and one ponders if there could have been a stronger resolution to the story. The Monkey Treatment (1981) is a much-needed dose of sunshine in an otherwise somewhat dark collection, although it is still a satisfyingly bitter and twisted thing of a tale. Nevertheless, the ending is unusually optimistic, although it will leave the reader with an insatiable desire to eat pizza. The Pear-Shaped Man (1987) won GRRM his Bram Stoker Award and is another deeply disturbing tale of psychological horror and breakdown, with a genuinely satisfying twist ending.

Dreamsongs, Volume I (*****) is an overwhelmingly impressive short story collection. With the exception of the first story, none of these tales feels old or dated, and Sandkings, Nightflyers, The Stone City, Meathouse Man, The Way of Cross and Dragon and The Ice Dragon are up there with the very best short SF fiction I have read.

Dreamsongs, Volume I is published by Bantam in the USA and is available in hardcover. Volume II will be published on 27 November.

The one-volume edition of Dreamsongs is published in Gollancz in the UK and is available in hardcover and trade paperback. The mass-market paperback version will be split in two and the first volume will be available in the spring.

The second volume features GRRM's short fiction and screenplays from the 1980s and 1990s, including his TV pilot Doorways and some of his Haviland Tuf series, along with selected stories from his contributions to the lengthy Wild Cards series and several of his other popular short fiction, including Portraits of His Children and the prequel to A Song of Ice and Fire, The Hedge Knight, which is a classic story in its own right. I will be reviewing it as soon as time allows.