This weekend, the new movie In The Lost Lands premieres in theaters. Based on a 1982 short story by A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin, In The Lost Lands is a post-apocalyptic fantasy about a witch named Gray Alys who can grant any wish — though you may not like the price. When she's petitioned to retrieve the power which can transform a person into a werewolf from the dangerous Lost Lands, she enlists a mysterious hunter named Boyce to guide her into the waste.
Any time a new George R.R. Martin project is released, we must stop and take heed. In The Lost Lands is directed by Paul W.S. Anderson (Resident Evil, Monster Hunter) and stars his wife and creative partner Milla Jovovich in the lead role of Gray Alys. Boyce is played by Guardians of the Galaxy's Dave Bautista. Anderson and Jovovich have made many movies together, often of the popcorn sci-fi horror variety. From the trailers for In The Lost Lands, I'm expecting much the same here: a fast-paced, entertainingly shclocky journey through the post-apocalypse. You don't throw around two-headed rattlesnakes in a hyper-serious movie, right?
Where to read In The Lost Lands by GRRM
If you're a reader, an obvious question you may be wondering is where you can read the original short story by George R.R. Martin. After all, who doesn't love a bit of page-to-screen analysis? Before Martin was famous for his Game of Thrones books, he wrote numerous short stories through the late 1970s and 1980s. In The Lost Lands is one such tale.
In The Lost Lands was originally published in a 1982 anthology called Amazons II, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. This book collected short works from 12 different authors, and In The Lost Lands was the final story in its table of contents. It was then re-published in 1987 in one of George R.R. Martin's short story collections, titled Portraits of His Children. However, if you want to read In The Lost Lands today, both Amazons II and Portraits of His Children are not readily available options; they've been out of print for some time, and no ebook version of either collection exists. If you want to track those books down, you'll have to do it second-hand.
Fortunately, there is another place you can read In The Lost Lands: George R.R. Martin's book Dreamsongs: Volume I. Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective was a huge short story collection published by Subterranean Press in 2003; it was later split into two volumes because the original book was a special collector's edition that was too large to be easily re-printed. Dreamsongs: Volume I and Volume II are both very much worth a read if you're interested in the early days of Martin's career. Volume I contains In The Lost Lands, along with a bunch of other notable Martin stories like Sandkings, The Ice Dragon, A Song for Lya, Meathouse Man, and his first published work The Hero.
Dreamsongs: Volume I is available wherever books are sold — as well as many public libraries, on account of it being an older collection! In The Lost Lands premieres in theaters on March 7.
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