The actors’ performances, generally, are good. The fact that the crew is seeking alien contact because humans have irreversibly damaged Earth feels prescient given current concerns about climate change. The production has some nice touches: the sets are realised with exquisite detail, and the special effects are realistic rather than distracting. Perhaps hoping to emulate the success of both “Alien” and “Game of Thrones”, “Nightflyers” has been adapted for television by SyFy, an American channel. It is a satisfyingly tense and claustrophobic story (even if “Alien”, Ridley Scott’s extraterrestrial thriller, had proved the same point the year before). His tale follows a group of scientists, on a mission to make contact with a mysterious alien fleet, who find themselves under attack from their own spaceship. Mr Martin’s novella, “Nightflyers”, took the trope of the haunted house and sent it into space. In 1978 a critic had declared that the irrationality and fear key to horror was fundamentally incompatible with the rationality and logic required by sci-fi. In 1980 Mr Martin penned a 23,000-word story to try and prove that horror and science fiction could be successfully combined.

The series was not the author’s first experiment with genre, form and style.

Magic was less important than the political scheming and violence between warring human factions. “It was the fantasy readers needed and had been waiting for.” It ignored the classic narrative of good-versus-evil in favour of gritty realism. “ dared to do things with fantasy that nobody else did. Lev Grossman, an author and critic, attributed the story’s success to Mr Martin’s willingness to defy the conventions of genre. “Game of Thrones”, HBO’s adaptation of the series, attracted record viewership for the network and earned 47 Emmy Awards, more than any other scripted primetime show. The story unfolds across multiple fictional continents in five books they come to around 4,000 pages in total. “A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE”, a series of fantasy novels by George R.

George rr martin nightflyers book