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A Fantasy Realm Too Vile for Hobbits
By DINITIA SMITH
Published: December 12, 2005
In the vast continent of Westeros, the alliance of the Seven Kingdoms is disintegrating. King Robert Baratheon has been murdered. A strange winter is descending on the countryside. Could this be another ice age?
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Rick Scibelli Jr. for The New York Times
George R. R. Martin meets fans at a book signing in Albuquerque.
Readers
Forum: Books
Meanwhile, Queen Cersei is sleeping with her twin brother, Jaime, while their other brother, the cynical dwarf Tyrion Lannister, has gone into hiding. And the woman warrior, Brienne of Tarth, is searching for Sansa, who was married to Tyrion, and is a member of the House of Stark, daughter of Eddard, Lord of Winterfell.
And ... well, to keep track of it all it helps to have the 63-page list of characters at the back of George R. R. Martin's "Feast for Crows," the fourth and latest installment in his fantasy series, "A Song of Ice and Fire."
Published last month by Bantam Spectra, the novel almost immediately hit No. 1 on the New York Times's fiction best-seller list. On Sunday it ranked No. 9 on the list.
Reviewing "Crows" in Time magazine, Lev Grossman called Mr. Martin "the American Tolkien," only better: " 'A Feast for Crows' isn't pretty elves against gnarly orcs," Mr. Grossman wrote. "It's men and women slugging it out in the muck, for money and power and lust and love."
Mr. Martin said in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Fe, N.M., that he was "thrilled" to be compared to Tolkien. But he has outdone Tolkien in at least one respect: "All three of 'The Lord of the Rings' books are the size of just one of my books."
"Crows" alone is 684 pages, not counting the appendix.
"Most of it exists in my head," Mr. Martin said of his fictional universe, with its myriad feuding states and noble families - the Lannisters, Baratheons and Starks - each with its own heraldry. The books are like an endless War of the Roses, spiced with Arthurian legend. There is a universal language, the Common Tongue of Westeros (a sept is a church; direwolves are a species of wolf bigger and fiercer than ordinary wolves). There are also regional dialects and even an extinct language called High Valyrian.
The plots are so convoluted that, Mr. Martin admitted, even he sometimes forgets things and makes mistakes. "I've had a couple of horses that change sex," he said. "I think Bran's horse, Dancer, in the first book, is one sex. It changes sex in the second book, though I don't remember exactly what to."
"But nothing gets by the fans," Mr. Martin said.
Mr. Martin's sagas are meticulously dissected online, in reviews on bookseller sites like Amazon.com and on fantasy sites. (On Mr. Martin's Web site, www.georgerrmartin.com, there's an entire section devoted to people who have named their pets - and children - after characters in his novels.)
Meanwhile, crowds have been lining up for hours on Mr. Martin's publication tour to hear him read. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen, except for hosting events for rock stars," said Carolyn T. Hughes, an events coordinator for Barnes & Noble at Astor Place in Manhattan, where Mr. Martin read in November. "There were 500 people."
One admirer of the series, Daniel Mills, a 30-year-old salesman from Jonesboro, Ark., said he responds to the complexity of Mr. Martin's characters. "Everybody is flawed," he said in a telephone interview. "Not everybody is all good, not everybody is all evil."
"Things aren't always what they seem at the first reading of them," he added.
Mr. Martin, 57, might have come out of a fantasy novel himself. About 100 pounds overweight, with a long gray beard, he looks like a rotund elf or Santa Claus. When he is not writing, he tends to his collection of thousands of miniature knights, which he paints and arranges in elaborate dioramas. (Those are shown on his Web site as well.)
What kind of mind comes up with all this? Nobody in Mr. Martin's family was a writer. His father was a longshoreman in Bayonne, N.J., his mother a factory manager. He began writing monster stories in grade school and selling them to other children. He sold his first short story while at Northwestern University studying journalism. During the Vietnam War he was a conscientious objector and performed alternate service. To make money, he directed chess tournaments, and he taught college journalism. Eventually he landed in Hollywood and worked as a writer for film and television, a story editor for "The Twilight Zone" and as a producer. Throughout he kept writing, including science fiction and mysteries.
Then, one day, an image came to him. A man is taking a boy to witness a beheading. They encounter a dead direwolf who has just given birth to a litter and they rescue the pups. "To this day I don't know where it came from," he said. "But I knew that I had to write it."
That image became the opening for "A Game of Thrones" (1996), the first in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series. That was followed by "A Clash of Kings" (1999) and "A Storm of Swords" (2000). Mr. Martin was deliberately following the pattern of the "Lord of the Rings" series, he said, focusing narrowly at the beginning, then opening up the narrative.
But then came a five-year hiatus.
"Crows" presented him with unusual difficulties, Mr. Martin said. Even he was overwhelmed by the intricacy of his creation. "I'm not writing one novel," he said, "but a series woven together." At one point his manuscript was 1,700 pages. A friend suggested that Mr. Martin divide the story geographically into two volumes, of which "Crows" is the first. (Mr. Martin is finishing the next installment, "A Dance With Dragons.")
Some reviewers have complained about his breaking up the narrative, saying that some of Mr. Martin's best characters are missing from "Crows." Publishers Weekly noted in its review that the book "sorely misses its other half," adding that "the slim pickings here are tasty, but in no way satisfying."
"There are physical limits as to how big books can be," Mr. Martin explained. "But they'll be in the next book and they'll have a lot more room."
In the meantime, Mr. Martin has two more volumes planned in the series after "Dragons," with noble houses in new wars; strange, spotted children; immense climactic changes; incest; peril; portents; and magic.
Sometimes, Mr. Martin said, he begins work in the morning, and "I'll look up and it's dark outside."
"It's like I've fallen through the screen."
Would You Like Some Fries With That Download?
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: December 12, 2005
If the Walt Disney Company has its way, McDonald's Happy Meal toys could be replaced with portable media players that hold Disney movies, music, games or photos, according to a pending patent application. Users could add files to the devices by earning points with food purchases.
The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game.
Earning a large file, like a movie, might require five trips - a compelling incentive for a customer to return to the restaurant.
"The reward for eating at a restaurant, for example, could be the automatic downloading of a segment of a movie or the like, or a short animated clip or cartoon," according to the patent application. While the application mentions McDonald's as a potential restaurant partner, such a device could apparently be licensed to other restaurants or businesses as well.
The British journal New Scientist, which recently reported on the patent application, said that the portable media players could be used as part of a McDonald's promotion and create marketing opportunities for electronics companies. They could also carry advertisements aimed at children and teenagers, the most likely targets of the promotion, and customers could transfer downloaded files to other media devices, potentially sharing their files with other users. (A Disney spokeswoman declined comment; McDonald's executives could not be reached.)
The patent application follows efforts by McDonald's to enhance wireless capabilities at its restaurants. The company began outfitting its restaurants with wireless Internet connections in 2003, and since then has installed Wi-Fi services in more than 6,200 restaurants worldwide. For now, Wi-Fi is primarily intended for McDonald's customers to surf the Internet and check e-mail messages on laptops. The restaurant charges customers for Wi-Fi usage and trades promotional coupons and prepaid cards for Wi-Fi time.
The portable media players would require "networking systems, such as Wi-Fi or any other suitable wireless Internet access systems," the application said. By continuing to install Wi-Fi capability, McDonald's may be gearing up for the portable media player to be a staple of its promotional lineup.
But McDonald's customers should not plan on the devices appearing anytime soon. Patent applications currently take an average of 30 months for final approval.
"It hasn't even begun to be reviewed," a spokeswoman for the Patent and Trademark Office said.
By DINITIA SMITH
Published: December 12, 2005
In the vast continent of Westeros, the alliance of the Seven Kingdoms is disintegrating. King Robert Baratheon has been murdered. A strange winter is descending on the countryside. Could this be another ice age?
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Rick Scibelli Jr. for The New York Times
George R. R. Martin meets fans at a book signing in Albuquerque.
Readers
Forum: Books
Meanwhile, Queen Cersei is sleeping with her twin brother, Jaime, while their other brother, the cynical dwarf Tyrion Lannister, has gone into hiding. And the woman warrior, Brienne of Tarth, is searching for Sansa, who was married to Tyrion, and is a member of the House of Stark, daughter of Eddard, Lord of Winterfell.
And ... well, to keep track of it all it helps to have the 63-page list of characters at the back of George R. R. Martin's "Feast for Crows," the fourth and latest installment in his fantasy series, "A Song of Ice and Fire."
Published last month by Bantam Spectra, the novel almost immediately hit No. 1 on the New York Times's fiction best-seller list. On Sunday it ranked No. 9 on the list.
Reviewing "Crows" in Time magazine, Lev Grossman called Mr. Martin "the American Tolkien," only better: " 'A Feast for Crows' isn't pretty elves against gnarly orcs," Mr. Grossman wrote. "It's men and women slugging it out in the muck, for money and power and lust and love."
Mr. Martin said in a telephone interview from his home in Santa Fe, N.M., that he was "thrilled" to be compared to Tolkien. But he has outdone Tolkien in at least one respect: "All three of 'The Lord of the Rings' books are the size of just one of my books."
"Crows" alone is 684 pages, not counting the appendix.
"Most of it exists in my head," Mr. Martin said of his fictional universe, with its myriad feuding states and noble families - the Lannisters, Baratheons and Starks - each with its own heraldry. The books are like an endless War of the Roses, spiced with Arthurian legend. There is a universal language, the Common Tongue of Westeros (a sept is a church; direwolves are a species of wolf bigger and fiercer than ordinary wolves). There are also regional dialects and even an extinct language called High Valyrian.
The plots are so convoluted that, Mr. Martin admitted, even he sometimes forgets things and makes mistakes. "I've had a couple of horses that change sex," he said. "I think Bran's horse, Dancer, in the first book, is one sex. It changes sex in the second book, though I don't remember exactly what to."
"But nothing gets by the fans," Mr. Martin said.
Mr. Martin's sagas are meticulously dissected online, in reviews on bookseller sites like Amazon.com and on fantasy sites. (On Mr. Martin's Web site, www.georgerrmartin.com, there's an entire section devoted to people who have named their pets - and children - after characters in his novels.)
Meanwhile, crowds have been lining up for hours on Mr. Martin's publication tour to hear him read. "It's unlike anything I've ever seen, except for hosting events for rock stars," said Carolyn T. Hughes, an events coordinator for Barnes & Noble at Astor Place in Manhattan, where Mr. Martin read in November. "There were 500 people."
One admirer of the series, Daniel Mills, a 30-year-old salesman from Jonesboro, Ark., said he responds to the complexity of Mr. Martin's characters. "Everybody is flawed," he said in a telephone interview. "Not everybody is all good, not everybody is all evil."
"Things aren't always what they seem at the first reading of them," he added.
Mr. Martin, 57, might have come out of a fantasy novel himself. About 100 pounds overweight, with a long gray beard, he looks like a rotund elf or Santa Claus. When he is not writing, he tends to his collection of thousands of miniature knights, which he paints and arranges in elaborate dioramas. (Those are shown on his Web site as well.)
What kind of mind comes up with all this? Nobody in Mr. Martin's family was a writer. His father was a longshoreman in Bayonne, N.J., his mother a factory manager. He began writing monster stories in grade school and selling them to other children. He sold his first short story while at Northwestern University studying journalism. During the Vietnam War he was a conscientious objector and performed alternate service. To make money, he directed chess tournaments, and he taught college journalism. Eventually he landed in Hollywood and worked as a writer for film and television, a story editor for "The Twilight Zone" and as a producer. Throughout he kept writing, including science fiction and mysteries.
Then, one day, an image came to him. A man is taking a boy to witness a beheading. They encounter a dead direwolf who has just given birth to a litter and they rescue the pups. "To this day I don't know where it came from," he said. "But I knew that I had to write it."
That image became the opening for "A Game of Thrones" (1996), the first in the "Song of Ice and Fire" series. That was followed by "A Clash of Kings" (1999) and "A Storm of Swords" (2000). Mr. Martin was deliberately following the pattern of the "Lord of the Rings" series, he said, focusing narrowly at the beginning, then opening up the narrative.
But then came a five-year hiatus.
"Crows" presented him with unusual difficulties, Mr. Martin said. Even he was overwhelmed by the intricacy of his creation. "I'm not writing one novel," he said, "but a series woven together." At one point his manuscript was 1,700 pages. A friend suggested that Mr. Martin divide the story geographically into two volumes, of which "Crows" is the first. (Mr. Martin is finishing the next installment, "A Dance With Dragons.")
Some reviewers have complained about his breaking up the narrative, saying that some of Mr. Martin's best characters are missing from "Crows." Publishers Weekly noted in its review that the book "sorely misses its other half," adding that "the slim pickings here are tasty, but in no way satisfying."
"There are physical limits as to how big books can be," Mr. Martin explained. "But they'll be in the next book and they'll have a lot more room."
In the meantime, Mr. Martin has two more volumes planned in the series after "Dragons," with noble houses in new wars; strange, spotted children; immense climactic changes; incest; peril; portents; and magic.
Sometimes, Mr. Martin said, he begins work in the morning, and "I'll look up and it's dark outside."
"It's like I've fallen through the screen."
Would You Like Some Fries With That Download?
By JULIE BOSMAN
Published: December 12, 2005
If the Walt Disney Company has its way, McDonald's Happy Meal toys could be replaced with portable media players that hold Disney movies, music, games or photos, according to a pending patent application. Users could add files to the devices by earning points with food purchases.
The plan could work something like this: A customer enters a restaurant and buys a meal, receiving the portable media player and an electronic code that authorizes a partial download of a movie, video or other media file, which can be downloaded while in the restaurant, according to a United States Patent and Trademark Office application filed by Disney. Then, with each subsequent return, the customer earns more downloadable data, eventually getting an entire movie or game.
Earning a large file, like a movie, might require five trips - a compelling incentive for a customer to return to the restaurant.
"The reward for eating at a restaurant, for example, could be the automatic downloading of a segment of a movie or the like, or a short animated clip or cartoon," according to the patent application. While the application mentions McDonald's as a potential restaurant partner, such a device could apparently be licensed to other restaurants or businesses as well.
The British journal New Scientist, which recently reported on the patent application, said that the portable media players could be used as part of a McDonald's promotion and create marketing opportunities for electronics companies. They could also carry advertisements aimed at children and teenagers, the most likely targets of the promotion, and customers could transfer downloaded files to other media devices, potentially sharing their files with other users. (A Disney spokeswoman declined comment; McDonald's executives could not be reached.)
The patent application follows efforts by McDonald's to enhance wireless capabilities at its restaurants. The company began outfitting its restaurants with wireless Internet connections in 2003, and since then has installed Wi-Fi services in more than 6,200 restaurants worldwide. For now, Wi-Fi is primarily intended for McDonald's customers to surf the Internet and check e-mail messages on laptops. The restaurant charges customers for Wi-Fi usage and trades promotional coupons and prepaid cards for Wi-Fi time.
The portable media players would require "networking systems, such as Wi-Fi or any other suitable wireless Internet access systems," the application said. By continuing to install Wi-Fi capability, McDonald's may be gearing up for the portable media player to be a staple of its promotional lineup.
But McDonald's customers should not plan on the devices appearing anytime soon. Patent applications currently take an average of 30 months for final approval.
"It hasn't even begun to be reviewed," a spokeswoman for the Patent and Trademark Office said.
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