How Big is the 'Game of Thrones' World?

Okay, to begin, let's get this out of the way: George Martin is a little bit of a coy dick about the planetary mechanics of his fictional universe. Which is actually fair, considering the more information he gives us, the less magic exists in his world.

I don't mean that in a literary way, I mean if we get more than even a reasonable sense of scale, we can actually determine to size of The World, and from that extrapolate its approximate mass and gravity (how dragons can sustain flight, maximum likely biped height, the strength of an executioner's swinging arm, the physical effects of non-congenital dwarfism, etc). Worse, with a little heliocentric tinkering, we could determine the planet's probable distance from a yellow sun to be in the 'Goldilocks Zone' of habitability and possible eccentricity of orbit and tilt, thus giving us a predictable seasonal cycle, what is essentially the giant looming doom on the horizon of the whole series.

Thus, it's pretty reasonable that Mr. Martin doesn't want us science-y types mucking around in his playpen.


That said, LET'S MUCK THE FUCK AROUND IN THIS DUDE'S PLAYPEN!

Click for embiggening.

Here's a map I just pieced together from the most recent official map release (free posters at Barnes and Noble locations) and a previous map derived from the Lands of Ice and Fire book that included distance scale. It is the most detailed map to date, though clearly cuts out large chunks of land in the Southern and South-Eastern regions. Additionally, there are tall tales of lands of eternal summer and without death in the distant West. Based on the similarity to Tolkein's work, I'm going to assume this land is full of elves and demigods. Since most people discount these stories, we should probably assume that they are 100% a real place. Martin has also said, at various times, that this planet is round (spherical is the implication), and about the same size as Earth or possibly a little bigger. Sothoryos, the lush continent at bottom center is described as being roughly akin to Africa in that it is jungle and historically unexplored by the people of the North. Ulthos, to the far South-East, is almost completely unknown except it is also covered in dense jungle.

Now what then can we glean from this image?

Well firstly, as a sense of scale, the image at hand, based on the scale from its predecessor, is just shy of being 8,700 miles across. This is fairly important.

The Earth's equator is just shy of 25,000 mi in circumference. We're tempted by the layout of the map to assume the centerline runs through The World's equator, but historically this wasn't the case on Earth until the mid 16th century. More often, Jerusalem or another politically important center was used as the center of a map, often eclipsing any rational scale or sense of distances.

Heinrich Bünting's map of the world, 1581.
He also drew Europe as a person whose head pointed West. Because yep.

Moreover, if we consider the climateology described by Martin and the map, only Northern Westeros seems to maintain an arctic climate. (In fact this is a major part of the nation's history and folklore, concerning the White Walkers and whatever else lives beyond The Wall in the Lands of Always Winter.) Importantly, at the bottom of our map we find only tropical climes. Not only is the map missing a large portion of The World latitudinally, it's missing ITS ENTIRE SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE.

I'll say that again. We currently have a map of verifiably less than half the planet. That is a problem.


But!

"But!" I say! We can fix this! for we now know some important facts:

1. The distances involved are fairly accurate, as they pertain to a well-traveled set of lands in the center of the map.
2. These lands are, very approximately, halfway between the tropical regions and the arctic ones.
3. The circumference of a sphere at any latitude is its equatorial circumference times the cosine of the latitude. (Apparently.)

Earth, for example, is just about 24,900 miles at the equator. Let's call it an even 24k to compensate for oblation of the sphere and just to make our lives a little easier. The Earth's circumference at the 42nd parallel, which New York resides along, would be:

cos(42) • 24000 = roughly 17,800 miles.

 So The World of Ice and Fire, then, at approximately the same latitude it would seem, would be:

cos(42) • X = 8,700

Solving for X would give us a planet only 11,700 miles in circumference. That would make it about 15% smaller than Mars, which already has gravity approximately 1/3 Earth norm. If this were the case, not only could dragons easily fly through even a thin atmosphere, but White Walkers could grow to enormous heights. Also, rain, snow, and the swinging of an axe towards the neck of anyone House Stark wouldn't really function as they do.


Conclusion: Not only are we missing the ENTIRE BOTTOM HALF OF THE GLOBE, we are ALSO MISSING A QUARTER MORE UP TOP.


Now, let me run into rampant speculation, and say that what follows are numbers I am only guessing at, grossly approximated for a perfect, spherical planet, and I actually have no idea if the math I'm doing is even remotely close enough to provide us any meaningful data about this fake World, but I have an idea and I haven't yet seen the Internet regurgitate anything remotely similar, so I'm calling this as my show from here on out.

If we do accept this as a spherical planet, although none really are, we could theoretically switch our orientation and calculate the circumference of The World at a longitudinal point!

The HEIGHT of our given map is approximately 5,700 miles. Let's round up to an even 6,000 to bring our map 'down' to the probable equator, and then double that for the Southern hemisphere. That gives us a vertical circumference at any Meridian of approximately 12,000 miles, or roughly the same as Earth! (Obviously the extent of the tropical zone is approximated, as is the exact distance from the Lands of Always Winter to The World's North Pole.)

So with these calculations, and matching what information George Martin has released to the public on the topic, we can see that The World really is about the same size as the Earth, possibly a little smaller or larger depending on how much we fudge the exact measurements and what is essentially Medieval cartography.

And that means The World really looks like this:

Which is stupid. It should be black and cloudy, like in Warcraft I & II for Windows 95 and 98.

Here's what that looks like, way cooler:

We've got a lot of map to fill in. For my money, I'm putting an ancient Middle Earth on the other side of the globe, possibly upside-down à la Douglas Adams' "Mostly Harmless" since it is said the Sun first rose in the West before Varda decided it should rise opposite, and let's go with Conan's Hyborian Age on the other side of the Northern hemisphere, so that their "snow apes," driven from their homelands to the far North of the remnants of the continent of Thuria by the now Neolithic humans who they then came to loathe, can be related to White Walkers.

Boom. I just saved space by putting 3 fantasy novels and a Douglas Adams sequel on a single planet.

"Now bring me that horizon." (Five.)

"Event Television" is the Death Knell of Network TV

Certain shows have been good for television as a medium in the last few years. Complex storytelling, compelling antiheroes, and gray morality have turned water cooler talk away from Desperate Housewives to "I can't believe Walt fucking [SPOILERED] [CHARACTER]." (Alright, that's essentially the same conversation when you remove the verbs, but suffice it to say that a high-maintenance cosmetic surgery addict is fairly distinct from a meth-cooking recovering cancer patient with a Napoleon complex.)

"Event Television" is being touted a lot right now. It's not a new idea, but it's the first time an old format has spurred so many producers to attempt to make money by creating grand, intricate shows that–frankly–cost a hell of a lot of money to produce.

Let us be clear: it is wonderful that networks are shilling out crazy amounts of cash to put together smart scripts, talented actors, and vision-filled producers and directors, and effectively giving them creative license to do what they think works best for the show. All of those things foster creativity and a generally better story. This is good.

 Let us also be clear: this is a complete fad.

Networks are always looking for their keystone programming, they're just more willing to take risks with their investments now that other networks have proven the format. That format? Early film reel serials. Self-contained stories with a designed beginning, middle, and end, fluffed up in the middle of each installment with some odd complication that extends the plot out and requires a steady viewing of the complete material for total understanding, but could otherwise be shown to a complete stranger at any point and give a reasonable account of the series' tone at large, preferably drawing them in to start from the beginning. Really, there's two target demographics working together who would normally compete here: Networks are now considering Netflix when they make a show.

Admittedly, that's something a a gross generalization. A more nuanced explanation might be that Networks have discovered a way to draw readers into live-airing programming (more developed storytelling) while simultaneously drawing back former viewers who have "cut the chord" with cable in favor of online streaming services for only a select few shows (format your show in easy-to-binge plot chunks for the Netflix addicts). Ideally, they seek to draw the latter group back into the former, and return a few precious commercial ad dollars.

The plan is a good one. Certainly serial dramas have not done well on television previously, at least on the whole. Sit-Coms and episodic dramas do better in syndication, as a single episode will be unlikely to contain much character or plot development for the overall series. Even fans of cult classic shows like Twin Peaks or The X-Files which skewed early towards long-form plots are hard-pressed to argue that the one-off episodes didn't tend toward being far better than later "wrap-it-all-up" episodes.

Much of this can be blamed on a lack of funding, or Network meddling ruining a great, masterfully arranged concept (Firefly being the quintessence to many viewers). And, to be honest, a serial format wasn't really a proven concept. Miniseries traditionally wouldn't do well. For every Roots their were Doctor Who made-for-TV movies that had been downgraded from series orders. And for every Who there were about 17 single-cam "I Love Lucy" and Honeymooners knock-offs which could be made for far less money.


Maybe we can call this period the Age of the Serials. Franchises are more powerful than ever in the entertainment world. I've long enjoyed photographing the movie posters at my local theater and commenting with "Sequel … sequel … remake … sequel of a remake … based off a TV show …" etc., etc. But these isn't the mere "Halloween: Part 5" franchises anymore. Now we're dealing with two-to-three movies a year coming out of Marvel studios, each its own franchise or potential franchise, crossing over every three years with a massive billion dollar event film, new Spider-Man and associated spin-offs from SONY, DC Comics and Warner Bros. trying to replicate that success with a new Superman, Batman, and Justice League shared universe, FOX adopting comic book time travel to link rebooted universes into a massive conglomerate for X-Men, and freaking STAR WARS getting produced into an even bigger Death Star of a warship. All of these movies I will pay upwards of $18 to see in theaters, possibly with popcorn, by the end of next year.

Now, nerds have always been more amiable to serialized stories. It's where we come from, generally speaking. The trick Networks have played is to convince average, well-rounded people to become as fanatical about one particular show as rabid nerds can be about Star Wars. I've seen people reading Game of Thrones who had previously seriously doubted had the capacity to read. Those are 700 pages tomes, filled to bursting with obscure, Old English spellings and fanciful, fictitious languages. Characters fight with swords and dragons, but spend 90% of their time engaging in courtly intrigue and sharp wit. People are buying these kinds of books because they "Really liked the first three seasons."

So what was the trick, if not simply making a better product? It's this: these Networks are still dying.


HBO GO was crashed by the sheer number of people attempting to stream the Game of Thrones premier through the network's app. The majority of these people do not pay any money to HBO, but rather know someone who was willing or foolish enough to fork over their password. These people, actual HBO subscribers, could watch the premier live on their TVs. This means that nearly all of the people watching through the app one hour after broadcast were not actually paying HBO anything. They were stealing. So many of them that it outstripped the service's ability to function.

Or perhaps we pick a different delivery method. FX Network bills American Horror Story as an "anthology series," each season being a self-contained story akin to a long-format Twilight Zone. Each season is 12-13 episodes, amassing equal airtime, about 75% of that actual story. These shows are watched once, and then nothing. Perhaps some DVD sales. But they are talked about seemingly forever, but mostly only in anticipation of the next episode or iteration.

There are always a few viewers who will subscribe to a Network or service just to watch their one new favorite series, but these are not life-time consumers. They are month-to-month and you can't maintain a vast corporation around that when 99% of your other programming is turned on in the background of a Kraft Dinner. Networks are going to hemorrhage money from their cheap shows while 1% of their lineup makes a majority of the profits, but those shows continue to cost drastically more to produce in the first place. The logical solution seems to be to produce fewer shows with higher quality, and allow for more reruns and syndication in their 24-hour broadcast cycles.

But there's the kick: not one viewer cares. They want to see their show, and they want to be able to gorge on it. So for the time being, Networks make their best shows drawn-out and riddled with suspense, so much so that  we end up watching flawed characters make flawed decisions on ever more increasingly grand scales, becoming cartoonish villains and caricatures of their initial selves. Jack Bauer has had the worst 192 hours a human being can endure. Walter White became Lex Luthor, and then Bryan Cranston narrowly lost that exact role to the kid from "The Social Network." Don Draper is in desperate need of a psychologist and a liver transplant, Rick Grimes and his son Carl have pretty obviously turned into mad sociopaths out of necessity, and I honestly don't know if the apparently endless Stark lineage can survive a planned seven-book run. The stakes keep getting higher, every commercial or credits run comes with bated breath, and viewers wait interminably for another episode to air, as if it were the only thing worth discussing since Tony Soprano (maybe) died.

Meanwhile, I'm done. Many, many, people, nerds and hipsters and Pre-K teachers among them, are bailing on watching live programming. A lot of people I know are using DVR to at least watch a show on their own work schedule or skip through the commercials, while many others simply stream online. Lamenting that Netflix can't upload a season until the home release is also available? Here's a neat trick: try Googling "Watch [NAME OF SHOW] online," and see what pops up. Legality issues aside, everything you've ever wanted to watch even the slightest is available to view on the Internet for free. It's not even hard, and in most cases, once the file is uploaded, there's nothing illegal about watching the thing that's already there. (Downloading and uploading, mind you, are still outlandishly punishable copyright offenses.)

Instantaneous gratification culture is killing Network Television, and I couldn't care less. I'm more excited to see what existing and new companies do when they realize it'll be more profitable to create one exceptional franchise with a reasonable pace and release it in complete installments all together (Hint hint: Arrested Development) than to cling desperately to failing media and schedules, begging Seth McFarlane to drop one more morsel on their plate. Even George Lucas and Spielberg discussed the future of the movie industry in similar terms, telling Empire magazine last year to expect fewer, bigger-budget movies and lots of small indie films, with ticket prices correlated directly to that cost, and playing in theaters for up to years at a time.

I would love to see 17 television stations and a TV that's mostly streaming apps à la carte.

Game of Thrones Spoilers from Someone Who Has Never Watched or Seen Game of Thrones

"So I smacked the grubby little priss I'm Tyrion Effing Lannister.

1. Right before he is to be beheaded, Eddard Stark passes on his secrets of metallurgy to his son, Robb. Robb sires Arno Stark, great-grandfather to the eleventh of Antonio, father of Howard, who begat Iron Man/Robert Downey, Jr.

2. Dire Wolves never manage to learn how to catch a Frisbee.

3. Eventually, something will break down the wall and come through. I imagine it will be rather large.

4. There will be a lot of sexing.

5. It will be revealed in the final chapters that all the characters have been clockwork mechanisms as hinted at in the opening credits. In a further twist, the entire world's history has been a massive holographic simulation at the behest of Peter Dinklage, before he must make an address to the Interstellar Consortium of Sentients. George R.R. Martin is heralded as the new Prince of hard science fiction.

6. Eventually, someone finally cuts their butt sitting on that pointy chair.