Fans of HBO’s Game Of Thrones and the George R.R. Martin “A Song Of Fire And Ice” series on which they’re based are acutely aware of the fact that the TV show is catching up to Martin’s books at a rate quite possibly much faster than he can write new ones. When it was announced in early February that Martin had signed a two-year development deal with the network, the prospect of yet another tax on the author’s time seemed like a terrible idea. How could he finish writing “the 3,000 pages” (his words) necessary to finish “A Song Of Fire And Ice” when he has to brainstorm new ideas for the most ambitious outfit on television?
One easy answer: A Game Of Thrones prequel. Martin has already written three books about Westeros called the “Dunk And Egg” novellas—The Hedge Knight, The Sworn Sword, and The Mighty Knight—and, in an interview with IGN, he entertained the idea of writing “nine or ten more” of those, then potentially turning them into a Game Of Thrones prequel series, set 100 years before the action in “A Song Of Fire And Ice” and “lighter in tone and more adventurous.” Keep in mind this is just one of several ideas Martin says he and the network have been discussing, along with a possible science-fiction show and a couple of historical dramas, and Martin says he would first need to find “another David Benioff and Dan Weiss” (the Game Of Thrones show-runners) to make it happen. Still, cannibalizing old work seems like a smarter piece of time management for Martin than creating something else new from scratch.