1. S. Anonyia says:

   December 30, 2014 at 12:52 pm GMT • 100 Words

   “Both of these populations are explicitly stated to not be inter-fertile with other human populations due to post-zygotic barriers. I have to wonder if this was just created on the stop to add exotic color to the book, since it seems pretty outlandish.”

   Remember that the narrator of the book is not omniscient. Some of this is deliberately like medieval European reports of men with their faces in their chests. In the game of telephone, some things get messed up. As far as the Ib go, Brown Ben Plumm claims to have an Ibbish great-grandparent. I think it more likely that there is just reduced fertility.
2. Magus Janus says: • Website

   December 30, 2014 at 3:26 pm GMT • 100 Words

   I will say it appears genetics work slightly differently in ASOIAF universe (universos?). Notice Targ purple eyes platinum hair through generations, or the whole Baratheon dark hair thing (though I suppose we could explain them via VERY dominant traits) . It might be a world in which inbreeding has a less deleterious effect for some reason. I mean, if we accept unstable seasons it’s not to much to accept inbreeding through generations not causing catastrophe and genes working slightly differently.

   There are hints that the inbreeding does have SOME effect, i.e. the quote about the Gods flipping a coin in every Targ for madness or greatness. So who knows… maybe the genes for greatness adn madness are linked (similar to Cochran’s theories on Ashk Jewish selection for intelligence leading to higher myopia, tay sachs, etc.) in universos.
3. TGGP says: • Website

   December 30, 2014 at 5:51 pm GMT

   My understanding is that the further from Westeros, the less reliable the account of the “maester” who supposedly wrote The World of Ice and Fire. So they may not be separate species.
4. Pseudonymic Handle says:

   December 30, 2014 at 11:21 pm GMT • 300 Words

   The inbreeding of the Targaryens clearly has a cost with many of them insane or very impulsive, but that’s the price to pay for the ability to bond with dragons, ability that looks to be hereditary. Maybe Daenerys should look for other descendents of Valyrian aristocracy to marry if madness is an effect of incest, but if the same genes that allow bonding with dragons make the Targaryens crazy there is not much she can do.
   The weirdest thing is how so many Westerosi dynasties survived for hundreds and even thousands of years (in Europe their lifespan was on average 150 years) and are threatened with extinction now.
   I’m curious how the warg abilities of the Stark children and Jon Snow came about. Was it something latent in the Starks triggered by the direwolves?
   The TV series has better control of the narrative than the books. Or at least it tries. Martin keeps bringing new characters and new lands into the story all the time and that started to get on my nerves by book 4. I’m curious what they will do now on the HBo series because the written material for some of the characters like Bran is exhausted while others like Jon and Dany have a lot to do. The actress playing Sansa hinted at a very dramatic scene in the upcoming season that it’s not from the books so the show runners will push forward some plotlines ahead of the future books, that may or may not come.
5. CupOfCanada says:

   December 30, 2014 at 11:40 pm GMT • 300 Words

   Re: everyone’s comments on unreliability, I’d just add that this interview from Martin confirms that we are not suppose to take the World of Ice and Fire as entirely factual.

   http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/george-rr-martin-new-book.html

   “Some of that is, Here there be dragons,” Martin cautioned. “It’s beyond the world they know.” Of the other continents yet to be explored, Martin said he “deliberately” kept Sothoryos mysterious, to echo real-life history: “Even though Africa was known to Europe from the earliest days of ancient Greece,” he said, “we knew relatively little about sub-Saharan Africa.”

   He also mentions that he wants to write (or rather co-write, as like this book the two people who run Westeros.org would be working on it as well) a GRRMarillion in the future. Which would be awesome.

   Re: the incest thing – I think it has something to do with their affinity and ability to bond with dragons. Perhaps a process similar to the Starks’ and First Men’s wargs? If it’s a genetic trait, perhaps that was the original reason for their endogamy.

   Re: the people in Sothoryos, I’ll have to reread a Dance with Dragons, as Dany sees some Brindle Men in Mereen when the fighting pits reopen. I can’t recall any details about their appearance though (aside from obviously having brindle colouring). There are other near-human races that we take for granted in the series – the Children of the Forest, the giants and the Others. I don’t think we know much about their interfertility with “standard” humans, or if they share any common ancestry.

   If anyone’s interested in a series with an anthropological skew on its world building, I’d highly recommend the Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson. Erikson is (you guessed it) an anthropologist.
6. josh says:

   December 30, 2014 at 11:54 pm GMT • 300 Words

   Lawrence Auster noticed the same thing:

   I hope I can be forgiven for making observations about a work of which I have so far read very little (namely the key parts of Fellowship including the conference in Rivendell and the last chapter, the first few chapter of Two Towers, and the appendix on the Numenorian kings), but I just have to say how amazed I am. There’s so much to say, but I’ll just limit myself to this.

   The sheer _particularity_ of Tolkien’s created world gives it a density and texture that makes it alive. There is the specificity of the geography (a good map is an absolute requirement for the reader), and of the various races and their characteristics. Tolkien doesn’t set out to tell a myth. He sets out to tell something that has the specificity and concreteness of history. But the story he tells has such a density that it takes on the quality of myth. For example, when Aragorn and his companions have to make the choice whether to follow Frodo and Sam toward Mordor, or whether to head in the opposite direction and try to rescue Pippin and Merry from the Orcs, and they decide on the latter and head off on this exhausting chase across the Northern regions of Rohan toward Isengard, everything has this concrete specificity about it. Yet the whole “lay-out” of the story—including the actions and sufferings of the characters, the detailed geographical setting in which they move, the awful dread that continues to hover over them—has such a density and resonance that it takes on the quality of myth, of something that lives outside time. Tolkien has created a historical, particular world which is so real in its particularity that it becomes mythical. This is an amazing achievement. It is analogous to God’s own creation of the world.

   http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002048.html

   • Replies: @AnonNJ

   @josh

   See Tolkien's On Fairy Stories. In particular, this part about suspension of disbelief and sub-Creations:

   
   Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker's art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
    

7. Curle says: • Website

   December 31, 2014 at 12:16 am GMT • 100 Words

   I recognize the name Tolkien and I’ve heard there is a popular HBO show called Game of Thrones though I assumed it was something akin to other fantasy entertainment I’ve never seen like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight, Harry Potter and The Hunger Games. Should I assume that men of your (our) age are generally familiar with the subject of this post, an HBO series/fantasy novel genre? If so, mind explaining why?
8. Ali Choudhury says:

   December 31, 2014 at 12:36 am GMT

   The Starks defeated the Warg King at some point in their past, killing his sons and taking his daughters as prizes. That’s likely where the warging ability comes from.

   Show is worth watching.
9. AnonNJ says:

   January 2, 2015 at 10:18 pm GMT • 200 Words

   @josh

   Lawrence Auster noticed the same thing:

   
   I hope I can be forgiven for making observations about a work of which I have so far read very little (namely the key parts of Fellowship including the conference in Rivendell and the last chapter, the first few chapter of Two Towers, and the appendix on the Numenorian kings), but I just have to say how amazed I am. There’s so much to say, but I’ll just limit myself to this.

   The sheer _particularity_ of Tolkien’s created world gives it a density and texture that makes it alive. There is the specificity of the geography (a good map is an absolute requirement for the reader), and of the various races and their characteristics. Tolkien doesn’t set out to tell a myth. He sets out to tell something that has the specificity and concreteness of history. But the story he tells has such a density that it takes on the quality of myth. For example, when Aragorn and his companions have to make the choice whether to follow Frodo and Sam toward Mordor, or whether to head in the opposite direction and try to rescue Pippin and Merry from the Orcs, and they decide on the latter and head off on this exhausting chase across the Northern regions of Rohan toward Isengard, everything has this concrete specificity about it. Yet the whole “lay-out” of the story—including the actions and sufferings of the characters, the detailed geographical setting in which they move, the awful dread that continues to hover over them—has such a density and resonance that it takes on the quality of myth, of something that lives outside time. Tolkien has created a historical, particular world which is so real in its particularity that it becomes mythical. This is an amazing achievement. It is analogous to God’s own creation of the world.
    

   http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/002048.html

   Replies: @AnonNJ

   See Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories. In particular, this part about suspension of disbelief and sub-Creations:

   Children are capable, of course, of literary belief, when the story-maker’s art is good enough to produce it. That state of mind has been called “willing suspension of disbelief.” But this does not seem to me a good description of what happens. What really happens is that the story-maker proves a successful “sub-creator.” He makes a Secondary World which your mind can enter. Inside it, what he relates is “true”: it accords with the laws of that world. You therefore believe it, while you are, as it were, inside. The moment disbelief arises, the spell is broken; the magic, or rather art, has failed. You are then out in the Primary World again, looking at the little abortive Secondary World from outside. If you are obliged, by kindliness or circumstance, to stay, then disbelief must be suspended (or stifled), otherwise listening and looking would become intolerable. But this suspension of disbelief is a substitute for the genuine thing, a subterfuge we use when condescending to games or make-believe, or when trying (more or less willingly) to find what virtue we can in the work of an art that has for us failed.
10. Douglas Knight says:

    January 2, 2015 at 11:00 pm GMT

    Since Martin has, in fact, published several hundred pages of prequels, I don’t think he is getting ahead of himself in the Targaryen material.

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