A Game of Thrones: TV's greatest epic is back, here's why

I was never an epic fantasy reader per say. I did read Terry Brook's Shannara series which I always thought could translate well to film with the right director, screenplay, and actors. Pretty much the ingredients needed for any movie venture.

George R.R. Martin's 1996 Game of Thrones book title (GOT hereafter) has captured my imagination enough to vault it to the top of mandatory viewing list. I will not go into a fascinating regurgitation of characters/actors in the seven kingdom fantasy world of Westeros. The names are confusing - unless you are a fantasy reading know-it-all - but what fascinates about this show, compared to all others, is it adoption of techniques rarely combined well, making GOT the number 1 pirated-show in the world. Shakespeare would even approve of this being done.

Season 3: War Preview

1. Sex, blood, and Middle age rock and roll. The first two seasons satisfied with Rome-like sex and blood lust that had purpose. While sex and prostitution was a staple of that Rome's series - now crossing over with Mance Rayder added to the GOT cast - the whores and women nude in GOT serve more that just jump off points to a scene. The sex shows the bad guys at their very worst; the conflicted souls at their tenderest of moments. And the quips made about the cockless, secret information man, well, are priceless. Blood - have a head, might travel - gets more gruesome that at Rome's peak possibly. And what's an epic without two rock and rollers getting bit parts - Coldplay's  Will Champion and Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody.

2. No place is home. This story travels to destinations with a feel that you are never going to go home again. The characters have to interact with their environment in such ways - that you feel Westeros really does exists on the map. Northern Ireland, Malta, Croatia, Iceland, and Morocco were the real locations - meaning some travel expenses must be really racking up in this epic. The dress and castle keeps and ice, desert, river runs, make this a breathing show via locale alone.

3. Characters that all have 3-dimensions. Rare that series has more than 1 or 2 characters with major arcs that need fleshing out over the course of the show. GOT though has 15 characters (just a number) that have huge conflicts to be dealt with: from an incest-made brutal teenage king who is the most despotic on TV; the new dwarfish Hand of that King (HOTK) that quips and calculates to TV perfection ; a revenge-through-war son-of-that-fallen King's hand who now loves a doctor that patches up his men; a once-timid "Dothraki whore"-to-a future dragon queen growing darker by the day; or the conflicted on The Wall bastard son of dead HOTK Ned Stark, whose life choices will be made against white walkers, or tied to family concerns. A young girl-made boy-girl cup bearer that has rewritten the child role forever as a killer who has to now hide amongst her fiercest enemies of her family. A crippled son of that HOTK, whose dire wolf and castle keep are all he's got - both at danger at every turn.

4. Lights, camera, ACTION! You get no break of action amongst this substantial cast. No one comes on the set without a purpose - whether to kill a lead character, to deliver the bad news, complicate the intriguing and messy plot, devise a new self-serving plan, deliver an evil spirit baby, or protect a tyrant's bride-to-be who has to hold her tongue, or die. GOT does not use long drawn out stares, or wishy-washy sub-characters to get from point A to point B, or C.

GOT uses action to move people - where there is quiet moments, it is to show characters revealing deep thoughts to others - doubts that make their actions before and after better cinema, if conflicted to their words, all the better.

5. This Realm Needs A King, A Leader True. You feel like this in everyday life. Who is our world's best leader? What will they do to improve on our hopes for the betterment of man? So each of these characters set out to be that leader, or maker of the leader they wish for. Fighting for their places at the table of power, or setting up the weakest among them. Sounds like a United Nations free-for-all, after aliens pop in - with the possibility of a fairy creature dropping in to make stuff really interesting. (Aliens=Dragons)

Peter Dinklage as HOTK Tyrion Lannister: Leader True?

I will be glued to GOT Season 3 opening. GOT will make the winter wait worthwhile if at least one head rolls, a whore gets some get back, a child undermines a powerful man, or a "halfman" takes a non-bastard king and tosses him to a dire wolf.  All will come true! It's Game of Thrones!

Elven Magic: My Early Lessons in Writing Truth

Chapter 4 of Back to My Future: The Life and Times at Purdue University

(left: Terry Brooks, Alessio Sbarbaro)

This is a excerpt from a working draft of: You Got a Life...But Do You Have a Plan?

The golden path to career success is not some extraordinary leap from typical day plodder to the corporate CEO of a Fortune-rated company. Everyone knows this, or at least, should. Whatever you are working on, and toward, is going to require time to gain the mastery necessary to be called boss or become the boss of the new venture. As master martial artist Bruce Lee eloquently surmised: “I am not afraid of a man that has practiced 10,000 kicks once; but one that has practiced 10,000 times one kick.” Meaning there is going to be a right amount of practice, and time invested, in order to become respected for knowledge and know-how.

At some juncture, a choice to retire one jersey will have to be made, in order to put on another, better suited to the skills you have honed.

My Free Agency for Life Plan (Defunct)

I have held 21 various positions for corporate America, university-related, or odd job(s) combined together. All total: 20 1/3 years of punch-the-clock work force time with about 4 more years of weekly occurring or daily odd jobs for ordinary citizens for straight cash. No writing positions were pursued from 1988 through 2009.

A few to be listed were very, very short-term. So yes, I was a well-traveled soul. In a book read about destructive narcissists, I suppose this pattern would be ample grounds for supporting their thesis. In some ways, I agree that was the case. Yet, another alternative theory is: I never was too keen on the jobs I took to begin with. I took them out of need of money, not a desire to be a cook, server, cashier, inventory analyst, or, even an industrial engineer, as a Navistar position was a good step up in pay from Lear Corporation but with almost zero responsibility or necessity to act. No, I was a square peg for all sorts of reasons, many discussed, and so this aspect of my life is still a quandary and ripe for interpretation.

Trading in his Uniform: Lessons from a Writing Life

My favorite author growing up was Terry Brooks. His books would be a fallback position at points in my life when I did not know where I was going, or even lacked any foreseeable way to get there even if I did know.

As it turns out, I started out hating to read anything, sticking to sports pictorials or Jane’s Fighting series on ships and aircraft. But in 7^th grade, I had an old bitty of an English teacher that required us to read 6 books for the year, and do ½ to 1-page chapter write-ups of each book we read, plus a final paper on a book. And she based 35% of our grade on this torturous task of reading. So, not wanting to be stuck in the 7^th grade forever, I went through the stacks of books and found The Sword of Shannara. I did not know much about the book only that the cover (paperback) looked cool. So I read this 600 plus page fantasy epic (as it counted as 3 books which appealed). Little did I know it was the first of its kind to reach the New York Times bestseller list. Or that its author had an interesting story to tell around the time I first got a hold of his masterpiece (1984-1985).

Brooks was an avid reader and writer. He enjoyed his play, pre-D&D style, back when Howdy, Uncle Miltie, and Texaco Star Theatre were big on TV, then considered a luxury good. He formulated stories, as kids do to have a hobby, but Brooks took his driving passion to write and shelved it (partly) as he reached early adulthood. Practically, he went to law school and did what the American Dream entailed, work and put away childish endeavors. However, he had a story to write – and did so, on and off, in the mid-1970s – and met up with Del Rey Books, and Lester del Rey, who polished Mr. Brooks into a better writer and author, from the first epic I read to Brooks’ turning point after publication of The Wishsong of Shannara.

Terry Brooks was caught between his legal career and his writing career in late 1984. He was hedging his bets, afraid, after all the success, he could not make it solely as a novelist. He visited his editor (del Rey) in New York, and, upon discussion, borrowed an idea for a book involving buying a magic kingdom at a crossroads in one’s life. The story in many ways was a depiction of himself.

Brooks finally made his decision to quit playing for the legal team and moved on to the writing team completely. Since then, he has written over twenty other books in various formats.

Crossroads #1 & Cooking Without a Purpose

In early 1992, after my grandmother lost her battle with cancer, I came to crossroads #1. I was never going to be a great engineer. I knew that then, but kidded myself for years, thereafter. Meanwhile, I started to write bad poetry. Journaled – a nice way for a guy to say he does not have a diary – to express my inner thoughts. After I was dismissed from Purdue for my horrible grades in the fall of that year, I went back to Lowell and an apartment that was too small for even myself, and yet, my mom was going to be there too. We argued some – not to the point of utter disdain – but I knew I had royally screwed up, and that got her ire up. I got a job at Burger King (job #9), then at Bob Evan’s as a grill cook, #10 on my list, roughly.

I was 21, and lost.

I went to the library to find Mr. Brooks. I figured a guy like him had written a truth or two since we last met in middle school. Sure enough, I found 3 or 4 books I had not read of his yet. So I read them. I plowed through about dozen books over the next four months. John Grisham was my next fiction target, since Mr. Brooks was only about ¾ the way through The Heritage of Shannara Series. (And I only could afford to buy a couple of titles on Brooks’ other journeys – the Magic Kingdom For Sale –SOLD!!! world, his crossroad title.)

I started reading more and more from then on, moving over to non-fiction, some poetry, and of course, the baseball stuff. Alas, while I did not do it as consistently as others, I can say, that – in a time crisis – Brooks has helped this wannabe move over to a different team. Later on, during my prison stay, I found his The Word and The Void series and The Voyage of The Jerle Shannara series in the dusty bins of a correctional library.

Such is the nature of truth.

(Terry Brooks’ information: Sometimes the Magic Works: Lessons from a Writing Life, 2003, Del Rey (Ballantine Books), New York.)