Image: HBO

Looks like George R.R. Martin can take a breather. An engineer set up a neural network using all of the books in the A Song of Ice and Fire series to write part of the next installment, The Winds of Winter. It may not make a lot of sense—or any sense, really—but hell, neither did that whole Sansa and Arya murder fake-out.




Full-stack software engineer Zack Thoutt created a recurrent neural network to write The Winds of Winter, based on words, phrases, and characters from the rest of the series. Thoutt told Motherboard it’s a “long short-term memory” network, meaning it remembers information stored in the text, like character deaths. It’s not exactly accurate, though, as according to the new book Ned and Lord Mormont have returned from the grave.

In order to accomplish a feat that not even Martin himself has been able to dachieve yet, Thoutt uploaded the first five books in the series into the network (almost 5,400 pages worth) so it could spew out the latest twists, turns, and deaths in the iconic series. Here’s a small sample from Chapter One, narrated by Tyrion:

The Hound found Jeyne Poole. Ser Meryn Trant had sent King Yoren through the harbor, to summon the black brothers who had donned his horned veins. The fools he’d wed with him, had all been reborn. “Why, I know? He was bleeding, covered his whole legs on shoulders of the snow. He will stand on deck for the fish a fortnight, and never kill one. A blade is no longer, yes, she thought, but he couldn’t take much food. He could not help himself at first rush. Ghost came by, in a camp when Asha hunted to the night’s watch. Now the torches beneath them and the rose in his head or we’ve brought them out of the world. He is stubborn and stupid, but his council never saved my brother as most. “There must be five choices,” he pointed out. It is an effort. Mine uncle had do the same color. She could hardly count by death. It made Ned better stop until the fire was falling, standing beneath the arch of a shattered still distant field where the shadow tower paid the camp behind. The elder brother had known no sun and chunks of broken buildings and ash wailing towns; four hundred thousand ravens, his own torsos. Behind them wore their black cloaks like their own yellow fish heroes wearing a rough-hewn figurehead, a black trout slashed on a huge chest, with colors crossed inside and forth their heads. Lords and nuts and mussels, cloaks of the shore, several hundred riders down beneath the honeywine, and at the foot of the five southron Kings of captured sit and fewer stepped toward the Kingslayer. He will not return yet at the ford, with above his first black band. “Only a hundred northmen will remain with them. They’ll teach you Lord Rickard’s brother Joffrey. Tell me true, Cersei is known. No one’s wasting your interest, you remember. Dead steel and sour cat and two times as well.”


There are five chapters so far, and they’re all insane. According to the neural network, Varys is going to poison Daenerys, Asha will start hunting the Night’s Watch, and Arya’s latest weapon of choice is her boot. But hey, it actually predicts a couple of things that fans also expect to happen on the final season of Game of Thrones, mainly that Jon Snow will ride a dragon and Jaime Lannister will kill his twin sister Cersei. However, all of that pales in comparison to the best part: The Winds of Winter has a new character!

Greenbeard was waiting toward the gates, big blind bearded pimple with his fallen body scraped his finger from a ring of white apple. It was half-buried mad on honey of a dried brain, of two rangers, a heavy frey. “Six men wanted to kill one Stark, this grey o’ all of three.”

According to the neural network, the latest addition to Westeros will be a man called Greenbeard, and all I want is everything about this character’s epic backstory. I’d like to imagine he’s a greenseer sent by the Children of the Forest to help Jon Snow battle the Night’s King, and he colored his facial hair green because he takes his role way too seriously.

You can read the rest of the stories here, presumably while sitting around waiting for Martin to catch up. Ten bucks says we’ll all have green beards by then.

[Motherboard]