COLLEGE STATION - Texas A&M University is famous for traditions - mostly involving athletics and the military. But decades before Johnny Football ever riled up Aggie fans, a different breed of enthusiasts convened in College Station for AggieCon, one of the largest gatherings of science fiction and fantasy fans in the state.

That tradition bound to the university another, less likely cult figure: George R.R. Martin, the author of "A Game of Thrones," whose works have been housed in a campus library for more than two decades - even before he wrote the book that spawned a burgeoning cultural phenomenon. The debut of the fourth season of HBO's TV adaptation last Sunday drew 6.6 million viewers.

Martin, who calls himself a pack rat, regularly sends copies of just about everything he's written, produced or been given, from games and calendars based on the series to replica swords and war hammers, to Texas A&M University's Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. The library boasts a world-renowned sci-fi and fantasy collection and Martin's works are its crown jewel.

"George has assumed the status of the modern American (J.R.R.) Tolkien," said Steve Smith, a former Cushing librarian. "You can imagine if Tolkien decided to give his papers to a library while he was still writing. What that would do in terms of making you the center of Tolkien research ... you can't put a price tag on that, you can't quantify that, its research value and cultural resonance."

In 1992, Smith loaded 24 boxes of books, letters, manuscripts and more - likely including some of Martin's earliest work on "A Game of Thrones," which he would publish four years later - out of the garage of the author's Santa Fe, N.M., home and drove them back to College Station.

That first vanload was the cornerstone of a carefully curated collection that now takes up a full wall of the library's stacks, appropriately nicknamed "The Wall" after a landmark in Martin's books. But the roots of the author's unlikely union with A&M had begun long before.

Texas connection

Martin's Texas connection started with a quarter and a comic book.

Martin, as a junior high student living in New Jersey in 1963, saw an ad in a fanzine. Someone in Arlington - a teenage Howard Waldrop, another notable sci-fi author whose works are also housed at Cushing - was selling a copy of "Brave and the Bold No. 28," a DC comic in which the Justice League made its debut.

Martin bought the comic, now worth thousands, from Waldrop for 25 cents and the two started a correspondence that continues today.

"That was a quarter well spent," Martin said.

Through Waldrop, Martin met a number of other writers living in Texas in the 1970s, including Lisa Tuttle, whose works are also at Cushing and with whom Martin wrote one of his earliest novels. Martin would regularly visit his Texas friends, and they would go to AggieCon just about every year. Martin, who was an award-winning author by 1975, developed a doting fan base in College Station, which Martin has called "crazy - nice, but crazy."

Legend has it that some fans once sent a barbecued brisket by bus to Martin's home in Santa Fe, N.M., though Martin says he doesn't remember it.

While Martin was making his trips to AggieCon, librarians were building a sci-fi and fantasy collection that was world-renowned long before his works formed "The Wall" in the stacks.

Through the 1970s, Hal Hall, a science fiction aficionado at the library, and Don Dyal, who took over special collections in 1973 and is now dean of libraries at Texas Tech University, courted authors - including Waldrop and Tuttle - for their manuscripts and unreleased material. They bought first-edition books, comics and pulp journals, which were popular through the 1940s and '50s but had yet to become collectibles. That meant now-rare material was still relatively cheap.

As wider interest in science fiction was reignited - the 1977 release of "Star Wars" was a sort of Big Bang of modern sci-fi fandom - Cushing had already established a reputation.

"We were way ahead of 'Star Wars,' " Dyal said. "We had people coming from Japan, from Germany, from all over the world to use the collection. It was kind of like, if you knew about sci-fi and fantasy, you knew about College Station, Texas."

In 1986, Dyal was still head of special collections and Martin was the guest of honor at AggieCon.

Dyal took Martin on a tour of the library, showing off the science fiction collection and the climate- and pressure-controlled room that keeps the stacks safe. Then he made the pitch.

"If you don't find a place to put your stuff, it will dissipate at some point," Dyal told Martin. "Someone will pick it apart. They'll pick low-hanging fruit and it won't exist as an entity. It will exist as separate things that people will sell, because they're interested in the money, not in your work."

Martin, impressed by the size of the collection, but especially by the library's physical facilities, said he'd consider the offer.

Six years later, a phone rang at Cushing. A newly hired librarian, Steve Smith, answered. Smith didn't recognize the name of the author on the other line, but he wanted to give his works to Cushing, and Smith knew that was a big deal.

Smith, now dean of libraries at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, was soon on the road to Santa Fe to help Martin unload his garage into an A&M van.

'The Wall'

Two decades later, "The Wall" is watched by a new group of librarians - younger fans of Martin's who nicknamed the main wall of his work. They also bestowed the name "Eastwatch by the Sea," a nod to another locale in Martin's books, on a portion of the collection that has grown to another shelf.

"I'm a fan of 'A Song of Ice and Fire,' " said Jeremy Brett, the current sci-fi curator, referring to the series of Martin novels that starts with "A Game of Thrones." "I like looking at the original manuscripts to see how their work evolves."

Brett points out that a now-famous line in "A Game of Thrones," "Stick them with the pointy end," wasn't added until late in the writing process. The manuscripts were featured in an exhibit of the collection last year that brought Martin back to campus for a speech and fundraising event, when he says he "got to revisit everything in the vaults there." The librarians at Cushing remember him reaching out to touch "The Wall."

"They seem to be taking good care of it," Martin said.

Martin sends boxes to College Station regularly. As the series increases in popularity, the variety has grown.

"They have some cool stuff there like war hammers and swords," Martin said. "If the zombie apocalypse comes, they can defend the library. Texas A&M can become a site of resistance."

Cushing's formidable sci-fi collection has proven a valuable research tool. When Dyal was at the library, he pointed out to a graduate student that science fiction authors were writing about nuclear fission long before it became a reality. It became the subject of the student's master's thesis.

"If you're a science fiction fantasy aficionado, nut, whatever - it's a great place to be," Dyal said. "There's some powerful stuff there."