Sandkings Add a review

"Sandkings" is a novelette by American writer George R. R. Martin, first published in the August 1979 issue of Omni. In 1980, it won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the Nebula Award for Best Novelette and the Locus Award for best novelette, and was nominated for the Balrog Award in short fiction. It is the only one of Martin's stories to date to have won both the Hugo and the Nebula. It was included in the short story collection of the same name, published by Timescape Books in December 1981.

Martin was inspired by a college friend at Northwestern University who had a piranha tank and would sometimes throw goldfish into it between horror film screenings. He had planned for it to be part of a trilogy, with Wo and Shade running businesses on several worlds, but the concept fell through.

"Sandkings" is set in the same fictional "Thousand Worlds" universe as several of Martin's other works, including Dying of the Light, Nightflyers, A Song for Lya, "The Way of Cross and Dragon" and the stories collected in Tuf Voyaging.