A Game of Thrones

So here we are at the very beginning, the very first book. Lord Eddard Stark and King Robert are explicitly mentioned here in the brief blurb at the back of the book. The old gods have no power in the south. This is probably the earliest hint at the underlying fantastical and supernatural nature of the series. Finally, a Dragon King is mentioned. So we know there are at least two kings vying for a single throne.

A Song of Ice and Fire

    Some say the world will end in fire,

                Some say in ice.

                From what I’ve tasted of desire,

                I hold with those who favour fire.

                But if it had to perish twice,

                I think I know enough of hate

                To say that for destruction ice

                Is also great

                And would suffice.

The above poem is extracted from the 1923 Pulitzer-Prize winning book New Hampshire by Robert Frost. The title of the poem is called Fire and Ice which discusses the end of the world and likened the elemental force of fire with the emotion of desire, and that of ice with hate. This is anecdotally reminiscent of a conversation that Frost had with the renowned astronomer Harlow Shapley a year before the poem was published where Frost asked Shapley how the world would end, to which Shapley replied that either the sun will explode and incinerate the Earth, or the Earth will somehow escape this fate only to end up slowly freezing in deep space.

George R.R. Martin has said that Robert Frost’s brief Dante-inspired poem above provided inspiration for his seminal series of A Song of Ice and Fire. Just like how Harlow Shapley, who correctly estimated the position of our sun in the Milky Way Galaxy, inspired Robert Frost’s Fire and Ice.

I often believe that every individual’s work is often inspired by someone else’s to a greater or lesser extent. One of the finest consequential inspirations I can observe is in that of a scientist inspiring a poet who in turn inspired a writer, who went on to inspire a generation of fans in modern day high fantasy literature and filmmaking.

So enough about inconsequential history in this introduction. My postings here will be a book by book and chapter by chapter observation of the series as I progress through the pages. I’ve recently finished watching the latest season 5 of the Game of Thrones TV series and feel it’s high time I started reading the books proper and discover the pages that inspired the show.

I’m not sure what I hope to achieve at the end of this (if I ever do get to the end), but I hope that somewhere along the way as I take down my notes and make my observations, I can rediscover this world of Ice and Fire through a new shard under a different light.

And this is not a review.