this post was submitted on 23 Mar 2026
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Chapotraphouse
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Personal opinion of/c but GOTs identity kinda strives on being the grounded 'realistic' & edgy fantasy.
The novel series plays with unreliable narrators and historical distortion under medieval level historians a lot more, leading some fans to theorize that the world isn't magical, but rather a sort of regressed sci-fi world, with observed magical abilities plausibly being sci-fi concepts related to genetics instead of prophecy.
IMO, it does take a brilliant writer to create a world textured enough that people can dispute the nature of it all, within its own genre conventions.
How is a hundreds km long wall of ice made of sci-fi? Or literal dragons?
Dragons are easy. They're just animals in this world. That isn't even divorced from the actual, textual origin of dragons in ASOIAF. GRRM put a lot of effort into making sure his designs resembled 'real animals' and the world is also inhabited by non fire breathing dragons that seem entirely naturalistic and could've been a base species bred into modern dragons.
The ice wall or shadow babies or Jon's resurrection all have their associated sci fi explanations, from self-servicing forgotten technology to telekinesis, an important piece of context to this theory is that GRRM has previously written about all of these things under a sci-fi lens. GOTs time travel plot is almost 1:1 copied from a sci-fi work of his dealing with hive minds and sending memories through time.
The story is fantasy, to be sure, but I think its a damn good one to inspire these sorts of ideas.