Tony from the Starship Sofa podcast writes, "Listen to George R R Martin's The Men of Greywater Station over at StarShipSofa. It is the first time this story has appeared anywhere online. It was written with Howard Waldrop in 1976 and appeared in Amazing Science Fiction magazine."
Getting this story was far from easy. In fact, it's probably one of the hardest things StarShipSofa has ever done. GRRM is a household name, a celebrity icon, so it was always a longshot.
But that didn't matter: we had to try. Jeremy Szal, our assistant editor, looked up a handful of his older stories, selected the one best suited for our podcast, and one that was unique, and shot over multiple requests. He basically told him who we were and what we did and gave him a pitch for adapting the story.
Then a few days later, GRRM responded. He wanted to know what sort of audio adaption it would be and how we'd do it. Our assistant editor told him the details. Then he gave us the green light/go ahead. We had a George R. R. Martin story!Only there was one problem: both the story (and the collection it appears in) are out of print (and have been since the 70s), and have never appeared online. Ever. Our assistant editor went back to him about this, and he offered to post him one of his own copies, or failing that, a carbon copy of the story.
So our assistant editor forked over his address and that was that. Nick (our narrator) went ahead and bought the book himself, and did a smashing job of the narration. And now StarShipSofa has officially had the honour and privilege of adapting a story by King George R. R. Martin, Lord of the Literary SF/F kingdom and protector of the realm. Not only that, but this is the FIRST TIME the story has ever been online, or even available to the public, since the 1970s. No electronic file exists publicly, and certainly no audio version. StarShipSofa is the first podcast — and only venue in the world — to do it."
(Image: George RR Martin at the Comicon, Bree Chan, Public Domain)
