Guide For Game Of Thrones

Guide For game of thrones. First, the origin story. Game of Thrones is based on a series of novels called A Song of Ice and Fire, first launched by award-winning author George R.R. Martin in 1996. The TV adaptation takes its name from the title of the first book in Martin's series: A Game of Thrones. The books have grown since their inception, initially envisioned as a trilogy, now clocking in at five novels and counting. The most recently published installment in the series is book five, A Dance with Dragons, released in 2011. Book six, The Winds of Winter, has suffered repeated delays, with no release date in sight. Because of this, the TV series started moving past the books as of season six, with new episodes revealing key plot points that remain unanswered in the novels.

Despite the delay in the novels proper, Martin and collaborators have released several stories set within the same fictional universe, including short stories like the Dunk and Egg novellas (set roughly a century before the events of Game of Thrones) and the impressively vast The World of Ice and Fire, a massive coffee table book filled with history and lore from the Thrones universe. It's a must-own for any and all die-hard fans of the series.

For the uninitiated, both Martin's original novels and the HBO show on which it's based primarily take place in the fictional world of Westeros, also known as the Seven Kingdoms. It's a harsh land where summers and winters can last for lifetimes, with little way of knowing how long the season will last.

Indeed, if the show has a motto, it's this: "Winter is coming." The words are owned by the show's de facto protagonists, House Stark, and they carry both literal and figurative meaning. But in the concrete sense, Game of Thrones takes place over a period of time in which winter slowly creeps into the land. By the end of the sixth and most recent season, the people of Westeros officially have recognized the onset of winter; executive producers and showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have cited the changing of the seasons, and the need to shoot the show in frostier conditions, as a key reason why Game of Thrones will return later than usual in 2017.