House of the Dragon: which George RR Martin books is fantasy series based on - what else has he written?

George R.R. Martin is an American fantasy and science fiction author with more than 50 years in the business.

Martin is best known for writing the epic and still uncompleted novel series A Song of Ice and Fire, which Game of Thrones is adapted from.

House of the Dragon, another HBO fantasy series set in the same world as Game of Thrones, is also based on works by Martin.

What books is House of the Dragon based on, what else has George Martin written, and will he ever finish A Song of Ice and Fire? This is everything you need to know:

Who is George R.R. Martin?

George R.R. Martin is a 73 year old American novelist, screenwriter and producer.

He published his first short story in 1971 and has gone on to write several short story collections and major fantasy novels.

He has also written several episodes of The Twilight Zone and adapted parts of his own novels when writing screenplays for certain episodes of Game of Thrones.

Martin worked as a producer on the 1990s fantasy series Beauty and the Beast, as well as Nightflyers, which is also adapted from one of his novels, Dark Winds, Game of Thrones, and House of the Dragon.

He is also slated to be a producer on at least two of the upcoming Game of Thrones spin-off series.

What is House of the Dragon based on?

House of the Dragon is primarily adapted from Martin’s 2018 novel, Fire & Blood, an in-depth 700-page history of the Targaryen dynasty.

The novel explores how House Targaryen were the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria, how they came to conquer Westeros, and how civil war, known as the Dance of Dragons came to tear the house apart.

Martin also wrote about the Dance of Dragons in two short stories, The Princess and the Queen, which was published in the anthology Dangerous Women, and The Rogue Prince, published in the anthology Rogues.

Ryan J. Condal, who wrote the screenplays for Hercules, Rampage, and action drama series Colony, adapted Fire & Blood for the screen.

What else has George R.R. Martin written?

Martin wrote the first five instalments in the A Song of Ice and Fire series between 1996 and 2011.

He has written other works set in the same universe, including the Tales of Dunk and Egg - three novellas set 90 years before the events of Game of Thrones about a young knight and his companion, the future King Aegon V.

Martin published The World of Ice & Fire in 2014 - it is a history of the fictional world that Game of Thrones is set in, written from the perspective of a maester who lives within the world.

The Sons of the Dragon is a novella published in the Book of Swords anthology in 2017 - it tells the story of the death of Aegon the Conqueror and the conflict between his two sons.

Aside from the Game of Thrones universe, Martin has written many other fantasy novels including the Wild Card series, about mutant superheroes in an alternate history of Earth after the Second World War.

His other works include vampire novel Fevre Dream, sci-fi novel Hunter’s Run written with Gardner Dozois, and fix-up novel Tuf Voyaging.

When will George R.R. Martin finish A Song of Ice and Fire?

There are supposedly two novels yet to be published in A Song of Ice and Fire - The Winds of Winter, and A Dream of Spring.

The Game of Thrones series began to extend beyond the source material from season five, with everything in the last three seasons of the show completely separate from the books.

Martin said previously that some things will be the same in the book as in the series, while a lot of things will not.

Martin has given several updates on the release date for Winds of Winter, first expressing hope that it would be published in 2014. No such luck.

It has now been 11 years since the latest book in the series was published, and there is still no confirmed release date for Winds of Winter.

If and when Winds of Winter does finally arrive, there will still be A Dream of Spring to come after that, so it is possible that we could be waiting a decade or longer for the final Song of Ice and Fire to materialise, if it ever does.