HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Winter Was Coming

"Winter Came"

New slogan: everyone gets $600 back on their taxes

LOL!

everyone knows that winter is coming, and yet they are all using their resources on these bullshit wars. So the populace should have realized they will all probably starve to death, and should be in an uproar, but they're all so passive.

imagine!

oh mordy did already carry on

you have to remember that there is a well-funded group that has a financial interest in suggesting that Winter is NOT coming, reminding everyone that Winter has come and gone in cycles for hundreds of millions of years, that the citizens of Westeros have nothing to do with it and should not worry about it at all.

Lannisters == Kochs? (Pity that the Kraken sigil belongs to the Greyjoys.)

Wasn't there something like the old age of magic caused the seasonal irregularities?

I was under the impression that the winter isn't as bad in all parts of Westeros. Dorn stays warm all the time right?

"the florida of westeros"

In the 1970s National Geographic used to run articles about how Summer was coming

I imagine Dorne is like Southern Italy climate wise, ie gets a bit cold and grey but not really.

http://theconversation.com/game-of-thrones-why-hasnt-westeros-had-an-industrial-revolution-25240

^^
This kind of thing often bugs me about fantasy societies that seem to stay in technological stasis for 1000+ years.

Who will be the Marx of Westeros?

dragons, germs, and steel

Valyrian steel!

Who will be the Marx of Westeros?

One of the Brotherhood Without Banners? Thoros, probably?

This kind of thing often bugs me about fantasy societies that seem to stay in technological stasis for 1000+ years.

i know for sure that there are people around here who know a ton about this topic, but isn't that kinda the M.O. of the fantasy genre? as in: magic replaces or forestalls the industrial revolution indefinitely. or else the narrative seems driven by the end of the "era of magic" as a coming magic-less modernity replaces it. no idea whether/how GOT even fits into that, however.

Feel like the Maesters also have a monopoly on all technical knowledge and are probably not shy about maintaining it?

Despite being magical in nature, the Wall is the site of some interesting technology -- I'm thinking mostly of the elevator -- and is beyond the Citadel's influence.

The Eyrie also has an elevator type contraption

i know for sure that there are people around here who know a ton about this topic, but isn't that kinda the M.O. of the fantasy genre?

That or it backtracks. Tolkien never delves too deeply into this -- I suspect it wasn't an area that he wanted to think over too much! -- but there's always a sense of heights long distant that have been lost. Essentially an oversimplified view of technological collapse after the Roman Empire leading into the 'Dark Ages,' so there's at most a tenuous maintaining of what's still around. (One thing that still impresses me a bit about LOTR is that it's a fairly empty landscape, strewn with ruins and the past.)

I guess Industrial Revolution fantasy is stuff like Steampunk or maybe something like Alasdair Gray's Lanark.

robot dragons by season 6 or gtfoimo

saruman is an industrialist & middle earth is a prelapsarian rural paradise of staffordshire lads who like to wander down country lanes singing songs about trees. imo it's too pre-industrial, it doesn't have the feel george lucas spoke about of a "used universe", but the language felt real & lived in. I suspect a fantasy writer who was really into economic history wld not be especially popular, but I feel like it cld be a noble endeavour

I guess Industrial Revolution fantasy is stuff like Steampunk or maybe something like Alasdair Gray's Lanark.

― 1 pONO 3v3Ry+h1n G!!!1 (dog latin)

China Mieville's Bas Lag novels also.

howl's moving castle too?

I really want a fantasy novel by someone into economic history. We could call it 'hard fantasy'. Something about the discovery of new trading routes leading to a decline in the citystates formerly with a monopoly on the trade of Varisian Pepper. Leading to a scramble for new conquests among the bordering powers.

Weren't the Star Wars prequels based on trade wars and sanctions?

wldnt a fantasy writer into economic history just be a scifi writer

Frank Herbert

Frederik, try this: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Darkness_Series

That article lost me the moment the author handwaved the long winters. Long winters that use up most of the resources collected during the preceding summer are exactly the kind of thing that prevent investing in new technology. They have no good way of knowing when winter ends and when their next harvest will be, their focus is going to be on survival.

choked on pigeon's pie? murder most fowl ; )

― am0n, Tuesday, April 15, 2014 2:58 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

re: Econ Fantasy:

The Neal Stephenson Baroque Cycle is kind of what you mean, but more historical fiction than fantasy...

http://i.imgur.com/w91PEsP.jpg

so embarrassing when you're doing a marketing presentation and you've accidentally included a slide from your grotesque death scene

wkiw

"Really funny guys, but can we please get back to these Q3 numbers now?"

I really want a fantasy novel by someone into economic history.

As a relative of an economist who has written exhaustive family histories almost entirely from an economic history viewpoint, no you do not. There is dry, there is bone dry, there is desert, and then there is economic history in narrative form.

As a companion piece or an appendix to which the main narrative refers, sure. That would TOTALLY flesh things out. But you do not want an economist telling you bed time stories.

The Neal Stephenson Baroque Cycle is kind of what you mean, but more historical fiction than fantasy...

― schwantz, Thursday, April 17, 2014 11:14 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p much every NS book has some kind of econ nerdery in it, the dude is hella into that stuff

I just want ASOIAF without dragons and undead and that kind of thing. It would be just as compelling without it. (yeah, I know, check out my original and important opinions, but still)

can't agree with this. the whole point is that magic and the supernatural are slowly but surely seeping back into an unsuspecting world.

I do agree with dowd, because for me ASOIAF was about the political integration of the world and the way actions rippled out.

to clarify I thought it'd be interesting to see someone who'd created a world from the bottom up so that it felt plausible, I don't want a novel written like a geography textbook

itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

Feel like the economics (ok, not how it works in regards to agriculture feeding the cities other than the Martell's lording it over everyone) but it feels like the Lannisters being in debt is burbling under the surface. Is the Iron Bank a real thing or just a metaphor for war costs?

it is a real thing