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Jun 1, 1974 · In A Song For Lya, George R.R. Martin, explores concepts of love, empathy, and loneliness through the use of rich imagery and language. It was published in Analog Science Fiction Magazine and would go on to win the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1975.
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Robb is an empath, able to read people’s feelings, and his lover Lyanna is a telepath, with the ability to read thoughts. Lyanna is a major Talent and her abilities are stronger than Robb’s, but also more demanding. The couple is hired for a job on the distant planet of Shkea. One of the oldest civilisations in space, the culture of Shkea is more t...
At first glance, A Song for Lyaseems to contain a nihilistic message, in that it suggests human beings are fundamentally alone in the universe, and that even seemingly deep connections between people are shallow, superficial and fleeting. This loneliness is symbolised by a vision that Robb has of a dark, empty realm called the "darkling plain." But...
Martin wrote A Song for Lya in 1973, when he was living in Chicago and working at the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation. At the time it was the longest story he'd written, and he believed he had finally surpassed his previous favourite stories With Morning Comes Mistfall and The Second Kind of Lonliness. Martin states that he wrote A Song for...
A Song for Lya was first published in the June 1974 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. It was included in the Martin's short story collections A Song for Lya and Other Stories, published in 1976, and Nightflyers and Other Stories, published in 1985. It was later included in his 2003 anthology Dreamsongs: A RRetrospective.
In 2007, Martin's short story anthology Dreamsongs was released in audiobook format. It included a recording of A Song for Lyaread by Mark Bramhall.
A Song for Lyawon the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1975. It was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novella and Jupiter Award for Best Novella, and took second place in the Locus Poll. In 2014, the Vassals of Kingsgrave podcast released a review of A Song for Lya:
When comparing the thoughts of the Shkeen to other alien species, Robb mentions the Hrangans, the Fyndii and the Damoosh. Robb refers several times to the planet of Baldur, which is where Simon Kress from Sandkings lives, and where Dirk t'Larien from Dying of the Light and John Bowen from This Tower of Ashes were born. He compares the Tower of Schk...
Several of Martin's other works feature the word "song" in the title, most notably his epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, but also the short story collections Songs of Stars and Shadows, Songs the Dead Men Sing, and Dreamsongs, as well as the co-authored anthologies Songs of the Dying Earth and Songs of Love and Death. Martin would re-use ...
The concept of the "darkling plain" comes from the 1867 poem "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold. Lya claims it is one of her favourite poems.
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Here I Am Again. Guest of Honor speech. Literature, Bowling, and the Labor Day Group. Critics and Reviewers. Why I’m Here Today, or, Secrets of My Black Past. The Usual. Editors: The Writer’s Natural Enemy. What I’m Reading. What I’m Watching.
May 1, 2017 · A Song for Lya follows two humans with special Talents on a disturbing quest that takes them to the distant planet of Shkea. Our narrator Robb is an empath, able to read people’s feelings, and his lover Lyanna is a telepath, with the ability to read thoughts.
Specifically A Song for Lya, and I noticed some similarities between it, and Asoiaf. It is about two telepaths; Robb and Lyanna. Who visit an alien planet to find out why the inhabitants worship a mold-like parasitic organism and ultimately choose to be consumed by it.
Summary of the first half of the story: Robert and Lyanna are sci-fi telepaths who get called in by the administrator (Dino) of a human trading outpost on an alien world to investigate the religion of the aliens because humans are starting to join it.
A Song for Lya – the 1974 Hugo Award-winning novella of an alien culture and the young telepath who succumbs to the chilling consequences of its religion... a man trapped between reality and madness on a lonely deep-space outpost... a prospector who learns there is no loyalty among the dead... a hero whose very acts of valor make him a ...
