Oddbean

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 @134318c2 @ed6dec54 @fb2b7c61 I'd be very surprised if I read a very long work and later realized the author had written one of my favorite short stories.

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 @e0d204e8 @134318c2 @ed6dec54 

Back in the 70s, when he was publishing stories like "And Seven Times Never Kill Man" in Analog magazine, George R.R. Martin was one of my favorite short story writers. His collections "Songs of Stars and Shadows" and "A Song for Lya" are brilliant.

Many years later I found A Game of Thrones in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble and thought "Great! He's writing again."

A few years later and I hear about the HBO show. Nerds have taken over the world.

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 @fb2b7c61 @e0d204e8 @134318c2 @ed6dec54 They should make a show out of GRRM's Tuf Voyaging. Great SF with a focus on (exo-)ecology.

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 @706554ec @e0d204e8 @134318c2 @ed6dec54 

Yes! That would be fun. Whenever I see a big mushroom I think of Haviland Tuf's mushroomitarian diet.

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 @fb2b7c61 @e0d204e8 @134318c2 @ed6dec54 
when I was a kid I loved George R. R. Martin's short stories, and I noted several good novels mentioned his writing classes in the dedication (_Frostflower and Thorn_) , the author's note, or in some other ancillary bit. But when GOT first came to my attention, I was horribly busy, 2 full times jobs AND 18 credit hours. After college, I tried it, and somehow - I couldn't finish any of the volumes, though a I read a few hundred pages of each.

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 @91b15004 @e0d204e8 @134318c2 @ed6dec54 

The style of these books worked for me. Switching to a different character for each chapter, and often ending chapters on a cliffhanger, kept my simple little mind engaged.

I liked his earlier novels, like The Dying of the Light, but I didn't think they quite matched his short stories. When he came back to novel-writing with A Game of Thrones it was like he was trying out a different style that (to me) works better in the longer format.