Drawing from his own personal experiences of the Summer of Love-era, this supernatural horror/thriller tells the tale of Sandy, a rock journalist in the early 80s who's investigating the mysterious, gruesome murder of a promoter who managed several big-name bands throughout the 60s and 70s, including hard-rockers The Nazgûl, one of the most famous of the era. Coming off his critically-acclaimed Sandkings collection and the highly successful historical vampire thriller, Fevre Dream, Martin's publisher rightfully pushed The Armageddon Rag as 'the next big thing.' Only no one bought it, and as a result the emotionally crushed author basically left the world of fiction-writing to become a Hollywood screenwriter instead.Īt the time, this was Martin's most ambitious work yet, and one that was very close to his heart, he being a child of the 60s. I'd guess Nightflyers will need word of a second series order before a real fandom can develop.George RR Martin was rising up the ranks in sf/f and horror in the early 80s, winning awards left and right. It's a very different model from Game of Thrones and other shows, which are weekly events and give a lot of time for fan speculation and discussion. “I admit I've not seen any evidence of a particular fandom around Nightflyers at this time,” he says, “but I think this has a lot to do with the fact that SyFy in the US, and now Netflix elsewhere, released it in a way that's aimed at binging rather than water-cooler talk. “What’s so great about Netflix is that shows are able to grow a huge following overnight and bring books to a whole new audience.”Įlio Garcia, co-founder of, the biggest A Song of Fire and Ice/Game of Thrones fan site, says that fans of that world have gone back to Martin’s other works to explore his writing, themes and approaches to storytelling in his “second most significant universe” The Thousand Worlds, but that this doesn’t guarantee anything for Nightflyers. “We wanted to give readers a chance to experience it before the TV show airs,” says Natasha Bardon, publishing director at Harper Voyager. A TV tie-in edition is due on February 7. To gear up for the show, the original 23,000-word novella was published in the UK in 2018 as a hardback book with elegant, otherworldly illustrations by David Palumbo.

But first, Nightflyers needs to prove its worth.

Nightflyers by george rr martin