George R. R. Martin

George Raymond Richard Martin was born September 20, 1948, and spent decades as a working writer before the epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire made him a name people argued about. HBO adapted it into Game of Thrones, which ran from 2011 to 2019, won Emmys, and became the kind of cultural event that had strangers talking about dragons at bus stops. Time called him "the American Tolkien" in 2005, and by 2011 he'd landed on their list of the most influential people alive. The show ended, but the source novels didn't - two books still outstanding. Meanwhile the world kept expanding: prequel series House of the Dragon arrived in 2022, another adaptation called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set for 2026, and he contributed worldbuilding to the video game Elden Ring. He's lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for years, where he helped fund the art collective Meow Wolf and runs a cinema named after Jean Cocteau.