The thrilling history of the Targaryens comes to life in this masterly work by the

author of A Song of Ice and Fire, the inspiration for HBO’s Game of Thrones.

With all the fire and fury fans have come to expect from internationally bestselling
author George R. R. Martin, this is the first volume of the definitive two-part history of
the Targaryens in Westeros.

Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen—the only family
of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria—took up residence on Dragonstone.
Fire and Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the
Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold
that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart.

What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why did it become so deadly
to visit Valyria after the Doom? What is the origin of Daenerys’s three dragon eggs?
These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a
learned maester of the Citadel and featuring more than eighty all-new black-and-white
illustrations by artist Doug Wheatley. Readers have glimpsed small parts of this
narrative in such volumes as The World of Ice & Fire, but now, for the first time, the
full tapestry of Targaryen history is revealed.

With all the scope and grandeur of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, Fire and Blood is the ultimate game of thrones, giving readers a whole
new appreciation for the dynamic, often bloody, and always fascinating history of
Westeros.

Awards and Honors

A Game of Thrones

 Ignotius Award, Best Foreign Novel of 2002

A Storm of Swords

 #1 on SF Site Readers’ Choice Best SF and Fantasy Books of 2000

A Clash of Kings

 1999 Nebula Award nomination

  Tops Locus Poll for Best Fantasy Novel of 1999

A Feast for Crows

 2006 Hugo Award nomination for Best Novel

 2006 Locus Award nomination for Best Fantasy Novel

A Dance with Dragons

 2012 World Fantasy Award nomination for Best Novel

 2012 Hugo Award nomination for Best Novel
 2012 Locus Award winner for Best Fantasy Novel

The Armageddon Rag

 Balrog Award, 1983 Fantasy Novel

Short Stories, Novellas, and Novelettes

 “A Song for Lya”: Hugo Award, 1974 Novella

 “Sandkings”: Nebula Award, 1979 Novelette
 “Sandkings”: Hugo Award, 1979 Novelette
 “The Way of Cross & Dragon”: Hugo Award, 1979 Short Story
 “Portraits of His Children”: Nebula Award, 1985 Novelette
 “Nightflyers”: Daikon (Japanese Hugo) Award, 1982: Best Short Fiction in
Translation

 Songs the Dead Men Sing: Gigamesh (Spanish) Award,

1987: Best Collection/Anthology
 “The Pear-Shaped Man”: Bram Stoker Award, 1987 Novelette
 “The Skin Trade”: World Fantasy Award, 1988 Novella
 “Blood of the Dragon”: Hugo Award, 1997 Novella

Other Awards

 Daedelus Award for 1987: Wild Cards

  Six-time winner of the Locus Award

 Finalist for the 1971 John W. Campbell

Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction
 World Fantasy Award (Howard) finalist for 1982, 1983.
 Finalist for the Writers Guild Award, best teleplay, anthology series, for 1986

All photographs (c) George R. R. Martin and/or their respective photographers.

May not be used without written permission.

FAQ

Q: I want to be a writer. Can you give me any advice?

A: The most important thing for any aspiring writer, I think, is to read! And not just the
sort of thing you’re trying to write, be that fantasy, SF, comic books, whatever. You
need to read everything. Read fiction, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers. Read
history, historical fiction, biography. Read mystery novels, fantasy, SF, horror,
mainstream, literary classics, erotica, adventure, satire. Every writer has something to
teach you, for good or ill. (And yes, you can learn from bad books as well as good ones
— what not to do)

And write. Write every day, even if it is only a page or two. The more you write, the
better you’ll get. But don’t write in my universe, or Tolkien’s, or the Marvel universe,
or the Star Trek universe, or any other borrowed background. Every writer needs to
learn to create his own characters, worlds, and settings. Using someone else’s world is
the lazy way out. If you don’t exercise those “literary muscles,” you’ll never develop
them.

Given the realities of today’s market in science fiction and fantasy, I would also suggest
that any aspiring writer begin with short stories. These days, I meet far too many young
writers who try to start off with a novel right off, or a trilogy, or even a nine-book
series. That’s like starting in at rock climbing by tackling Mt. Everest. Short stories help
you learn your craft. They are a good place for you to make the mistakes that every
beginning writer is going to make. And they are still the best way for a young writer to
break in, since the magazines are always hungry for short SF and fantasy stories. Once
you’ve been selling short stories for five years or so, you’ll have built up a name for
yourself, and editors will start asking you about that first novel.

Whatever you do, though… good luck. You’ll need it.

Q: Your novels are broken up into several parts in my country, and published in
multiple volumes. Why do you do that?

A: I don’t. My publishers do. In France, in Italy, in Germany, in the Czech Republic, in

Korea, in China, in Japan, and in several other countries, the novels have been
published as two (or in some cases, three or four) books. My understanding is that this
is largely a matter of economics. These are long novels even in English, and in many
cases the process of translation can actually make a book longer. And each publisher
presumably knows his own market, and what the readers will and will not accept in
terms of book length and book price. Even some of the publishers who would prefer to
issue each novel in a single volume — my British, Dutch, and Hebrew publishers, for
instance — found themselves unable to do so in the case of A STORM OF SWORDS,
where the sheer size of the book would have made it prohibitively expensive to produce,
for their markets. I know it must be annoying to have the story broken up into two or
three or four parts, but in some countries the choice is either that, or no edition at all. At
least I am in good company. Tolkien’s LORD OF THE RINGS was written as a single
long novel, too. It was his publisher who decided to issue it as a trilogy, purely for
commercial reasons.

Q: Why don’t you come to [fill in name of city] and do a signing and a reading at my
local bookstore?

A: I’d love to, but it isn’t up to me.

I expect that when A FEAST FOR CROWS is published, I will be doing a book tour to
promote it, just as I’ve done for the first three volumes. I usually visit a dozen different
cities or thereabouts, in as many days. In each city, I do one “sit down” signing where I
meet the readers and personally inscribe their books [sometimes accompanied by a talk
or a reading, depending on the wishes of the store], and a number of “drive by”
signings, where I just rush in, shake the hands of the manager and sales staff, sign all
their stock, and rush out again. The next day I do it all over again in another city.

I’d be willing to do a few more cities, if there was sufficient demand… but not too
many more, thank you. These tours can be exhausting, and a fifty-city tour of the sort
that Stephen King and John Grisham have been known to do would not only take two
months out of my life [and writing time], but might also kill me.

In any case, it is my publisher [in the U.S., Bantam Books] who decides whether or not
to send me on a signing tour, how many cities I’ll visit, and which ones it will be.
Bantam also decides where I’ll do my “sit down” talk and signing.

So if you want me to appear at your favorite local bookshop, the first step is to have the
bookshop put in a formal written request for me with Chris Artis at Bantam’s
promotions department. It also helps if the store in question orders a lot of the books,
and knows how to publicize author signings and get a good turnout. Some stores do,
some don’t, some can’t be bothered. When I toured for A GAME OF THRONES back
in 1996, one store (in Lexington, Kentucky) had four hundred people there to see me,
while another (in St. Louis) had four. Guess which one I have been back to, for all my
subsequent tours?

Pretty much the same thing is true for my appearances overseas, though of course the
publisher is different. Sometimes it is a convention that flies me across the ocean, but if
there are promotional appearances as well, signings and readings and the like, those
have usually been set up by my publisher.

Q: How do you research your novels?

A: The Internet is a wonderful tool, and I am using it more and more as time goes by,
but I still do most of my research the old-fashioned way, with books.

I use a “total immersion” method. Since I do not know going what particular nuggets I
may need during the course of writing a novel, I try to learn as much as possible about
the subject in question (the medieval world, in the case of A SONG OF ICE AND
FIRE, or the antebellum river and the steamboat era in the case of FEVRE DREAM) by
reading everything I can get my hands on.

Some particular books I found useful for A GAME OF THRONES and its sequels
deserve mention. For anything military, one good place to start is with the Osprey series
of illustrated reference books. They are primarily intended for gamers and miniaturists,
but they give an excellent overview of the periods and campaigns they cover… and
they’re inexpensive as well, generally running only $12 to $14 a volume.

Some other good stuff can be found in:

THE MEDIEVAL SOLDIER Gerry Embleton & John Howe

A DISTANT MIRROR Barbara Tuchman

MEDIEVAL SWORDMANSHIP John Clements

THE MEDIEVAL WARFARE SOURCE BOOK David Nicolle

LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL CASTLE and LIFE IN A MEDIEVAL CITY, both by Joseph

and Frances Gies

THE DICTIONARY OF HERALDRY by Joseph Foster

TOURNAMENTS by Richard Barber & Juliet Barker

GREAT CITIES OF THE ANCIENT WORLD by L. Sprague de Camp

THE CHRONICLES OF ENGLAND, FRANCE, SPAIN, AND OTHER PLACES

ADJOINING by Sir Jean Froissart

Those are just the tip of the iceberg. There are also specialized books that focus on
things like Fools and Jesters, Medieval Feasts, the Knights Templar, and the history of
the Hundred Years War or the Wars of the Roses.

A writer cannot do too much research… though sometimes it is a mistake to try and
cram too much of what you learned into your novel. Research gives you a foundation to
build on, but in the end it’s only the story that matters.

Q: Why don’t you update your website more often? Some of the news is months old.

A: I try to update as often as I can. There are two problems. The first is time. I have a
great webmaster who does all my HTML and web design for me, but I still need to
supply her with the content. So if I want to add a news item, I have to put aside the book
and anything else I’m working on, and do that instead. With the book running so late, I
have less for updates.

The other problem is simpler. Sometimes there’s just nothing new to add.

Q: How do I know if I have a first edition of A GAME OF THRONES? Which was

the first edition, anyway? What is it worth?

A: There have been five hardcover editions of A GAME OF THRONES published in

English to date.

The Bantam 1996 edition was the true first, as I see things. It had a silver foil cover with
an embossed throne but no other illustration. That one has become quite valuable, and
seems to sell for $200 to $600 (depending on condition), the last time I checked.

The HarperCollins/ Voyager 1996 edition was the British first. Its official publication
date was earlier than that of the Bantam edition, but Bantam went to print several
months early to hand out copies at the ABA, so I consider theirs the true first. However,
the British edition had a much smaller print run. As a consequence, it is much rarer, and
even more valuable. I’ve seen it selling for anywhere from $800 to $1500 on the
internet.

Then came the SF Book Club edition. A smaller size hardcover, it used the Bantam
cover, but was a dull grey instead of bright silver. You see this one listed on ebay
frequently. Some sellers are honest enough to list it as the SFBC edition. Others just call
it the “hardcover,” trying to pass it off as the first. You can join the SFBC and get the
book for around $12 even now, so it’s foolish to pay $50 or more for the same thing on
ebay.

The Meisha Merlin limited edition was slipcased, signed, and numbered, and featured
artwork by Jeffrey Jones and Charles Keegan. That came out in 2001. It was limited to
52 lettered copies and 448 numbered. The lettered are all sold out, but numbered copies
remain available from Meisha Merlin at $250. It is easily the most beautiful edition of
the novel, a real treat for a collector who loves fine books.

______________________________________________________________________
___

*Warning: We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts or screenplays Please do not send

any unsolicited material, they will not be read or sent back they will be immediately
shredded.

© 2019 George R.R. Martin. All rights reserved.