George R.R. Martin announces comic adaptation of one of his sci-fi stories

Before Jon Snow, there was Haviland Tuf, a tall, bald, phlegmatic cat-lover who traveled the galaxy solving environmental problems. This is his moment.

George R.R. Martin is best known for his A Song of Ice and Fire novels, famously adapted by HBO as Game of Thrones. But that’s not all he’s written. Martin had a long career before ASOIAF came along, working in both sci-fi and fantasy. One character he returned to often in the 1970s and ’80s was Haviland Tuf, “an exceptionally tall, bald, very pale, overweight, phlegmatic, vegetarian, cat-loving-but-otherwise solitary space trader.”

That description is from Wikipedia — in fact, it’s one of the best Wikipedia descriptions I’ve ever read, and I like it so much that I’m going to keep quoting it. “Tuf inadvertently becomes the master of the Ark,” the entry continues, “an ancient, 30-kilometre-long (19 mi) ‘seedship’ – a very powerful warship with advanced ecological engineering capabilities – after a deal with several venal and cutthroat traders goes awry. Tuf travels the galaxy, offering his services to worlds with environmental problems, and sometimes imposing solutions of his own.”

Several Haviland Tuf short stories are collected in the 1986 book Tuf Voyaging. As Martin writes on his Not a Blog, he always wanted to do more stories, “but, alas, other novels and television and ICE & FIRE came along, and what with one thing and another I never got around to writing them.”

But now, Martin announces that artist Raya Golden will be adapting the Tuf story The Plague Star. Here’s the official description:

"George R.R. Martin and Raya Golden’s VOYAGING, VOLUME ONE: THE PLAGUE STAR, the first volume of a graphic novel adaptation of TUF VOYAGING, Martin’s short story collection set in his science fiction universe the Thousand Worlds, to be adapted and illustrated by Golden, which follows a group of unlikely spacefaring rogues on a mysterious mission involving unfathomable galactic fame and fortune (but only if they can survive), to Kaitlin Ketchum at Ten Speed Press, in an exclusive submission."

There’s even some early artwork available:

Martin cautions that this is preliminary artwork, “but I think [the characters are] pretty close to the final versions which I’ll be working from once I finish up the script.”

According to Golden, the graphic novel isn’t due out until 2023. In the meantime, if you’re interested in Martin’s non-A Song of Ice and Fire-related work, there’s a lot to explore:

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