document_title: A Song of Ice and Fire

question_text: a song of ice and fire how many pages

question_tokens: a song of ice and fire how many pages

text: A Song of Ice and Fire

text: Plot synopsis[edit]

text: A Song of Ice and Fire takes place in a fictional world in which seasons last for years and end unpredictably. Nearly three centuries before the events of the first novel, the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros were united under the Targaryen dynasty by Aegon I and his sister wives Visenya and Rhaenys, establishing military supremacy through their control of dragons. Aegon became the first king of the entire continent of Westeros, save for the southerly region of Dorne. The Targaryen dynasty ruled for three hundred years, although civil war and infighting between the Targaryens resulted in the death of all their dragons. At the beginning of A Game of Thrones, 15 peaceful years have passed since the rebellion led by Lord Robert Baratheon that deposed and killed the last Targaryen king, Aerys II "the Mad King", and proclaimed Robert king of the Seven Kingdoms, with a nine-year-long summer coming to an end.

text: The principal story chronicles the power struggle for the Iron Throne among the great Houses of Westeros following the death of King Robert in A Game of Thrones. Robert's heir apparent, the 13-year-old Joffrey, is immediately proclaimed king through the machinations of his mother, Queen Cersei Lannister. When Lord Eddard "Ned" Stark, Robert's closest friend and chief advisor, discovers that Joffrey and his siblings are the product of incest between Cersei and her twin brother Jaime "The Kingslayer" Lannister, Eddard attempts to unseat Joffrey, but is betrayed and executed for treason. In response, Robert's brothers Stannis and Renly both lay separate claims to the throne. During this period of instability, two of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros attempt to become independent from the Iron Throne: Eddard's eldest son Robb is proclaimed King in the North, while Lord Balon Greyjoy desires to recover the sovereignty of his region, the Iron Islands. The so-called "War of the Five Kings" is in full progress by the middle of the second book, A Clash of Kings.

text: The second part of story takes place in the far north of Westeros, where an 8,000-year-old wall of ice, simply called "the Wall", defends the Seven Kingdoms from supernatural creatures called as the Others. The Wall's sentinels, the Sworn Brotherhood of the Night's Watch, also protect the realm from the incursions of the "wildlings" or "Free Folk", who are several human tribes living on the north side of the Wall. The Night's Watch story is told primarily through the point of view of Jon Snow, Lord Eddard Stark's bastard son.[8] Jon follows the footsteps of his uncle Benjen Stark and joins the Watch at a young age, rising quickly through the ranks.  He eventually becomes Lord Commander of the Night's Watch. In the third volume, A Storm of Swords, the Night's Watch storyline becomes increasingly entangled with the War of the Five Kings.

text: The third story follows Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of Aerys II, the last Targaryen king. On the continent of Essos, east of Westeros across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys is married off by her elder brother Viserys Targaryen to a powerful warlord, but slowly becomes an independent and intelligent ruler in her own right. Her rise to power is aided by the historic birth of three dragons, hatched from eggs given to her as wedding gifts. The three dragons soon become not only a symbol of her bloodline and her legitimate claim to the throne, but also devastating weapons of war, which help her in conquest of the Slaver's bay.

text: Publishing history[edit]

text: Overview[edit]

text: Books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series are first published in hardcover and are later re-released as paperback editions. In the UK, Harper Voyager publishes special slipcased editions.[9] The series has also been translated into more than 30 languages.[10] All page totals given below are for the US first editions.

text:
#

Title

Pages

Chapters

Words

Audio

US release

1

A Game of Thrones

694[11]

73

292,727[12]

33h 53m

August 1996[11]

2

A Clash of Kings

768[13]

70

318,903[14]

37h 17m

February 1999[13]

3

A Storm of Swords

973[15]

82

414,604[16]

47h 37m

November 2000[15]

4

A Feast for Crows

753[17]

46

295,032[18]

31h 10m

November 2005[17]

5

A Dance with Dragons

1056[19]

73

414,788[20]

48h 56m

July 2011[19]

6

The Winds of Winter

Forthcoming[21]

7

A Dream of Spring

Forthcoming[22]

Total
4,228
344
1,736,054
198h 53m

text: First three novels (1991–2000) [edit]

text: George R. R. Martin was already a successful fantasy and sci-fi author and TV writer before writing his A Song of Ice and Fire book series.[23] Martin had published his first short story in 1971 and his first novel in 1977.[24] By the mid-1990s, he had won three Hugo Awards, two Nebula Awards, and other awards for his short fiction.[25] Although his early books were well-received within the fantasy fiction community, his readership remained relatively small and Martin took on jobs as a writer in Hollywood in the mid-1980s.[25] He worked principally on the revival of The Twilight Zone throughout 1986 and on Beauty and the Beast until 1990, but he also developed his own TV pilots and wrote feature film scripts. He grew frustrated that his pilots and screenplays were not getting made[25] and that TV-related production limitations like budgets and episode lengths were forcing him to cut characters and trim battle scenes.[26] This pushed Martin back towards writing books, where he did not have to worry about compromising the size of his imagination.[25] Admiring the works of J. R. R. Tolkien in his childhood, he wanted to write an epic fantasy, though he did not have any specific ideas.[27]

text: When Martin was between Hollywood projects in the summer of 1991, he started writing a new science fiction novel called Avalon. After three chapters, he had a vivid idea of a boy seeing a man's beheading and finding direwolves in the snow, which would eventually become the first non-prologue chapter of A Game of Thrones.[28] Putting Avalon aside, Martin finished this chapter in a few days and grew certain that it was part of a longer story.[29] After a few more chapters, Martin perceived his new book as a fantasy story[29] and started making maps and genealogies.[23] However, the writing of this book was interrupted for a few years when Martin returned to Hollywood to produce his TV series Doorways that ABC had ordered but ultimately never aired.[26]

text:
"The first scene...chapter one of the first book, the chapter where they find the direwolf pups...just came to me out of nowhere. I was...at work on a different novel, and suddenly I saw that scene. It didn't belong in the novel I was writing, but it came to me so vividly that I had to sit down and write it, and by the time I did, it led to a second chapter, and the second chapter was the Catelyn chapter where Ned has just come back."
—George R. R. Martin in 2014[30]

tag: div

text: In 1994, Martin gave his agent, Kirby McCauley, the first 200 pages and a two-page story projection as part of a planned trilogy with the novels A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter intended to follow. When Martin had still not reached the novel's end at 1400 manuscript pages, he felt that the series needed to be four and eventually six books long,[26][31] which he imagined as two linked trilogies of one long story.[32] Martin chose A Song of Ice and Fire as the overall series title: Martin saw the struggle of the cold Others and the fiery dragons as one possible meaning for "Ice and Fire", whereas the word "song" had previously appeared in Martin's book titles A Song for Lya and Songs the Dead Men Sing, stemming from his obsessions with songs.[33] Martin also named Robert Frost's 1920 poem "Fire and Ice" and cultural associations such as passion versus betrayal as possible influences for the series' title.[34]

text: The revised finished manuscript for A Game of Thrones was 1088 pages long (without the appendices),[35] with the publication following in August 1996.[11] Wheel of Time author Robert Jordan had written a short endorsement for the cover that was influential in ensuring the book's and hence series' early success with fantasy readers.[36] Blood of the Dragon, a pre-release sample novella drawn from Daenerys's chapters, went on to win the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella.[37]

text: The 300 pages removed from the A Game of Thrones manuscript served as the opening of the second book, entitled A Clash of Kings.[31] It was released in February 1999 in the United States,[13] with a manuscript length (without appendices) of 1184 pages.[35] A Clash of Kings was the first book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series to make the best-seller lists,[26] reaching 13 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 1999.[38] After the success of The Lord of the Rings films, Martin received his first inquiries to the rights of the A Song of Ice and Fire series from various producers and filmmakers.[26]

text: Martin was several months late turning in the third book, A Storm of Swords.[25] The last chapter he had written was about the "Red Wedding", a pivotal scene notable for its violence (see Themes: Violence and death).[39] A Storm of Swords was 1521 pages in manuscript (without appendices),[35] causing problems for many of Martin's publishers around the world. Bantam Books published A Storm of Swords in a single volume in the United States in November 2000,[15] whereas some other-language editions were divided into two, three, or even four volumes.[35] A Storm of Swords debuted at number 12 in the New York Times bestseller list.[37][40]

text: Bridging the timeline gap (2000–2011) [edit]

text: After A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, and A Storm of Swords, Martin originally intended to write three more books.[25] The fourth book, tentatively titled A Dance with Dragons, was to focus on Daenerys Targaryen's return to Westeros and the associated conflicts.[32] Martin wanted to set this story five years after A Storm of Swords so that the younger characters could grow older and the dragons grow larger.[41] Agreeing with his publishers early on that the new book should be shorter than A Storm of Swords, Martin set out to write the novel closer in length to A Clash of Kings.[35] A long prologue was to establish what had happened in the meantime, initially just as one chapter of Aeron Damphair on the Iron Islands at the Kingsmoot. Since the events on the Iron Islands were to have an impact in the book and could not be told with existing POV characters, Martin eventually introduced three new viewpoints.[42]

text: In 2001, Martin was still optimistic that the fourth installment might be released in the last quarter of 2002.[33] However, the five-year gap did not work for all characters during writing. On one hand, Martin was unsatisfied with covering the events during the gap solely through flashbacks and internal retrospection. On the other hand, it was implausible to have nothing happen for five years.[41] After working on the book for about a year, Martin realized he needed an additional interim book, which he called A Feast for Crows.[41] The book would pick up the story immediately after the third book, and Martin scrapped the idea of a five-year gap.[33] The material of the written 250-page prologue was mixed in as new viewpoint characters from Dorne and the Iron Islands.[42] These expanded storylines and the resulting story interactions complicated the plot for Martin.[43]

text: The manuscript length of A Feast for Crows eventually surpassed A Storm of Swords.[41] Martin was reluctant to make the necessary deep cuts to get the book down to publishable length, as that would have compromised the story he had in mind. Printing the book in "microtype on onion skin paper and giving each reader a magnifying glass" was also not an option for him.[35] On the other hand, Martin rejected the publishers' idea of splitting the narrative chronologically into A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two.[7] Being already late with the book, Martin had not even started writing all characters' stories[44] and also objected to ending the first book without any resolution for its many viewpoint characters as in previous books.[41]

text: With the characters spread out across the world,[21] a friend suggested that Martin divide the story geographically into two volumes, of which A Feast for Crows would be the first.[7] This approach would give Martin the room to complete his commenced story arcs as he had originally intended,[35] which he still felt was the best approach years later.[21] Martin moved the unfinished characters' stories set in the east (Essos) and north (Winterfell and the Wall) into the next book, A Dance with Dragons,[45] and left A Feast for Crows to cover the events in King's Landing, the Riverlands, Dorne, and the Iron Islands.[35] Both books begin immediately after the end of A Storm of Swords,[21] running in parallel instead of sequentially, and involve different casts of characters with only little overlap.[35] Martin split Arya's chapters into both books after having already moved the three other most popular characters (Jon Snow, Tyrion, and Daenerys) into A Dance with Dragons.[45]

text: Upon its release in October 2005 in the UK[46] and November 2005 in the US,[17] A Feast for Crows went straight to the top of The New York Times bestseller list.[47] Among the positive reviewers was Lev Grossman of Time, who dubbed Martin "the American Tolkien".[48] However, fans and critics alike were disappointed with the story split that left the fates of several popular characters unresolved after A Storm of Swords' cliffhanger ending.[49][50] With A Dance with Dragons said to be half-finished,[49] Martin mentioned in the epilogue of A Feast for Crows that the next volume would be released by the next year.[51] However, planned release dates were repeatedly pushed back. Meanwhile, HBO acquired the rights to turn A Song of Ice and Fire into a dramatic series in 2007[52] and aired the first of ten episodes covering A Game of Thrones in April 2011.[53]

text: With around 1600 pages in manuscript length,[1] A Dance with Dragons was eventually published in July 2011 after six years of writing,[26] longer in page count and writing time than any of the preceding four novels.[23][49] The story of A Dance with Dragons catches up with and goes beyond A Feast for Crows around two-thirds into the book,[44] but nevertheless covers less story than Martin had intended, omitting at least one planned large battle sequence and leaving several character threads ending in cliff-hangers.[23] Martin attributed the delay mainly to his untangling "the Meereenese knot", which the interviewer understood as "making the chronology and characters mesh up as various threads converged on [Daenerys]".[50] Martin also acknowledged spending too much time on rewriting and perfecting the story, but soundly rejected the theories of some of his critics that he had lost interest in the series or would bide his time to make more money.[49]

text: Planned novels and future[edit]

text: Martin believes the last two volumes of the series will be big books of 1500 manuscript pages each.[54] The sixth book will be called The Winds of Winter,[55] taking the title of the last book of the originally planned trilogy.[21] Displeased with the provisional title A Time for Wolves for the final volume, Martin ultimately announced A Dream of Spring as the title for the seventh book in 2006.[22] Martin said in March 2012 that the final two novels will take readers farther north than any of the previous books, and that the Others will appear in the book.[56]

text: The Winds of Winter[edit]

text: The Winds of Winter will resolve the cliffhangers from A Dance with Dragons early on and "will open with the two big battles that [the fifth book] was building up to, the battle in the ice and the battle [...] of Slaver's Bay. And then take it from there."[56] By the middle of 2010, Martin had already finished five chapters of The Winds of Winter from the viewpoints of Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, Arianne Martell, and Aeron Greyjoy, accumulating to around 100 completed pages.[55][57] After the publication of A Dance with Dragons in 2011, Martin announced he would return to writing in January 2012.[23] He spent the meantime on book tours, conventions, and continued working on his The World of Ice & Fire companion guide and a new Tales of Dunk and Egg novella.[58][59]

text: In December 2011, Martin posted a chapter from The Winds of Winter from the viewpoint of Theon Greyjoy;[60] several other chapters have been made public since. Four hundred pages of the sixth novel had been written as of October 2012, although Martin considered only 200 as "really finished"; the rest needed revising.[34] In 2011, Martin gave three years as a realistic estimate for finishing the sixth book at a good pace,[1] but said ultimately the book "will be done when it's done",[21] acknowledging that his publication estimates had been too optimistic in the past.[23] Martin did not intend to separate the characters geographically again.[27]

text: In 2015 there were indications that the book would be published before the sixth season of the HBO show[61][62][63][64][65][66] but in early January 2016 Martin confirmed that he had not met an end-of-year deadline that he had established with his publisher for release of the book before the sixth season. He also revealed there had been a previous deadline of October 2015 that he had considered achievable in May 2015, and that in September 2015 he had still considered the end-of-year deadline achievable. He further confirmed that some of the plot of the book might be revealed in the upcoming season of Game of Thrones.[67] In February 2016, Martin stated that he dropped all his editing projects except for Wild Cards, and that he would not be writing any teleplays, screenplays, short stories, introductions or forewords before delivering The Winds of Winter.[68] In April 2018, Martin announced in a blog post that The Winds of Winter would not be published in 2018.[69]

text: During the Guadalajara International Book Fair in Mexico in early December 2016, Martin offered the following hint as to the tone of this book:

text: There are a lot of dark chapters right now ... I've been telling you for 20 years that winter was coming. Winter is the time when things die, and cold and ice and darkness fill the world, so this is not going to be the happy feel-good that people may be hoping for. Some of the characters [are] in very dark places.[70]

text: A Dream of Spring[edit]

text: Martin is firm about ending the series with the seventh novel "until I decide not to be firm".[23] With his stated goal of telling the story from beginning to end, he will not truncate the story to fit into an arbitrary number of volumes.[39] He knows the ending in broad strokes as well as the future of the main characters,[27] and will finish the series with bittersweet elements where not everyone will live happily ever after.[37] Martin hopes to write an ending similar to The Lord of the Rings that he felt gave the story a satisfying depth and resonance. On the other hand, Martin noted the challenge to avoid a situation like the finale of the TV series Lost, which left some fans disappointed by deviating too far from their own theories and desires.[21] In 2015, Martin said that he was not writing A Dream of Spring together with The Winds of Winter,[71] and in early 2016, he said he did not believe A Dream of Spring would be published before the last season of the HBO show.[72] In 2018, Martin commented he had not started working on the book.[73]

text: Martin offered the following hint as to how the series would conclude during a Q&A at the Guadalajara International Book Fair. "I'm not going to tell you how I'm going to end my book, but I suspect the overall flavor is going to be as much bittersweet as it is happy."[70]

text: TV series and other writings[edit]

text: Early during the development of the TV series, Martin told major plot points to producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss.[27] (The New York Times reported in 2011 that, at age 62, Martin was by all accounts in robust health.)[74] Martin was confident he would have published at least The Winds of Winter before the TV series overtook him.[27] Nevertheless, there was general concern about whether Martin would be able to stay ahead of the show.[75] As a result, head writers Benioff and Weiss learned more future plot points from Martin in 2013 to help them set up the show's new possible seasons. This included the end stories for all the core characters. Deviations from the books' storylines are also being considered, but a two-year show hiatus to wait for new books is not an option for them as the child actors continue to grow and the show's popularity would wane.[76] Martin indicated he would not permit another writer to finish the book series.[49] On January 2, 2016, Martin confirmed that the sixth volume would not be published before the start of the sixth season of the HBO series.[77]

text: Regarding A Song of Ice and Fire as his magnum opus, Martin is certain never to write anything on this scale again and would only return to this fictional universe in the context of stand-alone novels.[42] He prefers to write stories about characters from other A Song of Ice and Fire periods of history such as his Tales of Dunk and Egg project, instead of continuing the series directly.[42][78] A possible future side project is a prequel set during Aegon's conquest of Westeros.[79] Martin said he would love to return to writing short stories, novellas, novelettes, and stand-alone novels from diverse genres such as science fiction, horror, fantasy, or even a murder mystery. However, he will see if his audience follows him after publishing his next project.[29][36]

text: Inspiration and writing[edit]

text: Genre[edit]

text: George R. R. Martin believes the most profound influences to be the ones experienced in childhood.[80] Having read H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert A. Heinlein, Eric Frank Russell, Andre Norton,[29] Isaac Asimov,[33] Fritz Leiber, and Mervyn Peake[81] in his youth, Martin never categorized these authors' literature into science fiction, fantasy, or horror and will write from any genre as a result.[80] Martin classified A Song of Ice and Fire as "epic fantasy",[1] and specifically named Tad Williams' high fantasy epic Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn as very influential for the writing of the series.[33][81] One of his favorite authors is Jack Vance,[33] although Martin considered the series not particularly Vancean.[32]

text: Martin experienced some harsh winters when living in Dubuque a few years in the 70s, and suspects these winters had an influence on his writing; "I think a lot of the stuff in A Game of Thrones, the snow and ice and freezing, comes from my memories of Dubuque".[30]

text:
"[Martin's Ice and Fire series] was groundbreaking (at least for me) in all kinds of ways. Above all, the books were extremely unpredictable, especially in a genre where readers have come to expect the intensely predictable. [...] A Game of Thrones was profoundly shocking when I first read it, and fundamentally changed my notions about what could be done with epic fantasy."
—Fantasy writer Joe Abercrombie in 2008[82]

text: The medieval setting has been the traditional background for epic fantasy. However, where historical fiction leaves versed readers knowing the historical outcome,[81] original characters may increase suspense and empathy for the readers.[80] Yet Martin felt historical fiction, particularly when set during the Middle Ages, had an excitement, grittiness, and a realness to it that was absent in fantasy with a similar backdrop.[83] Thus, he wanted to combine the realism of historical fiction with the magic appeal of the best fantasies,[84] subduing magic in favor of battles and political intrigue.[25] He also decided to avoid the conventional good versus evil setting typical for the genre, using the fight between Achilles and Hector in Homer's Iliad, where no one stands out as either a hero or a villain, as an example of what he wants to achieve with his books.[85]

text: Martin is widely credited with broadening the fantasy fiction genre for adult content, including incest, paedophilia, and adultery.[49] For The Washington Post's Writing for The Atlantic, Amber Taylor assessed the novels as hard fantasy with vulnerable characters to which readers become emotionally attached.[86] CNN found in 2000 that Martin's mature descriptions were "far more frank than those found in the works of other fantasy authors",[87] although Martin assessed the fantasy genre to have become rougher-edged a decade later and that some writers' work was going beyond the mature themes of his novels.[39] Adam Roberts called Martin's series the most successful and popular example of the emerging subgenre of grimdark fantasy,[88] influencing other writers associated with that style, such as Joe Abercrombie.

text: Writing process[edit]

text: Setting out to write something on an epic scale,[87] Martin projected to write three books of 800 manuscript pages in the very early stages of the series.[81] His original 1990s contract specified one-year deadlines for his previous literary works, but Martin only realized later that his new books were longer and hence required more writing time.[41] In 2000, Martin planned to take 18 months to two years for each volume and projected the last of the planned six books to be released five or six years later.[37] However, with A Song of Ice and Fire series evolving into the biggest and most ambitious story he has ever attempted writing,[45] he still has two more books to write as of 2018. Martin said he needed to be in his own office in Santa Fe, New Mexico to immerse himself in the fictional world and write.[25] As of 2011, Martin was still typing his fiction on a DOS computer with WordStar 4.0 software.[89] He begins each day at 10 am with rewriting and polishing the previous day's work,[80] and may write all day or struggle to write anything.[25] Excised material and previous old versions are saved to be possibly re-inserted at a later time.[45] Martin does not consider A Song of Ice and Fire a "series" but a single story published in several volumes.[90]

text: Martin set the A Song of Ice and Fire story in a secondary world inspired by Tolkien's writing.[27] Unlike Tolkien, who created entire languages, mythologies, and histories for Middle-earth long before writing The Lord of the Rings, Martin usually starts with a rough sketch of an imaginary world that he improvises into a workable fictional setting along the way.[49] He described his writing as coming from a subconscious level in "almost a daydreaming process",[91] and his stories, which have a mythic rather than a scientific core, draw from emotion instead of rationality.[29] Martin employs maps[25] and a cast list topping 60 pages in the fourth volume,[7] but keeps most information in his mind.[1] His imagined backstory remains subject to change until published, and only the novels count as canon.[45] Martin does not intend to publish his private notes after the series is finished.[25]

text: Martin drew much inspiration from actual history for the series,[80] having several bookcases filled with medieval history for research[92] and visiting historic European landmarks.[43] For an American who speaks only English, the history of England proved the easiest source of medieval history for him, giving the series a British rather than a German or Spanish historic flavor.[93] For example, Ned and Robb Stark resemble Richard, 3rd Duke of York and his son Edward IV, and Queen Cersei resembles both Margaret of Anjou[94] and Elizabeth Woodville.[95] Martin immersed himself in many diverse medieval topics such as clothing, food, feasting, and tournaments, to have the facts at hand if needed during writing.[37] The series was in particular influenced by the Hundred Years' War, the Crusades, the Albigensian Crusade, and the Wars of the Roses,[80][92] although Martin refrained from making any direct adaptations.[80] Martin was also inspired by the French historical novels The Accursed Kings by Maurice Druon, which are about the French monarchy in the 13th and 14th centuries.[2][3]

text: The story is written to follow principal landmarks with an ultimate destination, but leaves Martin room for improvisation. On occasion, improvised details significantly affected the planned story.[96] By the fourth book, Martin kept more private notes than ever before to keep track of the many subplots,[33] which became so detailed and sprawling by the fifth book as to be unwieldy.[23] Martin's editors, copy editors, and readers monitor for accidental mistakes,[33] although some errors have slipped into publication. For instance, Martin has inconsistently referred to certain characters' eye colors, and has described a horse as being of one sex and then another.[49]

text: Narrative structure[edit]

text:
Number of chapters per point-of-view character
hide

POV character
Game
Clash
Storm
Feast
Dance
(Winds)
Sum

Bran Stark

7
7
4

3

21

Catelyn Stark

11
7
7

25

Daenerys Targaryen

10
5
6

10

31

Eddard Stark

15

15

Jon Snow

9
8
12

13

42

Arya Stark

5
10
13
3
2
≥1[55]
33

Tyrion Lannister

9
15
11

12
≥2[97]
47

Sansa Stark

6
8
7
3

≥1[55]
24

Davos Seaworth

3
6

4

13

Theon Greyjoy

6

7
≥1[60]
13

Jaime Lannister

9
7
1

17

Samwell Tarly

5
5

10

Cersei Lannister

10
2

12

Brienne of Tarth

8

8

Aeron Greyjoy

2

≥1[57]
2

Areo Hotah

1
1
≥1[98]
2

Asha Greyjoy

1
3

4

Arys Oakheart

1

1

Victarion Greyjoy

2
2
≥1[97]
4

Arianne Martell

2

≥2[55]
2

Quentyn Martell

4

4

Jon Connington

2

2

Melisandre

1

1

Barristan Selmy

4
≥2[99][100]
4

Prologue/Epilogue

1/–
1/–
1/1
1/–
1/1
1/
7

Total (characters)

73 (9)
70 (10)
82 (12)
46 (13)
73 (18)
TBD
344 (31)

text: The books are divided into chapters, each one narrated in the third person limited through the eyes of a point of view character,[49] an approach Martin learned himself as a young journalism student.[101] Beginning with nine POV characters in A Game of Thrones, the number of POV characters grows to a total of 31 in A Dance with Dragons (see table). The short-lived one-time POV characters are mostly restricted to the prologue and epilogue.[37] David Orr of The New York Times noted the story importance of "the Starks (good guys), the Targaryens (at least one good guy, or girl), the Lannisters (conniving), the Greyjoys (mostly conniving), the Baratheons (mixed bag), the Tyrells (unclear) and the Martells (ditto), most of whom are feverishly endeavoring to advance their ambitions and ruin their enemies, preferably unto death".[102] However, as Time's Lev Grossman noted, readers "experience the struggle for Westeros from all sides at once", such that "every fight is both triumph and tragedy [...] and everybody is both hero and villain at the same time".[103]

text: Modeled on The Lord of the Rings, the story of A Song of Ice and Fire begins with a tight focus on a small group (with everyone in Winterfell, except Daenerys) and then splits into separate stories. The storylines are to converge again, but finding the turning point in this complex series has been difficult for Martin and has slowed down his writing.[21] Depending on the interview, Martin is said to have reached the turning point in A Dance with Dragons,[21] or to not quite have reached it yet in the books.[104] The series' structure of multiple POVs and interwoven storylines was inspired by Wild Cards, a multi-authored shared universe book series edited by Martin since 1985.[105] As the sole author, Martin begins each new book with an outline of the chapter order and may write a few successive chapters from a single character's viewpoint instead of working chronologically. The chapters are later rearranged to optimize character intercutting, chronology, and suspense.[37]

text: Influenced by his television and film scripting background, Martin tries to keep readers engrossed by ending each A Song of Ice and Fire chapter with a tense or revelational moment, a twist or a cliffhanger, similar to a TV act break.[106] Scriptwriting has also taught him the technique of "cutting out the fat and leaving the muscle", which is the final stage of completing a book, a technique that brought the page count in A Dance with Dragons down almost eighty pages.[107] Dividing the continuous A Song of Ice and Fire story into books is much harder for Martin. Each book shall represent a phase of the journey that ends in closure for most characters. A smaller portion of characters is left with clear-cut cliffhangers to make sure readers come back for the next installment, although A Dance with Dragons had more cliffhangers than Martin originally intended.[27][37] Both one-time and regular POV characters are designed to have full character arcs ending in tragedy or triumph,[37] and are written to hold the readers' interest and not be skipped in reading.[81] Main characters are killed off so that the reader will not rely on the hero to come through unscathed and will instead feel the character's fear with each page turn.[36]

text: The unresolved larger narrative arc encourages speculation about future story events.[49] According to Martin, much of the key to A Song of Ice and Fire's future lies over a dozen years in the fictional past, of which each volume reveals more.[25] Events planned from the beginning are foreshadowed, although Martin is careful not to make the story predictable.[104] The viewpoint characters, who serve as unreliable narrators,[21] may clarify or provide different perspectives on past events.[108] Therefore, what the readers believe to be true may not necessarily be true.[25]

text: Character development[edit]

text: Regarding the characters as the heart of the story,[109] Martin planned the epic A Song of Ice and Fire to have a large cast of characters and many different settings from the beginning.[21] A Feast for Crows has a 63-page list of characters,[7] with many of the thousands of characters mentioned only in passing[49] or disappearing from view for long stretches.[110] When Martin adds a new family to the ever-growing number of genealogies in the appendices, he devises a secret about the personality or fate of the family members. However, their backstory remains subject to change until written down in the story.[45] Martin drew most character inspiration from history (without directly translating historical figures)[25] and his own experiences, but also from the manners of his friends, acquaintances, and people of public interest.[33] Martin aims to "make my characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish well-mixed in their natures".[37] Jeff VanderMeer of the Los Angeles Times remarked that "Martin's devotion to fully inhabiting his characters, for better or worse, creates the unstoppable momentum in his novels and contains an implied criticism of Tolkien's moral simplicity"[111] (see Themes: Moral ambiguity).

text: Martin deliberately ignored the writing rule of never giving two characters names starting with the same letter.[45] Instead, character names reflect the naming systems in various European family histories, where particular names were associated with specific royal houses and where even the secondary families assigned the same names repeatedly.[45] The story of A Song of Ice and Fire therefore has children called "Robert" in honor of King Robert of House Baratheon, a "Brandon" in every other generation of the Starks in commemoration of Brandon the Builder (of the Wall), and the syllable "Ty" commonly occurring in given names of House Lannister.[31] Confident that readers would pay attention, Martin distinguished people sharing a given name[45] by adding numbers or locations to their given names (e.g. Henry V of England).[31] The family names were designed in association with ethnic groups (see backstory): the First Men in the North of Westeros had very simply descriptive names like Stark and Strong, whereas the descendants of the Andal invaders in the South have more elaborate, undescriptive house names like Lannister or Arryn, and the Targaryens and Valyrians from the Eastern continent have the most exotic names with the letter Y.[31]

text: All characters are designed to speak with their own internal voices to capture their views of the world.[37] The Atlantic pondered whether Martin ultimately intended the readers to sympathize with characters on both sides of the Lannister–Stark feud long before plot developments force them to make their emotional choices.[112] Contrary to most conventional epic fantasies, the characters of A Song of Ice and Fire are vulnerable so that, according to The Atlantic, the reader "cannot be sure that good shall triumph, which makes those instances where it does all the more exulting."[86] Martin gets emotionally involved in the characters' lives during writing, which makes the chapters with dreadful events sometimes very difficult to write.[37] Seeing the world through the characters' eyes requires a certain amount of empathy with them, including the villains,[80] all of whom he has said he loves as if they were his own children.[81][109] Martin found that some characters had minds of their own and took his writing in different directions. He returns to the intended story if it does not work out, but these detours sometimes prove more rewarding for him.[45]

text: Arya Stark, Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow, and Daenerys Targaryen generate the most feedback from readers.[113] Martin has stated that Tyrion is his personal favorite, as the grayest of the gray characters, with his cunning and wit making him the most fun to write.[81] Martin has also said that Bran Stark is the hardest character to write. As the character most deeply involved in magic, Bran's story needs to be handled carefully within the supernatural aspects of the books. Bran is also the youngest viewpoint character,[37] and has to deal with the series' adult themes like grief, loneliness, and anger.[106] Martin set out to have the young characters grow up faster between chapters, but, as it was implausible for a character to take two months to respond, a finished book represents very little time passed. Martin hoped the planned five-year break would ease the situation and age the children to almost adults in terms of the Seven Kingdoms, but he later dropped the five-year gap (see section Bridging the timeline gap).[27][37]

text: Themes[edit]

text: Although modern fantasy may often embrace strangeness, A Song of Ice and Fire series is generally praised for what is perceived as a sort of medieval realism.[102] Believing that magic should be used moderately in the epic fantasy genre,[26] Martin set out to make the story feel more like historical fiction than contemporary fantasy, with less emphasis on magic and sorcery and more on battles, political intrigue, and the characters.[25] Though the amount of magic has gradually increased throughout the story, the series is still to end with less overt magic than most contemporary fantasies.[37] In Martin's eyes, literary effective magic needs to represent strange and dangerous forces beyond human comprehension,[59] not advanced alien technologies or formulaic spells.[114] As such, the characters understand only the natural aspects of their world, but not the magical elements like the Others.[102]

text: Since Martin drew on historical sources to build the world of A Song of Ice and Fire ,[80] Damien G. Walter of The Guardian saw a strong resemblance between Westeros and England in the period of the Wars of the Roses.[115] The Atlantic's Adam Serwer regarded A Song of Ice and Fire as "more a story of politics than one of heroism, a story about humanity wrestling with its baser obsessions than fulfilling its glorious potential", where the emergent power struggle stems from the feudal system's repression and not from the fight between good and evil.[112] Martin not only wanted to reflect the frictions of the medieval class structures in the novels, but also explore the consequences of the leaders' decisions, as general goodness does not automatically make competent leaders and vice versa.[84]

text: A common theme in the fantasy genre is the battle between good and evil,[84] which Martin rejects for not mirroring the real world.[32] Attracted to gray characters,[116] Martin instead endorses William Faulkner's view that only the human heart in conflict with itself was worth writing about.[84] Martin explores the questions of redemption and character change in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.[117] The multiple viewpoint structure allows characters to be explored from many sides, such that the supposed villains can provide their viewpoint.[87][42]

text: Although fantasy comes from an imaginative realm, Martin sees an honest necessity to reflect the real world where people die sometimes ugly deaths, even beloved people.[37] Main characters are killed off so that the reader will not expect the supposed hero to survive, and instead will feel the same tension and fear that the characters might.[36] The novels also reflect the substantial death rates in war.[81] The deaths of supernumerary extras or orcs have no major effect on readers, whereas a friend's death has much more emotional impact.[104] Martin prefers a hero's sacrifice to say something profound about human nature.[27]

text: According to Martin, the fantasy genre rarely focuses on sex and sexuality,[37] instead often treating sexuality in a juvenile way or neglecting it completely.[80] Martin, however, considers sexuality an important driving force in human life that should not be excluded from the narrative.[117] Providing sensory detail for an immersive experience is more important than plot advancement for Martin,[21] who aims to let the readers experience the novels' sex scenes, "whether it's a great transcendent, exciting, mind blowing sex, or whether it's disturbing, twisted, dark sex, or disappointing perfunctory sex."[117] Martin was fascinated by medieval contrasts where knights venerated their ladies with poems and wore their favors in tournaments while their armies mindlessly raped women in wartime.[37] The non-existent concept of adolescence in the Middle Ages served as a model for Daenerys' sexual activity at the age of 13 in the books.[106] The novels also allude to the incestuous practices in the Ptolemaic dynasty of Ancient Egypt to keep their bloodlines pure.[118]

text: Martin provides a variety of female characters to explore the place of women in a patriarchal society.[104] Writing all characters as human beings with the same basic needs, dreams, and influences,[24] his female characters are to cover the same wide spectrum of human traits as the males.[104][24]

text: Reception[edit]

text: Critical response[edit]

text: Science Fiction Weekly stated in 2000 that "few would dispute that Martin's most monumental achievement to date has been the groundbreaking A Song of Ice and Fire historical fantasy series",[37] for which reviews have been "orders of magnitude better" than for his previous works, as Martin described to The New Yorker.[49] In 2007, Weird Tales magazine described the series as a "superb fantasy saga" that "raised Martin to a whole new level of success".[29] Shortly before the release of A Dance with Dragons in 2011, Bill Sheehan of The Washington Post was sure that "no work of fantasy has generated such anticipation since Harry Potter's final duel with Voldemort",[110] and Ethan Sacks of Daily News saw the series turning Martin into a darling of literary critics as well as mainstream readers, which was "rare for a fantasy genre that's often dismissed as garbage not fit to line the bottom of a dragon's cage".[60] Salon.com's Andrew Leonard stated:

text: The success is all the more remarkable because [the series debuted] without mass market publicity or any kind of buzz in the fantasy/SF scene. George R. R. Martin earned his following the hard way, by word of mouth, by hooking his characters into the psyche of his readers to an extent that most writers of fantasy only dream of.[119]

text: Publishers Weekly noted in 2000 that "Martin may not rival Tolkien or Robert Jordan, but he ranks with such accomplished medievalists of fantasy as Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson."[15] After the fourth volume came out in 2005, Time's Lev Grossman considered Martin a "major force for evolution in fantasy" and proclaimed him "the American Tolkien", explaining that, although Martin was "[not] the best known of America's straight-up fantasy writers" at the time and would "never win a Pulitzer or a National Book Award ... his skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today".[48] As Grossman said in 2011, the phrase American Tolkien "has stuck to [Martin], as it was meant to",[103] being picked up by the media including The New York Times ("He's much better than that"),[120] the New Yorker,[49] Entertainment Weekly ("an acclaim that borders on fantasy blasphemy"),[23] The Globe and Mail,[51] and USA Today.[116] Time magazine named Martin one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2011,[51] and USA Today named George R.R. Martin their Author of the Year 2011.[121]

text: According to The Globe and Mail's John Barber, Martin manages simultaneously to master and transcend the genre so that "Critics applaud the depth of his characterizations and lack of cliché in books that are nonetheless replete with dwarves and dragons".[51] Publishers Weekly gave favorable reviews to the first three A Song of Ice and Fire novels at their points of release, saying that A Game of Thrones had "superbly developed characters, accomplished prose and sheer bloody-mindedness",[11] that A Clash of Kings was "notable particularly for the lived-in quality of [their fictional world and] for the comparatively modest role of magic",[13] and that A Storm of Swords was one "of the more rewarding examples of gigantism in contemporary fantasy".[15] However, they found that A Feast For Crows as the fourth installment "sorely misses its other half. The slim pickings here are tasty, but in no way satisfying."[17] Their review for A Dance with Dragons repeated points of criticism for the fourth volume, and said that, although "The new volume has a similar feel to Feast", "Martin keeps it fresh by focusing on popular characters [who were] notably absent from the previous book."[19]

text: According to the Los Angeles Times, "Martin's brilliance in evoking atmosphere through description is an enduring hallmark of his fiction, the settings much more than just props on a painted stage", and the novels captivate readers with "complex storylines, fascinating characters, great dialogue, perfect pacing, and the willingness to kill off even his major characters".[111] CNN remarked that "the story weaves through differing points of view in a skillful mix of observation, narration and well-crafted dialogue that illuminates both character and plot with fascinating style",[87] and David Orr of The New York Times found that "All of his hundreds of characters have grace notes of history and personality that advance a plot line. Every town has an elaborately recalled series of triumphs and troubles."[102] Salon.com's Andrew Leonard "couldn't stop reading Martin because my desire to know what was going to happen combined with my absolute inability to guess what would happen and left me helpless before his sorcery. At the end, I felt shaken and exhausted."[122] The Christian Science Monitor advised reading the novels with an A Song of Ice and Fire encyclopedia at hand to "catch all the layered, subtle hints and details that [Martin] leaves throughout his books. If you pay attention, you will be rewarded and questions will be answered."[123]

text: Among the most critical voices were Sam Jordison and Michael Hann, both of The Guardian. Jordison detailed his misgivings about A Game of Thrones in a 2009 review and summarized "It's daft. It's unsophisticated. It's cartoonish. And yet, I couldn't stop reading .... Archaic absurdity aside, Martin's writing is excellent. His dialogue is snappy and frequently funny. His descriptive prose is immediate and atmospheric, especially when it comes to building a sense of deliciously dark foreboding [of the long impending winter]."[124] Hann did not consider the novels to stand out from the general fantasy genre, despite Martin's alterations to fantasy convention, although he rediscovered his childhood's views:

text: That when things are, on the whole, pretty crappy [in the real world], it's a deep joy to dive headfirst into something so completely immersive, something from which there is no need to surface from hours at a time. And if that immersion involves dragons, magic, wraiths from beyond death, shapeshifting wolves and banished princes, so be it.[125]

text: Sales[edit]

text: The reported overall sales figures of the A Song of Ice and Fire series vary. The New Yorker said in April 2011 (before the publication of A Dance with Dragons) that more than 15 million A Song of Ice and Fire books had been sold worldwide,[49] a figure repeated by The Globe and Mail in July 2011.[51] Reuters reported in September 2013 that the books including print, digital and audio versions have sold more than 24 million copies in North America.[127] The Wall Street Journal reported more than six million sold copies in North America by May 2011.[128] USA Today reported 8.5 million copies in print and digital overall in July 2011,[129] and over 12 million sold copies in print in December 2011.[121] The series has been translated into more than 20 languages;[10] USA Today reported the fifth book to be translated into over 40 languages.[116] Forbes estimated that Martin was the 12th highest-earning author worldwide in 2011 at $15 million.[130]

text: Martin's publishers initially expected A Game of Thrones to be a best-seller,[23] but the first installment did not even reach any lower positions in bestseller list.[58] This left Martin unsurprised, as it is "a fool's game to think anything is going to be successful or to count on it".[109] However, the book slowly won the passionate advocacy of independent booksellers and the book's popularity grew by word of mouth.[49] The series' popularity skyrocketed in subsequent volumes,[23] with the second and third volume making The New York Times Best Seller lists in 1999[38] and 2000,[40] respectively. The series gained Martin's old writings new attention, and Martin's American publisher Bantam Spectra was to reprint his out-of-print solo novels.[37]

text: The fourth installment, A Feast for Crows, was an immediate best-seller at its 2005 release,[23] hitting number one on "The New York Times" hardcover fiction bestseller list November 27, 2005, which for a fantasy novel suggested that Martin's books were attracting mainstream readers.[1] The paperback edition of A Game of Thrones reached its 34th printing in 2010, surpassing the one million mark.[131] Before it even premiered, the TV series had boosted sales of the book series, with A Song of Ice and Fire approaching triple-digit growth in year-on-year sales. Bantam was looking forward to seeing the tie-ins boost sales further,[53] and Martin's British publisher Harper Voyager expected readers to rediscover their other epic fantasy literature.[132] With a reported 4.5 million copies of the first four volumes in print in early 2011,[53] the four volumes re-appeared on the paperback fiction bestseller lists in the second quarter of 2011.[126][133]

text: At its point of publication in July 2011, A Dance with Dragons was in its sixth print with more than 650,000 hardbacks in print.[134] It also had the highest single and first-day sales of any new fiction title published in 2011 at that point, with 170,000 hardcovers, 110,000 e-books, and 18,000 audio books reportedly sold on the first day.[129] A Dance with Dragons reached the top of The New York Times bestseller list on July 31, 2011.[7] Unlike most other big titles, the fifth volume sold more physical than digital copies early on,[74] but nevertheless, Martin became the tenth author to sell 1 million Amazon Kindle e-books.[135] All five volumes and the four-volume boxed set were among the top 100 best-selling books in the United States in 2011 and 2012.[136]

text: The TV series has contributed significantly boosting sales of both the books and collectibles like box-sets, merchandise, and other items. The TV series also contributed in increasing the geographic coverage of the books, introducing new customers in emerging countries like India and Brazil to the book series. All this has significantly increased the overall book sales.

text: Fandom[edit]

text: During the 1980s and early 1990s, Martin's novels had slowly earned him a reputation in science fiction circles,[137] although he said to only have received a few fans' letters a year in the pre-internet days.[80] The publication of A Game of Thrones caused Martin's following to grow, with fan sites springing up and a Trekkie-like society of followers evolving that meet regularly.[137] Westeros.org, one of the main A Song of Ice and Fire fansites with about seventeen thousand registered members as of 2011, was established in 1999 by a Swedish-based fan of Cuban-American descent, Elio M. García, Jr., and his girlfriend; their involvement with Martin's work has now become semi-professional.[49] The Brotherhood Without Banners, an unofficial fan club operating globally, was formed in 2001. Their founders and other longtime members are among Martin's good friends.[49]

text: Martin runs an official website[7] and administers a lively blog with the assistance of Ty Franck.[49] He also interacts with fandom by answering emails and letters, although he stated in 2005 that their sheer numbers might leave them unanswered for years.[80] Since there are different types of conventions nowadays, he tends to go to three or four science-fiction conventions a year simply to go back to his roots and meet friends.[138] He does not read message boards anymore, so that his writing will not be influenced by fans foreseeing twists and interpreting characters differently from what he intended.[138]

text:
"After all, as some of you like to point out in your emails, I am sixty years old and fat, and you don't want me to 'pull a Robert Jordan' on you and deny you your book. Okay, I've got the message. You don't want me doing anything except A Song of Ice and Fire. Ever. (Well, maybe it's okay if I take a leak once in a while?)"
—George R. R. Martin on his blog in 2009[139]

text: While Martin calls the majority of his fans "great", and enjoys interacting with them,[27] some of them turned against him because of the six years it took to release A Dance with Dragons.[49] A movement of disaffected fans called GRRuMblers formed in 2009, creating sites such as Finish the Book, George and Is Winter Coming?.[49][51] When fans' vocal impatience for A Dance with Dragons peaked shortly after, Martin issued a statement called "To My Detractors"[139] on his blog that received media attention.[49][124][140] The New York Times noted that it was not uncommon for Martin to be mobbed at book signings either.[137] The New Yorker called this "an astonishing amount of effort to devote to denouncing the author of books one professes to love. Few contemporary authors can claim to have inspired such passion."[49]

text: Awards and nominations[edit]

text:
A Game of Thrones (1996) – Locus Award winner,[141] World Fantasy Award[142] and Nebula Award nominee, 1997[143]
A Clash of Kings (1998) – Locus Award winner,[141] Nebula Award nominee, 1999[143]
A Storm of Swords (2000) – Locus Award winner,[141] Hugo Award[144] and Nebula Awards nominee, 2001[145]
A Feast for Crows (2005) – Hugo,[146] Locus,[141] and British Fantasy Awards nominee, 2006[147]
A Dance with Dragons (2011) – Locus Award winner,[148] Hugo Award[149] and World Fantasy Award nominee, 2012[150]

text: Derived works[edit]

text: Novellas[edit]

text: Martin has written several prequel novellas. The Tales of Dunk and Egg series, three novellas set ninety years before the events of the novel series, feature the adventures of Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire "Egg", the later King Aegon V Targaryen. The stories have no direct connection to the plot of A Song of Ice and Fire, although both characters are mentioned in A Storm of Swords and A Feast For Crows, respectively. The first installment, The Hedge Knight, was published in the 1998 anthology Legends. The Sworn Sword followed in 2003, published in Legends II.[42] Both were later adapted into graphic novels.[151] The third novella, titled The Mystery Knight, was first published in the 2010 anthology Warriors,[152] and is planned to be adapted as a graphic novel as well.[153] Martin planned to release the first three novellas as one collection in 2014.[154] Up to eight further Dunk and Egg installments are planned.[39]

text: The novella The Princess and the Queen or, the Blacks and the Greens appeared in Tor Books's 2013 anthology Dangerous Women, and explains some of the Targaryen backstory two centuries before the events of the novels.[155][156] The Rogue Prince, or, the King's Brother, published in the 2014 anthology Rogues, is itself a prequel to the events of The Princess and the Queen.[157] The novella The Sons of the Dragon appeared in the 2017 anthology The Book of Swords, is the story of Aegon the Conqueror's two sons Aenys I and Maegor I "the cruel".

text: Chapter sets from the novels were also compiled into three novellas that were released between 1996 and 2003 by Asimov's Science Fiction and Dragon:

text:
Blood of the Dragon (July 1996),[158] taken from the Daenerys chapters in A Game of Thrones.
Path of the Dragon (December 2000),[159] taken from the Daenerys chapters in A Storm of Swords.
Arms of the Kraken (March 2003),[160] based on the Iron Islands chapters from A Feast for Crows.

text: TV series[edit]

text: With the popularity of the series growing, HBO optioned A Song of Ice and Fire for a television adaptation in 2007.[52] A pilot episode was produced in late 2009, and a series commitment for nine further episodes was made in March 2010.[161] The series, titled Game of Thrones, premiered in April 2011 to great acclaim and ratings (see Game of Thrones: Reception). The network picked up the show for a second season covering A Clash of Kings two days later.[162] Shortly after the conclusion of the first season, the show received 13 Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, winning Outstanding Main Title Design and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for Peter Dinklage's portrayal of Tyrion Lannister.[163] HBO announced a renewal for a third season in April 2012, ten days after the season 2 premiere.[164] Due to the length of the corresponding book, the third season only covered roughly the first half of A Storm of Swords.[165]

text:
Shortly after the season 3 premiere in March 2013, the network announced that Game of Thrones would be returning for a fourth season, which would cover the second half of A Storm of Swords along with the beginnings of A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons.[166] Game of Thrones was nominated for 15 Emmy Awards for season 3.[167] Two days after the fourth season premiered in April 2014, HBO renewed Game of Thrones for a fifth and sixth season.[168] Season 5 premiered on April 12, 2015 and set a Guinness World Records for winning the highest number of Emmy Awards for a series in a single season and year, winning 12 out of 24 nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series.[169][170]
These episodes were watched by 8 million viewers, setting a record number for the series.[171] The sixth season premiered on April 24, 2016.[172] These episodes received the most nominations for the 68th Primetime Emmy Awards with 23, winning 12, including the award for Outstanding Drama Series.[173]  The seventh season premiered on July 16, 2017. The eighth and final season is set to premiere in 2019.[174]

text: Other works[edit]

text: A Song of Ice and Fire has spawned an industry of spin-off products. Fantasy Flight Games released a collectible card game, a board game, and two collections of artwork inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire series.[175][176] Various roleplaying game products were released by Guardians of Order and Green Ronin.[177][178] Dynamite Entertainment adapted A Game of Thrones into a same-titled monthly comic in 2011.[179] Several video games are available or in production, including A Game of Thrones: Genesis (2011) and Game of Thrones (2012) by Cyanide;[180][181] both received mediocre ratings from critics.[182] A social network game titled Game of Thrones Ascent (2013) by Disruptor Beam allows players to live the life of a noble during the series' period setting.[183] Random House released an official map book called The Lands of Ice and Fire, which includes old and new maps of the Ice and Fire world.[184] The companion book The World of Ice & Fire by Martin and the Westeros.org owners Elio M. García Jr. and Linda Antonsson was published in October 2014.[49] Other licensed products include full-sized weapon reproductions,[185] a range of collectable figures,[186][187] Westeros coinage reproductions,[188] and a large number of gift and collectible items based on the HBO television series.[189] The popularity of the HBO series has made its version of the Iron Throne an icon of the entire media franchise.[190][191][192][193]


document_title: Sinner's prayer

question_text: where did the sinner's prayer come from

question_tokens: where did the sinner 's prayer come from

root

text: Sinner's prayer

text: Origins[edit]

text: The Sinner's Prayer, as popularly known today, has roots in Protestant Christianity. Some affirm that it evolved, in some form or another, during the early days of the Protestant Reformation, as a reaction against the Roman Catholic dogma of justification by means of meritorious works.[14] Others believe it originated as late as the eighteenth century revival movement.[4] However, Paul Harrison Chitwood, in his doctoral dissertation on the history of the Sinner's Prayer, provides strong evidence that the Sinner's Prayer originated in the early twentieth century.[15]

tag: p

text: Evangelists such as Billy Graham and evangelistic organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ brought the concept to prominence in the 20th century. Televangelists often ask viewers to pray a Sinner's Prayer with them, one phrase at a time, to become a Christian. Quite commonly, such a prayer appears at the conclusion of a tract and is recited in a religious service or other public service as an invitation for congregants to affirm their faith, sometimes as part of an altar call. It is said to happen many times every day around the world—in one-to-one conversations between friends, relatives, and even strangers; in pastors' offices; via email; in online chat rooms; in addition to both small and large worship services.[16]

text: Typical examples[edit]

text: An early proponent of the sinner's prayer was the well-known American evangelist D. L. Moody.[17]

text: An early version of what some would consider the Sinners' Prayer is found in Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan, published in 1678, Ninth Stage, Chapter 18:

text: Hopeful: He bid me go to him and see. Then I said it was presumption. He said, No; for I was invited to come.[Mt 11:28] Then he gave me a book of Jesus’ inditing, to encourage me the more freely to come; and he said concerning that book, that every jot and tittle thereof stood firmer than heaven and earth.[Mt 24:35] Then I asked him what I must do when I came; and he told me I must entreat upon my knees,[Ps 95:6] [Dan 6:10] with all my heart and soul,[Jer 29:12,13] the Father to reveal him to me. Then I asked him further, how I must make my supplications to him; and he said, Go, and thou shalt find him upon a mercy-seat, where he sits all the year long to give pardon and forgiveness to them that come.[18] I told him, that I knew not what to say when I came; and he bid say to this effect:

text: God be merciful to me a sinner, and make me to know and believe in Jesus Christ; for I see, that if his righteousness had not been, or I have not faith in that righteousness, I am utterly cast away. Lord, I have heard that thou art a merciful God, and hast ordained that thy Son Jesus Christ should be the Savior of the world; and moreover, that thou art willing to bestow him upon such a poor sinner as I am—and I am a sinner indeed. Lord, take therefore this opportunity, and magnify thy grace in the salvation of my soul, through thy Son Jesus Christ. Amen.

text: Billy Graham[edit]

text: Dear Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner, and I ask for Your forgiveness. I believe You died for my sins and rose from the dead. I turn from my sins and invite You to come into my heart and life. I want to trust and follow You as my Lord and Savior. In Your Name.

text: Cru (formerly Campus Crusade for Christ)[edit]

text: Lord Jesus, I need You. Thank You for dying on the cross for my sins. I open the door of my life and receive You as my Savior and Lord. Thank You for forgiving my sins and giving me eternal life. Take control of the throne of my life. Make me the kind of person You want me to be.[20]

text: St. Paul Street Evangelization[edit]

text: God our Father, I believe that out of Your infinite love You have created me. In a thousand ways I have shunned Your love. I repent of each and every one of my sins. Please forgive me. Thank You for sending Your Son to die for me, to save me from eternal death. I choose this day to enter into (renew my) covenant with You and to place Jesus at the center of my heart. I surrender to Him as Lord over my whole life. I ask You now to flood my soul with the gift of the Holy Spirit so that my life may be transformed. Give me the grace and courage to live as a disciple in Your Church for the rest of my days. Amen.[10]

text: Support[edit]

text: The Peace with God organization, and other evangelistic organizations and preachers, messengers (delegates) to the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) 2012 annual meeting reaffirmed the "Sinner's Prayer" after some debate:

text: We affirm that repentance and faith involve a crying out for mercy and a calling on the Lord (Rom. 10:13), often identified as a "Sinner's Prayer", as a biblical expression of repentance and faith. A "Sinner's Prayer" is not an incantation that results in salvation merely by its recitation and should never be manipulatively employed or utilized apart from a clear articulation of the gospel (Matt. 6:7, 15:7–9).[1]

text: Criticisms[edit]

text: The absence of any specific examples of people praying the "Sinner's Prayer" in the Bible is also used by some to argue against it. There are also no examples of conversions in the Bible with people praying such a prayer. Though a more prominent concern is voiced by those who say it creates within the sinner a false sense of security.

text: "Authentic Conversions?"[edit]

text: David Platt, a prominent Southern Baptist pastor in Birmingham, Alabama, has said that "Many assume they are saved simply because of a prayer they prayed. It's not that praying a prayer in and of itself is bad—but the question in John 2-3 is what kind of faith are we calling people to?"[1] Speaking at the Verge church leaders' conference said the emphasis on the Sinner's Prayer is "unbiblical and damning." he continued,

text: "I'm convinced that many people in our churches are simply missing the life of Christ, and a lot of it has to do with what we've sold them as the gospel, i.e. pray this prayer, accept Jesus into your heart, invite Christ into your life. Should it not concern us that there is no such superstitious prayer in the New Testament? Should it not concern us that the Bible never uses the phrase, 'accept Jesus into your heart' or 'invite Christ into your life'? It's not the gospel we see being preached, it's modern evangelism built on sinking sand. And it runs the risk of disillusioning millions of souls."[21]

text: Platt says he is concerned that some people "say they believe in Jesus, …say they have accepted Jesus, …say that they have received Jesus, but they are not saved and will not enter the kingdom of heaven". While he affirmed that people calling out to God with repentant faith is fundamental to attaining eternal life (salvation), he said his comments about the "sinner's prayer" have been deeply motivated "by a concern for authentic conversions".

text: Subsequently he has written:

text: My comments about the sinner's prayer have been deeply motivated by a concern for authentic conversion and regenerate church membership.... Do I believe it is "wrong" for someone to pray a "prayer of salvation"? Certainly not. Calling out to God in prayer with repentant faith is fundamental to being saved…. (I) urge us, as we go to all people among all nations with the good news of God's love, to be both evangelistically zealous and biblically clear at the same time (Matthew 28:18-20).[22]

text: Francis Chan, a well-known evangelical Christian, has been making statements that contradict the sinner's prayer and emphasizing baptism and the Holy Spirit [23]

text: Possible shallow, or insincere commitment[edit]

text: A second and related criticism is that many believers fail to mature as Christians after their supposed conversion using the Sinner's Prayer. An article in Christianity Today claims that "mediocrity and hypocrisy characterize the lives of many avowed Christians".

text: Anyone can, and most Americans do, "believe" in Jesus rather than some alternative savior. Anyone can, and many Americans sometimes do, say a prayer asking Jesus to save them. But not many embark on a life fully devoted to the love of God, the love of neighbor, the moral practice of God's will, and radical, costly discipleship.

text: The writer encourages believers to go beyond a sinner's prayer and "embark on a life fully devoted to the love of God, the love of neighbor, the moral practice of God's will, and radical, costly discipleship". "Love of God" and "Love of neighbor" are the Great Commandments. See also Disciple (Christianity).[24]

text: Does the reciter truly understand what the commitment to Christ really means? Praying a sinner’s prayer with someone who isn’t genuinely repentant may create a false sense of security in the one reciting it. According to John 6:44, if a sinner is ready to accept Jesus as Savior, a biblical prerequisite is that the sinner (Christian prospect) has been drawn by the Holy Spirit.[24]

text: Not Taught in Revelation 3:20 or Romans 10:9-10, 13[edit]

text: Another criticism of the Sinner's Prayer is that passages used to support it actually are not about the lost repeating a prayer in order to become Christians. The Sinner's Prayer is often employed in conjunction with Revelation 3:20 and Romans 10:9-10, 13. Revelation 3:20 is employed to teach that Christ is knocking at the door of one's heart, and when a lost person asks Him to come inside, Jesus comes into the sinner's heart. Romans 10:9-10, 13 are employed to affirm that one must confess with his mouth, that is, say the sinner's prayer, in order to become a Christian. However, the Baptist Greek professor Thomas Ross argues that Revelation 3:20 is about members of a church turning to the Lord, not about Christ entering into the heart of the lost. He provides 14 reasons that Revelation 3:20 is not about the lost asking Jesus into their hearts to become saved.[25] He similarly argues that Romans 10:9-14 refers to Christians confessing Christ publicly before men and manifesting a life of prayer, rather than to the lost becoming saved by a one-time repetition of the Sinner's Prayer.[26]

text: Another form of this criticism of the sinner's prayer states that simply praying the sinner's prayer does not actually grant salvation to the one praying. One essay on the topic from the "Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry" asserts that "The 'Sinner's Prayer' is, today, an effective tool of Satan to dupe people into believing they are saved when they are not".

text: Many Christians make the cataclysmic and unbiblical mistake of giving the other person a false sense of assurance of salvation, by asserting the person is saved because he prayed a prayer. So, many people walk away from such a conversation still dead in their sins, but believing what they've been told. "I believed what my friend told me, and I prayed a prayer. So, now I'm a Christian!"

text: Absence of the Sinner's Prayer in historic Christianity[edit]

text: Other opponents of the Sinner's Prayer point out that no classic Christian confession of faith from any evangelical denomination in Christendom affirms that one must say the Sinner's Prayer to be saved; on the contrary, Baptist, Presbyterian and other Reformed, and other evangelical groups unanimously teach justification by faith alone. They argue that the Sinner's Prayer is a modern deviation from orthodox evangelicalism [27] and a deviation from classic evangelical methods of evangelism.[15] The Sinner's Prayer was not practiced before the 1700s.[citation needed] Therefore, to say that it is the way to be saved is to say that prior to the 1700s no one was saved.[citation needed]

text: Doctrine of baptismal regeneration[edit]

text: Baptismal regenerationalists—those Christians who believe that when one is baptized in water is the actual moment that an individual receives salvation include Roman Catholics, the Churches of Christ, International Churches of Christ, Christian churches and churches of Christ, and the United Pentecostal Church International. This is based on passages in the New Testament that some interpret to require water baptism for salvation. Examples of these may be found in Mark 16:16, John 3:3-5, Acts 2:38, Acts 22:16, 1 Peter 3:21.

text: In what is termed the Great Commission of Jesus just prior to his Ascension in Matt. 28:18-20, he instructed his followers to go, make disciples, teach them, and baptize them. Jesus was baptized in water by John the Baptist. His disciples baptized converts, but Jesus never personally baptized anyone, according to John 4:2 which says that "Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples" did. Opponents of baptismal regeneration understand baptism to be a means of identifying with Christ, and that when performed by immersion it is symbolic of his death, burial and resurrection. Some dispensationalists believe the baptism that saves a person is the Baptism with the Holy Spirit that Jesus gives, and not water baptism.[28] Many other evangelicals and fundamentalists recognize that texts such as Mark 16:16, John 3:5, and Acts 2:38 refer to baptism in water, but argue that such verses, interpreted in their context, provide no support whatsoever for baptismal regeneration.[29] Historic or Landmark Baptists affirm that the baptism with the Holy Spirit was a completed event that took place in the first century and is not for today, arguing that texts employed to support baptismal regeneration are actually totally consistent with justification by faith alone.[30]

text: Roman Catholics, Lutherans,[31] and Orthodox churches also teach that forgiveness is received in baptism (although they practice this in the "Christening" with water of infants or adult converts). A leading Roman Catholic authority defines "baptism" in the following fashion:

text: A sacrament of the New Law instituted by Jesus Christ, in which, as a result of washing with water accompanied by the words "I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," a human being is spiritually regenerated, and made capable of receiving the other sacraments…. Baptism of the unborn. If there is not a probable hope that a child can be baptized after birth, Baptism may be administered in the womb: in the case of a head presentation, on the head; in other presentations on the part presented, but then it has to be again baptized conditionally if it is living on complete delivery. Should the mother die in labour, the child is to be extracted from the womb and, if certainly living, baptized absolutely; if life is doubtful, conditionally. An aborted fetus must also be baptized, unconditionally or conditionally according to the circumstances

text: Evidence presented to advocate baptism being necessary for salvation includes the conversion of Saul of Tarsus (the Apostle Paul). After Christ had told Saul to enter Damascus where Saul would be told what he "must" do,[Acts 9:6] Saul was blind for three days and was praying during this time.[Acts 9:9-11] Ananias arrived, cured Paul of his blindness and baptized Saul.[Acts 22:16][33]

text: Others see it as an example of apparently instantaneous salvation coming through repentance without water baptism or any kind of work, citing the assurance Jesus gave to the penitent thief on a cross next to him during the crucifixion.[Lk 23:39-43][34]

text: An opposing position here is that the penitent thief was dying under the older Mosaic law which did not require baptism (cf. Mikveh) and that before Christ's death He had authority and did forgive many without any of the salvation requirements found after His Death, Burial and Resurrection found in the rest of the New Testament.[Heb 9:15-17] Additionally, it is unknown whether the thief had been baptized at a stage in life before being crucified. John the Baptist and Jesus' disciples already had baptized many individuals.[35]

text: Baptismal regenerationalists refer to water baptism as the "washing of regeneration", believing it to be part of the "born again" conversion experience in the Bible. The passage states, "And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord".[Acts 22:16] Opponents of baptismal regeneration argue that vast numbers of texts in John's Gospel, the only specifically evangelistic book of the New Testament (John 20:31), promise eternal life to every single believer (John 1:12; 3:16, 18, 36; 5:24; 6:47, etc.) and so demonstrate that eternal life is received by faith alone before baptism. Similarly, while texts affirm that those who do not repent and believe are damned (Luke 13:3; Jn 3:18, 36), no Biblical text affirms that the unbaptized are damned, so baptismal regeneration is false.[36] Advocates of the Sinner's Prayer also believe verses such as Romans 10:13 show that people are saved before baptism when they pray and ask to be saved, while evangelical and fundamentalist opponents of the Sinner's Prayer believe that a defense of the Sinner's Prayer plays into the hands of opponents of justification by faith alone by enshrining a human tradition over the Biblical mandate to repent and believe to receive eternal life (Mr 1:15). Moreover, opponents of the Sinner's Prayer reference Romans 6:3-5 to assert that the audience of the book of Romans was already baptized, and, therefore, were being instructed to call on the name of the Lord after they had heard and believed the message being preached (Acts 10:14-17). Other verses such as Acts 22:16 suggest that baptism and "calling on His name" are complementary actions required for forgiveness of sins. [37]


document_title: The Dukes of Hazzard (film)

question_text: who plays billy cricket in dukes of hazzard

text: The Dukes of Hazzard (film)

text: Plot[edit]

text: Cousins Bo (Seann William Scott), Luke (Johnny Knoxville), and Daisy Duke (Jessica Simpson) run a moonshine business for their Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson) in Hazzard County, Georgia. The cousins' primary mode of transportation is an orange 1969 Dodge Charger that the boys affectionately refer to as the "General Lee". Along the way, the family is tormented by corrupt Hazzard County Commissioner Jefferson Davis Hogg, widely known as "Boss Hogg" (Burt Reynolds), and his willing but dimwitted henchman, Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (M. C. Gainey).

text: After Rosco has the General Lee wrecked during Bo's attempt at winning his fifth consecutive local road rally, Billy Prickett (James Roday), a famous stock-car driver, enters Hazzard to participate in the rally. Meanwhile, Rosco plants a fake moonshine still ("'cause he's too dumb to find the real one") in Uncle Jesse's barn and seizes the Duke property in the interest of eminent domain for Boss Hogg, forcing the family to temporarily reside with neighbor and Uncle Jesse's love-interest, Pauline (Lynda Carter). Pauline informs the Dukes that Rosco seized another farm on charges so Bo and Luke investigate a local construction site and find geologic core samples with the help of bait-shop owner Sheev (Kevin Heffernan). Meanwhile, Coltrane makes arrangements to seize the General Lee as "evidence" from the local auto body shop run by the Dukes' friend Cooter Davenport (David Koechner), who instead turns the car into a hot-rod and applies a new paint job and horn, in return for finally getting payment for all the work he has done ("...'cause that's how this works...") for the boys in the past.

text: After retrieving the General Lee before Rosco can, the Dukes go to Atlanta to visit a local university geology lab, meeting up with Katie-Lynn Johnson (Nikki Griffin), a Hazzard county girl and the Dukes' love interest, and her Australian roommate Annette (Jacqui Maxwell). At the lab, they discover Boss Hogg's intentions of turning the county into a strip coalmine. They are later arrested by Atlanta Police after running from campus police. Back in Hazzard, Daisy learns, with the help of Sheriff Deputy Enos Strate (Michael Weston), that Billy Prickett has been hired by Boss Hogg to participate in the Rally as a ringer. Boss Hogg then heads to Atlanta where he informs the Duke boys, in lock-up, that they are too late to stop him and reveals that the vote on Hogg's proposition is at the same time as the rally, explaining Billy Prickett's involvement. During a transfer from detainment, Daisy helps the boys escape from the patrol car and they speed home to try to inform the townsfolk, escaping Atlanta Police, and the Georgia State Patrol after Bo out-maneuvers the city cops.

text: Upon returning home, the Dukes discover that Rosco has taken Uncle Jesse and Pauline hostage, an obvious trap for the boys, and that Billy is in on the scheme because he's ashamed of the town's low status. The two race to the farmhouse to cause a distraction to the waiting Hazzard County Sheriff's Deputies and Georgia State Troopers while Daisy and Cooter rescue Jesse and Pauline. Meanwhile, the college girls head to the rally with Sheev to inform the townsfolk about the vote on the strip-mining ordinance. Because of Sheev's armadillo hat and lack of pants, no one listens, so Bo leaves for the rally while Luke and Jesse team up to foil the county and state police who are chasing Bo, interfering with the race. Upon crossing the finish line first, before Billy, the two continue racing back and forth all the way into town, leading the townsfolk to the courthouse just in time to vote against Boss Hogg's proposed ordinance. At the courthouse, Daisy takes advantage of the governor of Georgia's presence and TV cameras to convince him into pardoning the boys, so Uncle Jesse takes the opportunity to knock out Boss Hogg and gets a pardon for assaulting a county commissioner at the same time.

text: The final scene shows a cook-out at the Dukes' house where Pauline convinces Uncle Jesse, who could not be found because he was "using the meat smoker", to get up and play the television series' main theme. Bo and Luke are romantically involved with the girls in the General Lee when they are caught by Luke's other love-interest Laurie Pullman (Alice Greczyn) from the intro of the film, who proceeds to chase them with a shotgun as they drive away.

text: During the credits, outtakes from the production of the film are shown.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Johnny Knoxville as Luke Duke
Seann William Scott as Bo Duke
Jessica Simpson as Daisy Duke
Burt Reynolds as Boss Hogg
Willie Nelson as Uncle Jesse Duke
David Koechner as Cooter Davenport
M. C. Gainey as Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane[1]
Michael Weston as Deputy Enos Strate
Lynda Carter as Pauline
James Roday as Billy Prickett
Kevin Heffernan as Derek "Sheev" Sheevington
Nikki Griffin as Katie-Lynn Johnson
Jacqui Maxwell as Annette
Alice Greczyn as Laurie Pullman
Junior Brown as The Balladeer (narrator)
Joe Don Baker as Governor Jim Applewhite
Barry Corbin as Bill Pullman
Randy Orton as Bo Duke (Stunt double)

tag: ul

text: Cameos[edit]

text: All five members of the comedy film troupe Broken Lizard make appearances in the film, classified as cameos except for Kevin Heffernan who had a larger speaking role (Sheev).

text:
Steve Lemme appears as Jimmy Pullman, the son of Bill Pullman, in an early car chase scene in which he accidentally shoots the inside of his father's truck.
Jay Chandrasekhar and Erik Stolhanske reprise their roles as "Ramathorn" and "Rabbit" from the Broken Lizard comedy, Super Troopers. The characters are now campus security officers, who give a warning to the Duke boys for driving too slowly.
Paul Soter appears as TV newsman Rick Shakely, who is reporting from the Hazzard Road Rally.
Charlie Finn, who played a dimwitted fast food employee in Super Troopers, appears as a dimwitted geology student who assists the Duke boys with the coal samples.

text:
During the bar fight scene, Indy-car driver A. J. Foyt IV appears as himself.
Bloopers roll under the ending credits, one of which features Rip Taylor interrupting the bedroom scene with Luke and the two college girls. Taylor had previously appeared with Knoxville in Jackass: The Movie.

text: Production[edit]

text: Stunts[edit]

text: Knoxville said he was initially reluctant to take on the role but was persuaded by script changes and the presence of Dan Bradley as stunt coordinator and second unit for the car chase scenes. Knoxville praised him saying "everyone in Hollywood wants Dan Bradley to shoot their car stuff".[2]

text: Locations[edit]

text: The majority of the film was shot in and around Clinton, Louisiana.

text: The street scenes are set in Atlanta but filmed in the New Orleans Central Business District, and the University scenes on the campus of Louisiana State University.

text: Reception[edit]

text: Box office[edit]

text: The film was No. 1 at the box office its opening weekend and grossed $30.7 million on 3,785 screens. It also had an adjusted-dollar rank of No. 24 all-time for August releases.[3]

text: The film eventually collected $111 million worldwide, although it was much less successful financially outside the United States.

text: Critical reception[edit]

text: Roger Ebert gave the film one star, calling it a "lame-brained, outdated wheeze" and wondered that Burt Reynolds' part in the film is "karma-wise... the second half of what Smokey and the Bandit was the first half of".[4] Ebert also named it the second worst film of the year and Richard Roeper named it the worst film of 2005.[5]

text: According to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 14% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 168 reviews; the website's consensus called the film "A dumb, goofy and vacuous adaptation of a TV show where plot is simply an excuse to string together the car chases." The audience score on the film was "46% liked it". "Top Critics" linked by Rotten Tomatoes who gave the film a "fresh" rating (positive review) wrote for Chicago Review, USA Today, Toronto Star, New York Post, Washington Post, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, and Variety. [6] The film received an average rating of 33% on Metacritic based on 36 reviews.[7] Longtime fans of the original Dukes of Hazzard series were generally disappointed by the film.[8]

text: Awards[edit]

text: At the 26th Golden Raspberry Awards, the film received seven nominations, but didn't win any.

text:
Worst Picture - lost to Dirty Love
Worst Director (Jay Chandrasekhar) - lost to John Mallory Asher for Dirty Love
Worst Screenplay (John O'Brien) - lost to Jenny McCarthy for Dirty Love
Worst Supporting Actor (Burt Reynolds) - lost to Hayden Christensen in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
Worst Supporting Actress (Jessica Simpson) - lost to Paris Hilton in House of Wax
Worst Screen Couple (Jessica Simpson & Her Daisy Dukes) - lost to Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell in Bewitched
Worst Remake or Sequel - lost to Son of the Mask

text: At the People's Choice Awards, Simpson won the "Favorite Song from a Movie" award for her cover of Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'".

text: The film was nominated for two MTV Movie Awards, including Best On-Screen Team (Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott, & Jessica Simpson), and Sexiest Performance (Jessica Simpson).

text: Simpson won the Choice Breakout Female award for her role in the film at the Teen Choice Awards.

text: Controversy[edit]

text: Before the release of this film, Warner Bros. reportedly paid $17.5 million to the producer of Moonrunners, the movie that inspired the television series. This was soon followed by a claim from screenwriter Gy Waldron. The Hollywood Reporter reported that James Best, who portrayed Rosco P. Coltrane in the original series, filed suit in late July 2011 over royalties he was contracted to receive over spinoffs that "used his identity".[9] Ben Jones, who played Cooter Davenport in the original series, criticized the film for its emphasis on sexual content, suggesting that the original series was more family-oriented and not as sexualized.[10] He called for fans of the television series to boycott the film "unless they clean it up before the August 5th release date."

text: Some have countered that the original series also contained sexual themes, primarily Catherine Bach's (Daisy Duke) much-displayed "short shorts" (which have become so ubiquitous in American culture that skimpy blue jean cutoff shorts are now often simply called "Daisy Dukes"). In a film review, a New York Daily News entertainment columnist said the movie's sex humor is "cruder" than the TV series, but that it is "nearly identical to the TV series in... its ogling of the posterior of cousin Daisy Duke."[11]

text: Although initially he commented that he enjoyed the new style of relationship between the movie versions of Bo and Luke, John Schneider, who played Bo Duke in the original series, was later asked if he saw the film and said: "My gosh... it was terrible! It wasn’t Dukes. It was true to whatever it was; I just don’t know what that was!"[12]

text: Soundtrack[edit]

text: Jessica Simpson recorded her own version of "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" (and added her own lyrics) for the soundtrack to the film The Dukes of Hazzard (2005). Performed from the point of view of her character in the movie, Simpson's cover was co-produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, and was released as the soundtrack's first single in 2005. It became Simpson's fifth top-twenty single in the United States and its music video drew some controversy because of its sexual imagery.[13] Both the original Ram Jam version of "Black Betty", and the Sylvia Massy produced remake by Spiderbait appear in the film. "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)" and "Shoot to Thrill" are played by AC/DC.[14]

text: Unrated Cut[edit]

text: In 2008, an unrated cut restored changes made to get a PG-13 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America. The unrated cut was released on DVD, and included rated and unrated bonus features, including unrated deleted scenes and blooper scenes. This edition was not rated by the MPAA, but would have unquestionably been rated R for nudity, language and violent driving stunts.[15]

text: Prequel[edit]

text: A prequel to the film, titled The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning, was released to television on March 4, 2007 and released to DVD on March 13, 2007.