Woohoo! My very favorite fantasy series by a living author, George R.R. Martin's "The Song of Ice and Fire," is being turned into a TV series by HBO. This is fantastic news! I had heard rumors about TV rights being sold and such, and I was very nervous because ABC or one of the major broadcast networks would never give the story it's due. They would be cutting characters left and right, shortening storylines, lowering the sex and violence levels, and canceling the whole thing after 5 episodes because of low ratings (caused by their interference). But HBO? They can do this right. The plan is to turn each book into one season of episodes. Although I bet they split book 3, A Storm of Swords, perhaps one of the most badass volumes of fantastic literature ever written, into two seasons. And perhaps combine books 4 and 5, which originally were meant to be one volume anyway.

The other really important thing I should mention about all this is that Martin himself will be involved, writing at least one episode per season. He has previous TV experience, having been a writer (head writer?) on the late '80s show, Beauty and the Beast, which starred Linda Hamilton and Ron Pearlman. All I really remember about it is that my family enjoyed it and made a point of watching every week.

Back to the "Song." Most fantasy written today is built around the Tolkien framework. Good versus evil, powerful magicians, orcs, elves, dragons, that sort of thing. The hero is introduced at the beginning, he or she goes through many trials, but you know they will prevail in the end. Not so with "Song." The cast of characters is in the thousands, the story evolves from different points of view, with several different storylines happening simultaneously. The first guy you think is going to be the hero is killed. One of the villains later becomes heroic (for a very believable and in-character reason), several other heroes are killed off unexpectedly. Other heroes become villains, and most cannot be described in black and white terms anyway. The whole series has some magic and some dragons and such in it, but at the same time could be described as a historical fiction describing a medieval war.