Who else would I do for M but our own George R. R. Martin? I did consider Michael Moorcock but I couldn’t find any of his books on my shelf and felt that was the deciding factor. I must have read some of Martin’s work over the years as he’s been published in Analog, Galaxy, Omni among other publications but I couldn’t find any on my shelf last night.

George R. R. Martin. Multitalented man, he’s written many books, short stories, TV scripts and edited many anthologies, some with Gardner Dozois and some without. He’s been criticised for spending such a long time between publishing books but I suspect very few people take into account the other work he’s doing. I’m sure even the multiskilled Martin can’t do two things at once and make each of them work well.

In print he’s affectionately known as GRRM and I discovered the hard way why we insist on putting R. R. into his name…there’s another famous George Martin who is an English Record Producer who has been made a Knight Bachelor and who is often considered the fifth Beatle due to his involvement on each of their albums. I’d like to suggest we knight GRRM for his involvement in the science fiction and fantasy world. He’s been the catalyst for other people to start reading speculative fiction and then start writing their own. He constantly makes himself available to fans: attending various conventions and signing books all over the world; he has a blog; is on Twitter and; has an author page on Facebook which only has 351.000+ likes.

Sir GRRM I salute you.