From shades of gray fantasy to woke fantasy
Vox has an interesting but predictable reaction to the finale of the show that much of America was watching, The Game of Thrones finale had a chance to break the wheel. It upheld the status quo. The show is obviously now its own thing apart from the books. But as someone who was reasonably immersed […]
George R. R. Martin’s typical fantasy trope
George R. R. Martin has done something new in fantasy. He has created a world in shades of gray. This is in contrast to the modern template of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, where what is good and what is evil were as clear and distinct as black and white. In […]
Targaryen genetic load
I have to point you to this post on royal inbreeding in A Song of Ice and Fire. They reference my post on the Habsburgs. Well done! In any case, one possibility is that the Targaryen lineage may have purged their genetic load through inbreeding. The ba…
George R. R. Martin in The New Yorker
A friend mentioned last night that he was watching a bit of A Game of Thrones, the new HBO series based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. I’ll probably wait until after the DVD version comes out, if I watch it at all. …