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in GRRM: A RRetrospective (2002, later reprinted as Dreamsongs in 2006) but is expanded to both include GRRM's unpublished work and also the work that has followed since.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
- Wild Cards (1987)
- Aces High (1987)
- Jokers Wild (1987)
- Aces Abroad (1988)
- Down and Dirty (1988)
- Ace in the Hole (1990)
- Dead Man's Hand (1990)
- One-Eyed Jacks (1991)
- Jokertown Shuffle (1991)
- Double Solitaire (1992)
- Dealer's Choice (1992)
- Turn of the Cards (1993)
- Card Sharks (1993) (Book I of a New Cycle trilogy)
- Marked Cards (1994) (Book II of a New Cycle trilogy)
- Black Trump (1995) (Book III of a New Cycle trilogy)
- Deuces Down (2002)
- Death Draws Five (2006)
- Inside Straight (2008)
- Busted Flush (2008)
- Suicide Kings (2009)
- Fort Freak (2011)
- Lowball (2014)
- High Stakes (2016)
- Mississippi Roll (2017)
- Low Chicago (2018)
- Knaves Over Queens (2018)
- Texas Hold 'Em (2018)
- 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
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 (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)
Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods, which will also get you exclusive content weeks before it goes live on my blogs. The Cities of Fantasy and History of Middle-earth series are debuting on my Patreon feed and you can read them there one month before being published on the Wertzone.
