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‘Game of Thrones’ creator traces his twists and turns

Neil Clarke and George R.R. Martin sitting at a table during Seattle Worldcon 2025 panel
George R.R. Martin takes part in a panel discussion at Seattle Worldcon 2025 as sci-fi editor Neil Clarke looks on. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

If you were to track the milestones in the career of George R.R. Martin, the science-fiction and fantasy writer whose knightly tales spawned HBO’s “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon,” you’d have to include his twisted take on “The Pit and the Pendulum” in high school.

Martin — who famously killed off good-guy Ned Stark early in the “Game of Thrones” saga — recounted an early stage of his literary origin story during a panel session at Seattle Worldcon 2025, a prestigious science-fiction convention that wraps up today.

The spark for the story came when fellow sci-fi writer Isabel J. Kim told Martin that the father of a friend had lent her a 1966 yearbook from Martin’s high school, in hopes that the 76-year-old author would add a fresh signature over his class photo.

The crowd laughed at the contrast between the fresh-faced kid in the yearbook photo and Martin’s current bewhiskered visage — but seeing the yearbook reminded Martin of a story.

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Worldcon celebrates science fiction’s past and future

Illustration showing futuristic cartoon characters with Seattle Worldcon 2025 sign
Seattle Worldcon 2025 strikes a retro-futuristic theme. (Characters by Matt Youngmark / Logo by Rob Carlos)

Thousands of science fiction and fantasy fans will be going back to the future this week when Seattle plays host to Worldcon, the world’s premier sci-fi convention, for the first time since the Space Needle opened its doors.

“The Pacific Northwest is a great community of makers and doers and learners, and people really deeply engaged in speculative fiction and all that genre has to offer,” Kathy Bond, the chair of Seattle Worldcon 2025, told me. “We want to share that with the rest of our world community.”

Registered Worldcon members selected the site of the annual convention under the auspices of the World Science Fiction Society — a tradition that started with the first convention in New York City in 1939. Seattle’s organizers have been preparing for this week since 2017, when they sent in their initial bid to host Worldcon.

Bond, a volunteer who works as an attorney at her day job, became involved after attending her first Worldcon in 2015 in Spokane. “From there, I got it into my head that we could totally do this in Seattle,” Bond said.

The path hasn’t always been smooth: This spring, a controversy arose over the revelation that generative AI was used to glean information about prospective speakers. Bond issued an apology, and the organizers reworked the process for vetting Worldcon’s panelists — but the episode led some writers and fans to create a one-day alternative convention called ConCurrent Seattle, set for Aug. 14.

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Will HBO finish ‘Game of Thrones’ first?

Image: George R.R. Martin
“Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin sets the scene for a reading at the Sasquan science-fiction convention in Spokane. (Credit: Alan Boyle)

SPOKANE, Wash. — “Game of Thrones” author George R.R. Martin acknowledges that HBO could air the final episode of the show based on his books even before the last book in the series comes out — and he’s OK with that.

“Anything is possible,” he told GeekWire during Thursday’s Q&A at the Sasquan science-fiction convention in Spokane. Martin took questions after reading a chapter from “The Winds of Winter,” which will be the sixth book in what’s expected to be at least a seven-volume series.

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