Quartet: Four Tales from the Crossroads [Paperback]

George R.R. Martin is the greatest author ever, and he knows it. Not many authors could put out a book with an incomplete story, a screenplay, and 2 materials that have already been published (one being just an exerpt from Song of ice and fire). But this book works here becasue of the intoductions and explanations to the stories...too often we forget that there is a real person writing our stories and that they have problems and concerns in life too..this book gives us back this precious insight...

the story "black and white and red all over" is an incomplete jack the ripper mystery and is the best of them all.. it is 100 pages with no ending that ends mid-sentance!!! but when finished i was dying for more....now i will probably never get more but in some cases that is what reading is all about...

Buy this book, (Especially the awsome limited edition hardcover)

While interesting, Martin's historical recreation of the Ripper's supposed exploits in New York, based in part on the mysterious, and historically accurate, death of a prostitute by the name of Old Shakespeare in emulation of Jack the Ripper is rather difficult to overcome, possibly because the reader knows that the novel, and the mystery, remain unfinished. Although entertaining, and well crafted, simply knowing that the mystery has no solution, like Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, makes intellectual investment in the narrative and the characters rather difficult. If the novel is ever completed, it will surely stand with the best of Ripper fiction, alongside such works as Alan Moore's From Hell (2000), as well as among the best of Martin's own work.

Martin's werewolf novella, "The Skin Trade", is the most engaging of the collection's work: It's a traditional page-turner horror novella, with the pacing of a well-plotted action film. The characters are interesting, the mystery well constructed, if not slightly transparent, and Martin handles lycanthropy with aplomb. Like the equally well-plotted "Blood of the Dragon", a novella that factors in to Martin's high fantasy opus, A Song of Fire and Ice, which won a Hugo for best novella in 1997, "The Skin Trade" is a wonderful read for both Martin fans and not. But having both been previously published, it is the script for "Starport" that makes this collection worth owning.

As Martin details in his introduction to the 168 page script, which comprises the most space of any of the selections in the collection, "Starport" was the proposed SF series to replace Alien Nation on Fox in the early 1990s. Explicitly a cop drama, much like Hill Street Blues, but more in line with Alan Moore's recent Top 10 comic book series, "Starport" concerns a near future Chicago police department that concerns themselves with the vast influx of alien races that have begun trade with Earth, with Chicago acting as one of the three "starports" on Earth to facilitate such. The cast is an ensemble of characters, most of which are human police officers and detectives, but accentuated with alien diplomats, merchants, and workers. The sheer inventiveness of the fictional world that Martin created in "Starport" is amazing, more so than his carefully constructed alter-Earth in the Wild Cards series, and while reading the script, it's hard not to mourn the loss of such an amazing entry into SF television. Engaging, funny, intelligent, the only aspect of "Starport" that is a little trying is the Klingon-esque Angels that play alien foils to the human cops with their arcane honor based culture. But "Satrport" is an amazing piece of work, and hopefully one day Fox will realize their loss. But until then, at least "Starport" is published, alongside some other outstanding work from Martin's most important phases of development.

Of much more interest are the other three stories. The first selection is a portion of an unfinished Martin novel from the 1980s. I was quite taken with the 100+ pages that are already written and would enjoy seeing a finished product. Unfortunately with Martin wrapped up in his current epic series, any continuation of _Black and White and Red All Over_ will be some time in the making. This excerpt is the story of a Jack-the-Ripper type killer in America. Martin attempted to sell the novel but didn't find any takers. He points out that in the early 90s, Caleb Carr's _The Alienist_ was a best-selling novel with a similar theme and writes, with a tinge of bitterness, that there apparently was a market for such a novel after all!

The unproduced teleplay "Starport" for a proposed Fox television series is very difficult to read. I've always found scripts to be mind-numbingly dull and this was no exception. Although I have faith in Martin's efforts to create a compelling world, I think we're better off never having seen this one.

Finally, the World-Fantasy-Award winning werewolf novella "The Skin Trade" was an enjoyable piece. I believe this is it's first appearance in a Martin collection. I wasn't engaged in this story, which is a common problem that I have with World-Fantasy-Award winners. But that's my problem.

Martin fans will particularly enjoy his 2-3 page introductions to each story. He writes about the events leading up to the creation of the story. The story behind the genesis of his epic 'Fire & Ice' saga is quite interesting. On the whole this is an enjoyable book, one that I think is well worth the low purchase price if only for the unfinished novel excerpt alone. I hope that in the future, Mr. Martin makes time to finish this promising novel.