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What are the secrets behind one of the most successful fantasy series of all time? by University of Warwick.
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| What are the secrets behind one of the most successful fantasy series of all time? How has a story as complex as "Game of Thrones" enthralled the world and how does it compare to other narratives? Researchers from five universities across the UK and Ireland came together to unravel "A Song of Ice and Fire", the books on which the TV series is based. Photo: Coventry University |
How has a story as complex as "Game of Thrones" enthralled the world and how does it compare to other narratives?
Researchers from five universities across the UK and Ireland came together to unravel "A Song of Ice and Fire", the books on which the TV series is based.
In a paper that has just been published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of physicists, mathematicians and psychologists from Coventry, Warwick, Limerick, Cambridge and Oxford universities have used data science and network theory to analyse the acclaimed book series by George R.R. Martin.
The study shows the way the interactions between the characters are arranged is similar to how humans maintain relationships and interact in the real world...
Thomas Gessey-Jones, from the University of Cambridge, commented: "The methods developed in the paper excitingly allow us to test in a quantitative manner many of the observations made by readers of the series, such as the books famous habit of seemingly killing off characters at random."
Additional resources
Thomas Gessey-Jones el al., "Narrative structure of A Song of Ice and Fire creates a fictional world with realistic measures of social complexity," PNAS (2020).
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2006465117
Source: Phys.org
