TY - JOUR
T1 - Narrative structure of A Song of Ice and Fire creates a fictional world with realistic measures of social complexity
AU - Gessey-Jones, Thomas
AU - Connaughton, Colm
AU - Dunbar, Robin
AU - Kenna, Ralph
AU - MacCarron, Pádraig
AU - O'Conchobhair, Cathal
AU - Yose, Joseph
N1 - This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC-BY)
PY - 2020/11/17
Y1 - 2020/11/17
N2 - 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 refect a cognitive limit on the number of concurrent social connections that humans tend to maintain. We also analyze the distribution of time intervals between signifcant 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 refected 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 signifcant 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 signifcant deaths in A Song of Ice and Fire are unpredictable chapter by chapter.
AB - 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 refect a cognitive limit on the number of concurrent social connections that humans tend to maintain. We also analyze the distribution of time intervals between signifcant 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 refected 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 signifcant 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 signifcant deaths in A Song of Ice and Fire are unpredictable chapter by chapter.
KW - A Song of Ice and Fire
KW - Dunbar’s number
KW - Game of Thrones
KW - comparative literature
KW - networks
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096348300&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1073/pnas.2006465117
DO - 10.1073/pnas.2006465117
M3 - Article
C2 - 33139549
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 117
SP - 28582
EP - 28588
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 46
ER -