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" George R.R. Martin failed in his first attempt to become a writer of books, so he headed to Hollywood. His credits included a revival of The Twilight Zone and the ABC series Max Headroom, a short-lived sci-fi show that annoyed America so quickly and completely that its titular character is best remembered today as the spokesman for an even bigger failure: New Coke. Done with the abrupt endings and disappointments of television, Martin started work on a fantasy novel called A Game of Thrones, which would become the first in a planned seven-book epic called A Song of Ice and Fire. Thrones was a classic battle of good versus evil, a ferocious post-Cold War response to a lazy and deservedly maligned genre that had long labored in the shadow of The Lord of the Rings. Thrones was the kind of story a person might write after seeing his great ideas killed by an indifferent TV industry\u2014it had all the makings of a visionary show he wanted to do but couldn&amp;#039;t get green-lit, a Trojan Horse concealing a far grander plan. Chapters ended in cliffhangers so sharp you could almost see the credits roll; the story arc of a hero named Ned Stark was shockingly cut short; the last scene featured a completely naked, literally smoking silver-haired woman with a squalling baby dragon perched on her shoulder\u2014checking every box a cable network executive could possibly want.  Get Esquire for iPad&amp;quot;  Could want and did want. After buying the rights to Martin&amp;#039;s series in 2007, HBO launched its adaptation\u2014shortened to Game of Thrones\u2014with a 2011 debut season that mirrored his first book so closely that the first chapter was the first scene, and the final chapter the final scene. But as season four starts on Sunday, Thrones confronts its most difficult test yet: how to get through the long, meandering middle phase of the other four books in Martin&amp;#039;s series (he has yet to finish volumes six and seven) without absolutely boring the shit out of people. Will we really follow a character for a whole season as she walks\u2014like really walks\u2014more or less aimlessly through the landscape? Will HBO delve into the political intrigues of an ancient city where a main character is basically crashing until she accepts her calling? Questions like these burn hotter with every disappointment served up by this golden age of television. With great TV comes great responsibility, and viewers are always on the lookout for a false arc, or a pointless one, to throw a conniption about. We don&amp;#039;t want to fall for the next Lost or Battlestar Galactica\u2014long series that promised the world and then turned to mush. Martin himself has expressed concern about the fate of Thrones. &amp;quot;I want to give them something terrific,&amp;quot; he once told The New Yorker. &amp;quot;What if I fuck it up at the end? What if I do a Lost?&amp;quot;  But there is one big reason why that won&amp;#039;t happen here. And that is Martin himself.      Here&amp;#039;s the difference between Game of Thrones and some of the great letdowns in modern TV history. The foundation of most shows lies in the improvisational skills of the rooms of writers paid by studios to develop and advance an idea, often for an undetermined period of time (as with, say, Prison Break, whose main characters broke out in season one \u2026 and then did other stuff for three more seasons). In order for this to work, the shows need to achieve a tempered mix of skill, economic success, chemistry among all parties involved in the production, and luck. The foundation of Thrones, on the other hand, is a single, obsessed, invested\u2014and, most important, still working\u2014author. This is not Martin&amp;#039;s show per se, but it is unambiguously his story. And almost twenty years in, he is nowhere near finishing it, nor (seemingly) getting tired of it. In the past six months or so, he&amp;#039;s released two books that take place in the world of Thrones, yet have little to do with the TV show. One is an eighty-page history of a power struggle that took place 150 years before A Game of Thrones begins. The other is a fking atlas; it charts lands that Martin says he may never touch upon in the series itself. He&amp;#039;s also publishing an encyclopedia of his world at the end of this year.  Some might look at this as Martin going down the rabbit hole, or maybe procrastinating when he should be writing more books before the TV series runs out of fodder\u2014especially after a worryingly long delay between books four and five. But Martin has kept a firm hand in the show thus far, and there&amp;#039;s no reason to think things won&amp;#039;t stay that way. He writes one episode per season and serves as co-executive producer, so he&amp;#039;s very much involved in helping adjudicate issues big and small, including variations on his original story. In other words, have faith. I&amp;#039;ve seen the first three episodes of season four, and while I won&amp;#039;t spoil it for you, I can say the following: It will remain its own strange mix of The Walking Dead and The Sopranos. It will have zombies, or something like them. It will have some great character arcs, like those of Tyrion Lannister and Jon Snow. It will not have the kinds of Easter eggs that made True Detective, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad such phenomena\u2014which is a good thing, because if Thrones tried to inject that kind of high-minded allusion (and there&amp;#039;s actually plenty of it in the books), it would land about as well as a pole-vaulting smoked ham. Most important: It will be really fking good. This season, and the ones that follow. All we need is for the show to keep telling us that Winter Is Coming, and so is the Mother of Dragons. Neither will happen this season. But it&amp;#039;s still nice and warm in King&amp;#039;s Landing, and Dany is looking hot conquering something, somewhere\u2014and I&amp;#039;m fine if it stays like that forever.  Get Esquire for iPad&amp;quot;  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a32805/game-of-thrones-george-rr-martin/>