This page is a student project by an amateur web programmer going by Alex Álvarez who is documenting the series of fantasy books called A Song of Ice and Fire created by George R. R. Martin.
"A Song of Ice and Fire" is a series of epic fantasy novels written by American author George R. R. Martin. The series is set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos and follows the power struggles among noble families as they vie for control of the Iron Throne and the Seven Kingdoms.
The series has been adapted into the hugely successful HBO television series "Game of Thrones".
George Raymond Richard Martin (born September 20, 1948), sometimes referred to as GRRM, is an American author and screenwriter of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He was selected by Time as one of the "2011 Time 100," a list of the "most influential people in the world". In 2012 he won the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement.
He was born on September 20, 1948 in Bayonne, New Jersey the son of a longshoreman, whose working class family lived not far from the Bayonne docks. As a youth, Martin became an avid reader and collector of 1960s "silver age" superhero comic books. Fantastic Four #20 (Nov 1963) features a letter to the editor he wrote while still in high school. He credits the attention he received from this letter, as well as his following interest in comics fandom and its fanzines, with his interest in becoming a writer. Martin has spoken of Marvel Comics and especially Stan Lee as having influenced him.
In 1970 Martin received a B.S. in Journalism from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, graduating summa cum laude. He went on to complete a M.S. in Journalism in 1971, also from Northwestern. Martin was married to Gale Burnick from 1975 to 1979.
Martin began to write science fiction short stories in the early 1970s, and while his start into a career as a professional writer was not easy (one of his stories was rejected by different magazines forty-two times), he was never discouraged; several years later he went on to win the first of several Hugo Awards and Nebula Awards for his short fiction. His first story nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Award was With Morning Comes Mistfall, published in 1973 by Analog magazine. The story lost both awards, but Martin did not mind too much, noting that joining "Hugo-and-Nebula Losers" Club was a big enough accomplishment for him.
In 1976 for Kansas City's MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), Martin, along with his friend and fellow writer Gardner Dozois, conceived of and organized the first Hugo Losers Party. It was a gathering spot, held the final evening of MidAmeriCon, for the losing writers (and their friends and family) to commiserate following the Hugo Awards ceremony the previous night. The large party had been planned well in advance, and perhaps fittingly, being the party's undisputed host, Martin had lost again in 1976; this time it was for two Hugo Awards: the novelette "...and Seven Times Never Kill Man" and the novella "The Storms of Windhaven," co-written with Lisa Tuttle. In the years and decades that have followed, the Hugo Losers Party become an annual event, evolving into one of the largest social gatherings held at the annual Worldcon, while adopting a more politically correct title of Post-Hugo Nominees Reception along the way.