Nightflyers (film)

The film is based on a novella that appears in George R. R. Martin's 1985 short story collection. Originally written in 1980, the 23,000-word novella was published by Analog Science Fiction and Fact. In 1981, at the request of his editor at the time, James Frenkel, Martin expanded the story into a 30,000-word piece, which was published by Dell Publishing, together with Vernor Vinge's True Names, as part of their Binary Star series. In the extended version, Martin supplied additional backstory on several characters, and named secondary characters which were not named in the original version.[2]

Nightflyers is set in the same fictional "Thousand Worlds" universe as several of Martin's other works, including Dying of the Light, Sandkings, A Song for Lya, "The Way of Cross and Dragon", "With Morning Comes Mistfall", and the stories collected in Tuf Voyaging.[4]

Screen and television rights were purchased by Vista in 1984, which produced a 1987 film adaptation with a screenplay co-written by Martin,[5] with writer/producer Robert Jaffe.[3] It was directed by Robert Collector, using the pseudonym "T. C. Blake" as he left before post-production was completed.[3] According to Martin, writer/producer Robert Jaffe probably adapted his script from the shorter novella version, since all the secondary characters had different names than the ones he chose in the expanded version.[2] The film grossed $1,149,470.[6] Martin was unhappy about having to cut plot elements in order to accommodate the film's small budget.[7] While not a hit at theatres, Martin believes that the film saved his career, and that everything he has written since exists in large part because of it.[8]