The son of a longshoreman and a factory worker,George R. R. Martin , 64, grew up in the confines of a federal housing project on First Street in Bayonne. “I went to school on Fifth Street, and that was pretty much my world, from First Street to Fifth Street, except in my imagination,” he says. “I was a voracious reader of science fiction and fantasy books. We didn’t even own a car, so we never went anywhere.”

Martin’s vivid imagination expanded his limited childhood world. It allowed him to travel beyond Bayonne, even if he was just gazing across Kill van Kull at neighboring Staten Island. “There were always big ships on the way to Port Newark, freighters and oil tankers with flags from all over the world,” he says. “I had an encyclopedia with a list of flags in the back, so I would look at all these flags from China and Liberia and England and Denmark. I tried to imagine what it would be like to be voyaging on some of these ships…. Staten Island was Shangri-la to me. It was just lights shining on the water, lights of people that I would never see, people that I would never touch, but it really kindled my imagination.”

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