A fantastical saga with a huge cult fanbase is faithfully adapted for the screen by an American cable network. The author is closely involved, helping to recalibrate a multi-tentacled plot for television. Characters are vividly drawn, the storyline jumps between political machinations and ribcage-tightening action.

With each season taken more or less directly from one of the volumes in the series there is a brisk trade in cliff-hangers and betrayals, augmented by the occasional spicy swear word and imaginative x-rated scene.

It sounds like a can’t-fail formula and, in the case of HBO and Game of Thrones, that’s just how things have played out. However, the situation is less happy for SyFy Channel and its retelling of James S Corey’s The Expanse, which, it has been announced, is to be cancelled after three critically-lauded seasons. (Amazon are reportedly on the verge of reviving the series following a fan campaign.)

Setting aside their respective trajectories, the parallels between George RR Martin’s swords and sorcery epic and The Expanse are striking. Both have resuscitated genres that had become mired in cliché. In the case of The Expanse, the corner of the geek-o-sphere that required rescuing was space-opera, which, as it became synonymous with bombast-fests such as Star Wars, decoupled from its brainy literary counterpart of hard science fiction.