who would normally have reacted violently to such
an affront, and the leper’s actions seem innocuous
if rather strange.
The following morning Fleete wakens with a
nasty looking discoloration on his chest and a sud-
den craving for undercooked meat. His behavior
grows increasingly biazrre, and horses brought into
close proximity react to his presence with near
panic. During the day Fleete’s behavior grows
more and more bestial. He rolls in the dirt and in-
sists that he is ravenous and that only raw meat
will satisfy him. After night falls all vestiges of his
humanity vanish, and he acts like a savage animal
whom they manage to control only by binding him
hand and foot. A doctor is called to the scene, who
diagnoses Fleete’s condition as a terminal case of
hydrophobia, but even he knows that the answer is
far less simple.
Fleete’s companions eventually capture the
leper and torture him until he agrees to reverse
the curse, after which he is set free. Although the
abrasive Englishman makes a full recovery, his com-
panions are on the verge of nervous collapse and
will never afterward be able to dismiss lightly the
power of local religions. Although one of Kipling’s
best-known stories, it is unsatisfying in some ways,
chiefly because Fleete fully deserved his fate and
later does not even remember his descent into bes-
tiality, while the rightfully offended agent of Hanu-
man is tortured and defeated. The former’s rapid
loss of humanity is, however, eloquently and eco-
nomically narrated.
Martin, George R. R.(1948– )
Although George R. R. Martin has never been a
particularly prolific writer, he has still managed to
become a respected name in science fiction, fan-
tasy, and horror, having published novels and short
stories in all three fields. He began appearing pro-
fessionally in the early 1970s but only turned to
fantasy several years later, notably with the short
story “The Ice Dragon” (1980), a touching story
about an emotionally disturbed child whose life is
altered by the periodic manifestations of a dragon.
Martin’s novel Fevre Dream (1982) is set
aboard a Mississippi riverboat during the 19th cen-
tury. A band of vampires lives there, insulated from
the world of human beings. The major conflict is
not between humans and vampires, but rather be-
tween two strains of the latter, those who consider
humans mere food to be harvested and those who
wish to abandon the traditional role of their kind
and live quietly and in secret. Their battle esca-
lates toward an inevitable but still exciting conclu-
sion. Martin employed the supernatural again in
his next novel, Armageddon Rag(1983), one of the
few attempts to blend horror and rock music that
actually succeeds. A legendary rock band, the
Nazgul, has been idle for years, but they are about
to be brought back together for a single reunion
concert. An enterprising journalist covering the
events building up to the concert discovers that
there is a supernatural conspiracy behind the
scenes and that the effort to bring back the spirit
of the 1960s might result instead in universal Ar-
mageddon.
Martin continued to write occasional short
fantasies during the 1980s, including the gentle
ghost story “Remembering Melody” (1981) and
the Bram Stoker Award–winning “The Pear
Shaped Man” (1987). “The Skin Trade” (1989)
won the World Fantasy Award. Most of these were
collected in Portraits of His Children(1987), the
best collection of his fantasy and horror short sto-
ries. Until the middle of the 1990s, Martin had
written no mainstream fantasy. That changed in
1996 with the publication of A Game of Kings,the
first in a projected series of seven novels.
A Game of Thronesintroduces a very large cast
of characters in a world that encompasses several
kingdoms, the rulers of which are engaged in a
complex game of political intrigue and physical
confrontations. There is dark sorcery involved as
well as the natural dangers of that world, and be-
yond the enormous wall that isolates the civilized
world from the unexplored regions, an army of the
undead has become animated and begins pressing
against the borders. The story continues and grows
more complicated in A Clash of Kings(1997) and
A Storm of Swords(2000), with some of the con-
flicts resolving themselves but others becoming
even more involved. Martin never eases up on the
tension, and he is not afraid of killing off charac-
ters who the reader genuinely misses and who
might have been expected to survive in the hands230 Martin, George R. R.