After centuries of using this practice as the principal means of maintaining social contact among the islands, Windhaven's flyers have developed into a caste superior to the landsmen. In order to preserve tenuous lines of communication across the vast seas, the stranded population constructed mechanically simple gliding rigs from available spaceship wreckage the gliders could be kept aloft almost indefinitely in Windhaven's stormy atmosphere by their pilots. After the crash, the survivors spread out and settled on the many scattered islands of Windhaven's waterworld. Its inhabitants are the descendants of human space voyagers who crash-landed on Windhaven centuries before the events of the book take place. The novel recounts events which occur on the fictional planet Windhaven.

Two more books were planned, with Painted Wings as the intended title of the second, but Martin and Tuttle never found the right time for additional collaboration, and as they grew older, their writing styles became more distinct, making cooperation more difficult. The third novella, The Fall, was written specifically for inclusion in the expanded novel, along with a prologue and epilogue. It was nominated for a 1981 Hugo Award for Best Novella and won the Analog Readers Poll for best serial. The two writers eventually returned to the world of Windhaven, and the second novella, One-Wing, was originally published in two parts in the January and February 1980 issues of Analog. It won the 1976 Locus Award for Best Novella, and was nominated for both the Hugo Award for Best Novella and Nebula Award for Best Novella. The Storms of Windhaven was originally published in the May 1975 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

During the conception and writing of the story, they agreed on eventually expanding it into a fix-up novel. Martin and Tuttle became friends in 1973, and soon decided to collaborate on a story, which became the first of the three novellas, The Storms of Windhaven (included in the novel as 'Storms'). Windhaven was nominated for a Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel in 1982, and finished in second place in that year's Locus Poll. The novel was also published in paperback form in the UK by New English Library in 1982 and Gollancz in 1988. It was later reprinted by Bantam Spectra in hardcover in 2001, and paperback in 20, with cover art by Stephen Youll. Both editions featured cover art by Vincent Di Fate. It was published as a mass market paperback in 1982 by Pocket Books. The novel is a collection of three novellas compiled and first published together in 1981 by Timescape Books. Windhaven is a science fiction fix-up novel co-written by George R.

Windhaven by george rr martin