Abstract
Network science and data analytics are used to quantify static and dynamic structures in George R. R. Martin's epic novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, works noted for their scale and complexity. By tracking the network of character interactions as the story unfolds, it is found that structural properties remain approximately stable and comparable to real-world social networks. Furthermore, the degrees of the most connected characters reflect a cognitive limit on the number of concurrent social connections that humans tend to maintain. We also analyze the distribution of time intervals between significant deaths measured with respect to the in-story timeline. These are consistent with power-law distributions commonly found in interevent times for a range of nonviolent human activities in the real world. We propose that structural features in the narrative that are reflected in our actual social world help readers to follow and to relate to the story, despite its sprawling extent. It is also found that the distribution of intervals between significant deaths in chapters is different to that for the in-story timeline; it is geometric rather than power law. Geometric distributions are memoryless in that the time since the last death does not inform as to the time to the next. This provides measurable support for the widely held view that significant deaths in A Song of Ice and Fire are unpredictable chapter by chapter.
Highlights
Network science and data analytics are used to quantify static and dynamic structures in George R
Ice and Fire is presented from the personal perspectives of 24 point of view (POV) characters
Parenthesized values indicate the approximate 95% confidence intervals determined by bootstraping. These results suggest that interevent times for significant deaths in discourse time are well described by a geometric distribution and are memoryless
Summary
Network science and data analytics are used to quantify static and dynamic structures in George R. “Much of the anticipation leading up to the final season (of the TV series) was about who would live or die, and whether the show would return to its signature habit of taking out major characters in shocking fashion” (20) Inspired by this feature, we are interested in deaths as signature events in Ice and Fire, and we study intervals between them (21). We use mathematical and statistical methods to probe how a sprawling, dynamic, complex narrative of massive scale achieved broad accessibility and acclaim without surrendering to the need for reductionist simplifications Subtle narrational tricks such as how natural social networks are mirrored and how significant events are scheduled are unveiled. The narrative network matches evolved cognitive abilities to enable complex messages be conveyed in accessible ways while story time and discourse time are carefully distinguished in ways matching theories of narratology This marriage of science and humanities opens avenues to comparative literary studies. For example, for the widespread view that deaths appear to be randomly distributed throughout the narrative even though, they are not
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