GRRM's New HBO Series (Not GoT)

http://winteriscoming.net/2013/02/breaking-george-r-r-martin-signs-development-deal-with-hbo/

Sounds like good news for him and potentially for fans of his works. He's got a lot of stuff he's written that would adapt well to a network like HBO that doesn't have an issue with outlandish show concepts as long as they're good. His Dreamsongs anthology even includes the script for a pilot he pitched back in the 80s that sounded really cool and never got off the ground.

I know some people are going to pitch a fit over how this might delay him finishing writing ASoIAF, but honestly I'm happy to see him at the helm with creative control over a series with the kind of backing HBO can provide. I can't wait to see what comes of this.

I wonder if Fevre Dream would be considered too similar to True Blood.

Maybe we'll see a good science fiction series on HBO as a result? I hope so.

So he's never going to finish writing the book series is he?

I could easily see a series built around his early Haviland Tuf stories. Make it an anthology open to different writers and directors; you'll have funny episodes, you'll have dreary didactic ones, action-oriented creature feature ones, etc. Throw in some bits about Tuf also being an author with a longrunning project that's never finished but that he keeps insisting he's working on, too. It writes itself, really.

I donno. Haviland Tuf is a pretty unlikable character. And not unlikable in the way we like our characters to be unlikable. Unlikable like if your average angry Portlandia vegan was less a character being played for yucks on a TV and more someone you had to interact with in daily life. A preachy dickhead with a god machine.

I mostly want it to happen just to know that auditions would consist primarily of Tuf-hopefuls blinking.

He could also partner up with and/or option one of his friends' series, like The Expanse series.

WRITE THE BOOK.

This is a development deal, keep in mind. Nothing visible will happen for, like, two seasons. Martin should easily be able to finish the books before any actual work falls on him. It's not like he's running rooms - at least, not for a very long time.

Keep him the hell away from The Expanse, those guys are flying along and getting better with each story. I don't want them Martined up.

I'm hoping for Wildcards.

Kinda hard for them not to be, considering one of them is his assistant.

Objection! Two years is demonstrably not enough time for Martin to easily finish the books.

You realize that the latest book was delayed by like five years, right? I really doubt that he's going to 'be able to finish the books before any actual work falls on him'.

Well, let me put it this way. Bobby Hollywood (aka Robert Kirkman) writes three monthly comics, plots at least one more, runs an imprint under Image, is in the room for Walking Dead, and has a development deal with AMC for the book I mentioned that he's plotting/concepting but not necessarily putting words in (Thief of Thieves). And he wrote...is it two prose novels now, or just the one? For any reasonable writer, it should be perfectly feasible to write the books and have this going on in the background. This is actually the kind of thing that you wouldn't even hear about if Game of Thrones hadn't brought a sort of huge online body to the table to begin with. Any delays the rest of the series sees will not be related to this.

Here is the entire flaw in your logic. Some writers can crank out a ton of crap, and some can't. GRRM falls into the latter.

I'd love to see a series of self-contained horror short stories, although I imagine that's unlikely to happen. He could base some on his existing stories and make new ones.

Robert Kirkman is a terrible writer. I would rather the series remain unfinished than read a Kirkman-level Ice and Fire novel.

I think you're really missing the point on all of this, which is that Martin lost momentum and looked in danger of never finishing the series before he ever started working in TV. You're right, the delays are not going to be entirely because of this, but it sure as shit isn't a solution.

This. GRRM's short horror is my favorite work of his next to ASoIAF itself, and running something like The Outer Limits, for which GRRM wrote a few episodes, with him at the helm would be very exciting.

What would you recommend reading if I have never read this side of his work? Is there a good collection to start with?

A short horror collection is....unlikely. Limited series may be coming back (two on Fox - one that I don't remember much about and one from Shyamalan), but anthologies have been dead for a very, very, very long time. If Masters of Horror couldn't make it, I'm not sure why Martin would be any different.

That said, this thing doesn't have to be an adaptation. It could be an original property. In some ways, it might be best if it were an original property. I have to think it can't be particularly satisfying in a creative respect to write scripts for a story you already told. That said, something in the horror family wouldn't be out of the question. True Blood is getting very long in the tooth and HBO needs something to replace it when they finally pull the plug. It wouldn't hurt to have something a little bit more tasteful to put on in front of The Newsroom either. Unless there's, like, infinity more titties in the second season than there were in the first, which I kind of doubt, first because I don't really see any of the cast popping their tops off (Kim Pine and Emily Mortimer don't need to at this point in their careers, and it would probably do more damage to Olivia Munn than help, and I would strenuously advise her NOT to disrobe on camera, at least until she's established her bona fides in more than one venue), and manass just isn't going to cut it if you're trying to form some sort of cohesive flow in that night of programming. Also, Sorkin ain't gonna do that anyway.

If I were HBO, I'd be asking for something to slot in place of True Blood, first because the cast is getting expensive and second because the show is creatively dead at this point and it's kind of just careening from one ludicrous thing to another. I'd say we're about one bad writing session away from seeing all of Alexander Skarsgard's dick, and at that point the show can basically wrap production, because there's nothing left for it to do. Martin might be able to give you a series to go there.

Between the two Dreamsongs collections, you'll get most of his short horror work.

If you can find it, Songs the Dead Men Sing is the collection devoted specifically to his short horror and darker science fiction stories. It's been out of print for ages though, and is hard to find. I must have been pretty lucky to find it in my university's library. Here's the list of stories in it:

"The Monkey Treatment"
"...for a single yesterday"
"The Needle Men"
"Meathouse Man"
"Sandkings"
"Nightflyers"
"Remembering Melody"
"In the House of the Worm"
"This Tower of Ashes"

Six of them are reprinted in Dreamsongs: Volume 1. As for the other three, "In the House of the Worm" is available on Kindle e-book, you can read "...for a single yesterday" online for free, and you're out of luck with "The Needle Men," if you can't find Songs the Dead Men Sing, since it was only republished in that collection.

Sandkings and Nightflyers are excellent. The Monkey Treatment is bizarre and twisted and well worth a read. The Pear-Shaped Man and Seven Times Never Kill Man are in Dreamsongs but not in that collection and I find them quite entertaining.

I would not be opposed to a Tuf Voyaging series. Aside from ASoIAF that's probably the next best set of works he's done. You can get a sense of that universe from the stories reprinted in Dreamsongs but if you can get the collection itself it's very, very good.

Hey, the Outer Limits lasted for like five seasons on Showtime and some of those episodes were packed with gratuitous nudity. Dufresne mentioned that Martin wrote some episodes, but specifically the very first episode was an adaption of Sandkings, featuring Lloyd and Beau Bridges together at last.

Bit late for that.

I have an inordinate fondness for that adaptation of Sandkings.

Of all the movies I haven't seem, I'm going to guess that Magic Mike is among the most excusable. I do hope it works out for her, though. Provided she's actually a good actress. The only thing I've ever seen her in where I thought she did a reasonably good job was...well, The Newsroom.