"Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin is developing a new project with HBO.

Entertainment Weekly reports the potential series, "Captain Cosmos," is set in 1949, at the dawn of the television age, "a visionary young writer creates a science fiction series that tells stories no one else will dare to tell.” Michael Cassutt ("Z Nation") is writing the pilot.

Martin, who's pushing to complete "The Winds of Winter," the anxiously awaited sixth installment in his "A Song of Ice and Fire" series, posted an excerpt of the novel Thursday on his website. He announced last month that he's pulling back on convention appearances, including Comic-Con International; he also won't write an episode of "Game of Thrones" this season so he can concentrate on the book.

However, as frustrating as the delay in "The Winds of Winter" may be to fans (the previous novel, "A Dance With Dragons," was released in 2011), Martin revealed to EW that it's enabled him to come up with a major twist that he hadn't previously considered.

“This is going to drive your readers crazy,” he teased, “but I love it. I’m still weighing whether to go that direction or not. It’s a great twist. It’s easy to do things that are shocking or unexpected, but they have to grow out of characters. They have to grow out of situations. Otherwise, it’s just being shocking for being shocking. But this is something that seems very organic and natural, and I could see how it would happen. And with the various three, four characters involved … it all makes sense. But it’s nothing I’ve ever thought of before. And it’s nothing they can do in the show, because the show has already — on this particular character — made a couple decisions that will preclude it, where in my case I have not made those decisions.”