This year will see HBO’s wildly popular fantasy series Game of Thrones finally catch up to the story in the books upon which it is based, and perhaps take the first steps into spoiler territory. A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin is currently working on the sixth book in the series, “The Winds of Winter”, which fans are eagerly waiting to read.

Martin has promised that he’s putting his novel-writing duties first, drastically cutting down on his public appearances and declining to write any episodes for Game of Thrones season 6. Just this week he published another excerpt from “The Winds of Winter”, which offers a glimpse into the future for Sansa Stark and Petyr Baelish.

It looks like Martin isn’t going to be devoting 100% of his time to the lands of Westeros and Essos, however. THR reports that the author is developing a new HBO series called Captain Cosmos, about a young science fiction writer living in 1949 and writing stories for one of the very first TV shows. The pilot episode is being scripted by Z Nation executive producer Michael Cassutt.

It’s unclear the extent to which the show will be based on a true story, but the title brings to mind the very early sci-fi TV series Captain Video and His Video Rangers (pictured below), which originally ran from 1949 to 1955. Other early sci-fi shows include Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and Space Patrol. There’s certainly a lot of inspiration for Martin and Cassutt to draw on – and since Martin himself started out as a sci-fi writer, he can also draw from his personal experiences.

Before any Game of Thrones fans start panicking too much about Martin not having any time to finish the books, THR states that Captain Cosmos is “not expected to be a big time commitment” for the author. That suggests that he won’t actually be writing any of the scripts, just developing the story idea and perhaps nabbing an executive producer credit. It could be the case that HBO just wants to have Martin’s name attached to this project, in order to attract fans of the network’s most successful drama series. “From the creator of Game of Thrones” would definitely look good in a trailer.

Captain Cosmos has an intriguing premise and could end up being a strong period drama along similar lines to Mad Men. As for “The Winds of Winter”, try not to be discouraged by the fact that Martin is working on another project – winter is still coming.

Game of Thrones premieres April 12th, 2015 on HBO. We’ll keep you updated on Captain Cosmos as development continues.