Roadmarks: George R.R. Martin & HBO riding a highway thru time for new adapted series

HBO and Game of Thrones mastermind George R.R. Martin are reuniting for a new book-to-screen adaptation that threads the time-bending needle between fantasy and science fiction. This time, though, the book’s already finished…and Martin didn’t even have to write it. 

Deadline reports that Martin is re-teaming with HBO to executive produce a small-screen series based on Roadmarks, the 1979 time travel novel from Nebula and Hugo Award-winning sci-fi and fantasy author Roger Zelazny. The project is reportedly in development with former Star Trek: Discovery writer and Fear the Walking Dead co-executive producer Kalinda Vazquez on board as showrunner, writer, and executive producer. 

Roadmarks puts Zelazny’s experimental, high-concept spin on the idea of an infinitely-connected multiverse. The novel’s central feature is a real highway that, once discovered, can navigate time by allowing travelers to enter and exit at various points in history. In the process, especially gifted travelers can even shape (or reshape) the course of events by creating ever-shifting off-ramps to alternate futures. Created by the mysterious Dragons of Bel’kwinit, the road itself is a real place — but it’s not necessarily a place that everyone who inhabits its world will stumble across. 

In a statement reported by Deadline, Martin explained the influence that Zelazny, who passed away in 1995, has had on his own work. “My career in television started in 1985 when I adapted Roger Zelazny’s Last Defender of Camelot for The Twilight Zone,” said Martin. “Roger was a friend, a mentor, and one of the greatest science fiction writers who ever lived. It was an honor to be able to bring his work to television. That is why I am so thrilled to be a part of adapting Roger’s novel Roadmarks for HBO.”

In addition to her work on Discovery and Fear the Walking Dead, Vazquez is known for her writing work on Fox’s Prison Break as well as The CW’s Nikita. Her additional creative credits include Once Upon a Time, Marvel’s Runaways, Human Target, and Barrier — Legendary Television’s screen adaptation of Brian K. Vaughan’s Eisner-nominated graphic novel.

In addition to Roadmarks, Martin’s also plenty busy with creative input on the upcoming Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon at HBO, with the network also recently picking up his Tales of Dunk and Egg spinoff novellas for a future series treatment. If that’s not enough, Martin’s also toiling away to finish The Winds of Winter, the next novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series.