A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels by the American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. The first volume of the series, A Game of Thrones, was begun in 1991 and first published in 1996. Martin, who initially envisioned the series as a trilogy, has published five out of a planned seven volumes. The fifth and most recent volume of the series published in 2011, A Dance with Dragons, took Martin five years to write. The sixth novel, The Winds of Winter, is still being written.