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George R.R. Martin's Nightflyers gets a freaky SyFy teaser

Space isn't safe. Sci-fi and horror collide in the Nightflyers teaser.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser

While he may be most famous for the swords and sorcery of Game of Thrones, author George R.R. Martin is no stranger to science fiction. SyFy posted a teaser for the upcoming show Nightflyers, a space thriller based on Martin's 1980 novella. 

The teaser doesn't give us a lot to go on, but it succeeds in setting a thoroughly creepy mood of uncertainty and danger on board a spaceship named Nightflyer. The only thing approaching dialog is a horrified scream at the end. It also drops a tagline: "You can't escape what's inside." As a teaser, it's pretty effective.

"While it departs considerably from my novella in certain details, the essence of the story remains the same -- and I thought the teleplay was quite strong on its own terms, and a good launching point for a series," Martin wrote in a blog post late last year.

We got a slightly more informative (and bloodier) first-look peek at the series in March, where Martin described it as "Psycho in space." The novella was previously adapted into a low-budget movie in 1987. 

Nightflyers is part of Martin's wider "Thousand Worlds" fictional future universe of short stories, which means there's a lot more of the author's sci-fi to mine if Nightflyers is a hit. The show is coming this fall. 

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