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A Song of Ice and Fire
	A Game of Thrones; A Clash of Kings; A Storm of Swords; A Feast for Crows; A Dance with Dragons; The Winds of Winter; A Dream of Spring
Author	George R. R. Martin
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	High fantasy, dark fantasy, medieval fantasy
Publisher	Bantam Books (USA, Canada); Voyager Books (UK, Australia); AST (Russia)
Published	August 6, 1996–present
Media type	print (hardcover and paperback); audiobook

General

To check

From GRRM archive

August 4, 2002 "THE HEDGE KNIGHT" COMES TO COMICS
11/09/02: Mike S. Miller talks about adapting "The Hedge Knight" to comics
November 19, 2002 A GAME OF THRONES collectible card game
01/22/03 HEDGE KNIGHT COMIC NOW AVAILABLE FOR PREORDERS
02/20/03 THE ART OF ICE AND FIRE
2/28/03 A STORM OF SWORDS wins Geffen Prize
04/20/03 award GAME OF THRONES CCG NOMINATED FOR ORIGINS AWARD
6/10/03 HEDGE KNIGHT COMIC NAMED "GEM OF THE MONTH"
10/15/03 THE RETURN OF DUNK AND EGG
11/22/03 A GAME OF THRONES WINS IGNOTUS AWARD
03/05/04 HEDGE KNIGHT RETURNS TO THE LISTS

TV

http://www.artofthetitle.com/2011/05/12/game-of-thrones/ Game Of Thrones INTERVIEW A Q&A with Creative Director Angus Wall of Elastic. May 12, 2011
http://www.iol.co.za/saturday-star/feeding-the-fantasy-1.1174817 Feeding the fantasy Hollywood Reporter November 9 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/arts/television/in-game-of-thrones-a-language-to-make-the-world-feel-real.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/29/david-benioff-d-b-weiss-discuss-game-of-thrones-season-2-more.html Game of Thrones’ Creative Gurus By Jace Lacob Aug 29, 2011

Article

A Song of Ice and Fire is a series of epic fantasy novels by American novelist and screenwriter George R. R. Martin. Martin began writing the series in 1991 and the first volume was published in 1996. Originally planned as a trilogy, the series now consists of five published volumes; a further two are planned. In addition there are three prequel novellas currently available, with several more being planned, and a series of novella-length excerpts from the main Ice and Fire novels.

The story of A Song of Ice and Fire takes place in a fictional world, primarily on a continent called Westeros but also on a large landmass to the east, known as Essos. Most of the characters are human but as the series progresses others are introduced, such as the assumed-to-be-extinct cold supernatural Others from the far North and fire-breathing dragons from the East. The series is told in the third-person through the eyes of a number of point of view characters, 25 by the end of the fifth book.

There are three story lines that become increasingly interwoven: the chronicling of a dynastic civil war for control of Westeros among several competing families; the rising threat of the Others, who dwell beyond an immense wall of ice that forms Westeros' northern border; and the ambition of Daenerys Targaryen, the exiled daughter of a king who was murdered in another civil war fifteen years before, to return to Westeros and claim her rightful throne.

The "Ice and Fire" series has been translated into more than 20 languages. The fourth and fifth volumes reached the top of The New York Times bestseller lists in 2005 and 2011.^[1] Overall, the series has sold more than seven million copies in the USA^[2] and more than 15 million copies worldwide.^[3] One of the excerpt novellas won science fiction's Hugo Award. The series is the basis of a great number of derived works, including the HBO TV series Game of Thrones, a comic book adaptation, a card game, a board game, a role-playing game and two video games.

Plot synopsis

Set in the fictional continents of Westeros and Essos, A Song of Ice and Fire follows three principal storylines that are divided by geography and participants. The principal storyline is set in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and chronicles a many-sided struggle for the Iron Throne of Westeros after the king's death. The second storyline takes place on the extreme northern border of Westeros, where a huge wall of ice and gravel is to guard the kingdom against the mystic Others. The third storyline is set on the huge eastern continent of Essos and follows the adventures of a young girl named Daenerys Targaryen, another claimant to the Iron Throne. The events are told from the perspective of many POV characters.

At the beginning of the first book, A Game of Thrones, Robert of House Baratheon is King of Westeros. After his death midway through the first book, his son Joffrey claims the Iron Throne with the support of his mother's powerful family, House Lannister. Lord Eddard Stark, King Robert's "Hand" (chief advisor), finds out Robert's children are illegitimate, and that the throne should therefore fall to the second of the three Baratheon brothers, Stannis. The charismatic and popular youngest Baratheon brother, Renly, also places a claim, openly disregarding the order of precedence. While the claimants battle for the Iron Throne, Robb Stark, Lord Eddard Stark's heir, is proclaimed King in the North as the northmen and their allies in the Riverlands seek to return to self-rule. Likewise, Balon Greyjoy also (re-)claims the ancient throne of his own region, the Iron Islands, with an eye toward independence. This so-called War of the Five Kings is in full progress by the middle of the second book, A Clash of Kings, and is told through the eyes of many, initially independant POV characters.

Meanwhile, winter is coming. A huge wall of ice and gravel, constructed on the extreme northern border of Westeros many thousands of years ago, is to defend Westeros from the threat of The Others, a race of now-mythical creatures living beyond the wall. The Wall is maintained by the Sworn Brotherhood of the Night's Watch. Since the Others have not been seen in over 8,000 years at the beginning of A Game of Thrones, the Night's Watch has devolved into essentially a penal colony: it is badly under-strength, manned primarily by criminals and refugees, with only a few knights or men of honor to stiffen them, and spends most of its time dealing with the human "wildlings" or "free folk" who live beyond the Wall. This storyline is told primarily through the eyes of Jon Snow, bastard son of Eddard Stark. Jon Snow rises through the ranks of the Watch, learns the true nature of the threat from the north, and prepares to defend the realm, even though the people of Westeros are too busy warring to send support. This storyline is somewhat entangled with the civil war to the south by the end of the third volume. By the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, four of the five self-proclaimed kings have been killed. Stannis, the sole survivor of the original claimants to the thrones, moved to the Wall in the attempt to protect the realm from the threat of invasion and simultaneously win the favor of the northern strongholds. Joffrey's younger brother Tommen holds the Iron Throne, with his mother and later his uncle as regents. The first snowflakes reach the capital in the last chapters of the fifth book.

Until A Dance with Dragons, the story of Daenerys Targaryen, the last scion of House Targaryen and another claimant to the Iron Throne, is pretty much separated. Daenerys lives there in exile on Essos, a huge continent East of Westeros across the narrow sea. Daenerys's adventures showcase her growing ability as she rises from a pauper sold into a dynastic marriage to a barbarian warlord to a powerful and canny ruler in her own right. Her rise is aided by the birth of three dragons, creatures thought long extinct, from fossilized eggs given to her as wedding gifts. Because her family standard is the dragon, these creatures are of symbolic value before they have grown big enough to be of tactical use. Though her story is separated from the others by many thousands of miles, her stated goal is to reclaim the Iron Throne. Daenerys is the sole POV character in the first books to tell the events on Essos. She is joined by more old and new POV characters in A Dance with Dragons.

Book series

Overview

All page totals given below are for the US paperback edition and hardcover editions, with the exception of A Dance with Dragons, which became available in hardcover on July 12, 2011.

#	Title	Pages	Chapters	Audio	Earliest Release
1.	A Game of Thrones	807 (704 hardcover)	77	33h 53m	August 1996
2.	A Clash of Kings	969 (784 hardcover)	70	37h 17m	November 1998
3.	A Storm of Swords	1128 (992 hardcover)	82	47h 37m	August 2000
4.	A Feast for Crows	976 (784 hardcover)	46	31h 10m	October 2005
5.	A Dance with Dragons	(959 hardcover)	73	48h 56m	July 2011
6.	The Winds of Winter^[4]	(Forthcoming)
7.	A Dream of Spring^[5]	(Forthcoming)

Before the series

Martin was already a successful fantasy and sci-fi author and TV writer when he decided to attempt an epic fantasy.^[6]

George R.R. Martin’s first story appeared in 1971. Much of his early work was science fiction — and very successful science fiction at that, winning him two Hugo Awards in 1980, one for the now classic “Sandkings” — but there has always been a ghostly and horrific strain in his work. Even “Sandkings” is very much a horror story. Martin’s Fevre Dream (1982) is a notable novel of steamboats and vampires. The Armageddon Rag (1983) combines rock & roll with the supernatural. His “The Pear-Shaped Man” (1987) won him a Bram Stoker Award for from the Horror Writers of America. In the 1980s he was deeply involved in television writing, first for The New Twilight Zone and then as story-editor of Beauty and the Beast.^[7]

In the mid-1980s, Martin worked mainly in Hollywood, principally as a writer or producer on The New Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You’ve said before that the first book, Game of Thrones, was partly a reaction to the sort of storytelling you couldn’t do as a TV writer in the 1980s. What was the actual moment that inspired Thrones? -- Martin: I just wanted to make it big. For so long [in TV], I heard, “It’s too big, it’s too expensive, lose characters and lose the settings.” Going back to prose, I could make it as big as I wanted, as big as my imagination. It really came out of nowhere. I knew in a general sense I wanted to write an epic fantasy since I loved [J.R.R.] Tolkien since I was a kid. But I didn’t have any specific ideas for it.^[8]

While these early books were well received within the fantasy fiction community -- his short fiction winning three Hugo Awards, two Nebulas and others -- his readership remained relatively small and when Hollywood came calling in the mid-1980s, Martin answered. He worked on the revival of The Twilight Zone throughout 1986 and then on staff on Beauty and the Beast from 1987 through 1990. "After that I mostly did development deals. I was creating my own pilots for new shows. I was doing some film scripts for features, some of them adapting my own work, some originals and some adapting other people's work." Hollywood's carelessness of his talent was one of the things that pushed Martin back towards writing books. "Books were really my first love. I kind of missed doing them anyway. There's a freedom there that you don't get in Hollywood. There's a full canvas to paint on so you don't have to worry about compromising: having to fight with directors or networks or studios. But the real telling thing was that, although I was making a lot of money in Hollywood writing these screenplays and developing the pilots, they weren't getting made and it was just ultimately unsatisfying."^[9]

Nothing ever got made though. It was one of the things that ultimately frustrated me and drove me back to books. Books were really my first love. I kind of missed doing them anyway. There's a freedom there that you don't get in Hollywood. There's a full canvas to paint on so you don't have to worry about compromising: having to fight with directors or networks or studios. But the real telling thing was that, although I was making a lot of money in Hollywood writing these screenplays and developing the pilots, they weren't getting made and it was just ultimately unsatisfying. No amount of money can really take the place of... you want your stuff to be read. You want an audience and four guys in an executive office suite at ABC or Columbia is not adequate.^[9]

The writer George R. R. Martin left Hollywood in 1994, determined to do what he wanted for a change. He’d had some success in television, working on a new version of “The Twilight Zone” and on the fantasy series “Beauty and the Beast.” But the pilot for “Doorways,” a series he’d developed, hadn’t been picked up, and he was tired of the medium’s limitations. “Everything I did was too big and too expensive in the first draft,” he told me recently. He wanted castles and vistas and armies, and producers always made him cut that stuff. A line producer for “The Twilight Zone” once explained to him, “You can have horses or you can have Stonehenge. But you can’t have horses and Stonehenge.”^[10]

A Game of Thrones (1996)

After Beauty and the Beast ended in 1989, Martin returned to writing prose and started work on a science fiction novel called Avalon. In 1991, while struggling with this story, Martin conceived of a scene where several youngsters find a dead direwolf with a stag's antler in its throat.^[11] The direwolf has birthed several pups, which are then taken by the youngsters to raise as their own. Martin's imagination was fired by this idea, and he eventually developed this scene into an epic fantasy story, which he first envisioned as a trilogy consisting of the novels A Game of Thrones, A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter. Martin had apparently not been previously inspired by the genre, but reading Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series convinced him it could be approached in a more adult and mature way than previous authors had attempted.^[12]

After a lengthy hiatus spent writing and producing a television pilot for a science fiction series he had created called Doorways, Martin resumed work in 1994 on A Game of Thrones and completed it the following year, although he was only partway through his initial plan for the first novel. As a result, over time, Martin eventually expanded his plan for the series to include four books, then six, and finally seven, as the tale "grew in the telling," he said, quoting epic fantasy master J.R.R. Tolkien. Publication of A Game of Thrones followed in 1996. In the UK, the book was the subject of a fierce bidding war, eventually won by HarperCollins for £450,000.^[13] Pre-release publicity included publication of a "sample novella" called Blood of the Dragon, which went on to win the 1997 Hugo Award for Best Novella. In May 2005 Martin noted that his manuscript for A Game of Thrones had been 1088 pages long without the appendices.^[14]

He added to his burden when he decided that his planned trilogy needed to be at least a seven-book series. “The tale grew in the telling,” Martin often says, quoting J. R. R. Tolkien, a writer he greatly admires.^[10]

In the summer of 1991 I was in Hollywood but I had no TV deal. Suddenly I just got the first chapter where they found the direwolf pups — it was just there. I knew I had to write it.^[8]

Jay Tomio – From where came the idea that would lead you to write a multi-book, epic sequence that would be told via multiple narratives? -- George R.R. Martin – Damned if I know. I was actually at work on a new SF novel in 1991 when the first chapter of A Game of Thrones – the chapter where Bran rides out with his father to see a man beheaded, and they find the direwolf pups in the summer snows –came to me one day, so strongly and so vividly that I knew that I had to put the other novel aside to write it. At the time I had no idea it was part of any multi-volume epic, only that I had to get it down on paper.^[15]

WT: Did you have some broad plan of creating this whole epic, or did it just sort of grow? -- GRRM: A bit of both. In my case, when I wrote the first chapter of A Game of Thrones, I didn’t really know what I had. In fact I was writing quite a different book, a science-fiction book; and this chapter just came to me so vividly that I put the science fiction aside and wrote it. At this point I didn’t know if it was a short story or a piece of something bigger; but by the time I’d finished it, which only took two or three days, I was fairly certain that it was a piece of something bigger. It led to a second chapter and a third. I think that by the time I was four or five chapters in, I had some idea that, yes, I was working on a fantasy. I thought it was a trilogy. It was initially sold as a trilogy. Three books, three quite large books, mind you, but it grew even larger in the telling.^[7]

Initially, Martin knew only that he wanted to write a big novel that would let him indulge in all the elements Hollywood executives told him were impossible to produce in the TV show he worked on: global stakes, graphic sex and violence, giant battles, and a ton of characters — in short, a tale that would shatter all the romanticized clichés inspired by medieval Europe and instead depict the period's barbaric reality. Pretty soon I was 100 pages into the book and I was making maps and genealogies, he says.^[6]

Born in Bayonne, New Jersey, Martin started writing A Song of Ice and Fire in 1991. He'd published short stories and novels since the early 70s before getting involved in television, but while he waited to see if a pilot and a film he'd written were going anywhere, he decided to go back to a science-fiction novel that he'd been pondering for years. "I was writing away merrily on that, when suddenly the first chapter of A Game of Thrones came to me," he recalls. "So vividly I knew I had to write it. So I put the other book aside and I wrote that chapter, and by the time I'd finished that chapter I knew what the second chapter would be, and pretty soon the science-fiction novel was forgotten."^[16]

Dargon: Where did the series name a Song of Ice and originate? What do you think this title reflects most upon in the series? -- George: I don’t really remember where. I knew the first book was a Game of Thrones but I needed an overall title as well. We had these other elements in the story, beyond the struggle for power at court -- the Others beyond the Wall, and the dragons. That suggests Ice and fire, but that’s not the only possible meaning. I like titles that can have many meanings. I think it makes the writing and the fiction richer. I have always had this obsession with songs as well --- the titles of my books are full of "song" references, from A Song for Lya and Songs of the Dead Men Sing to things like "... for a single yesterday."^[17]

So you envisioned it as a series from the beginning? -- Oh yeah. Initially I thought it was a trilogy but that was really before I started writing it.^[9]

Damned if I know. I actually began the book back in the summer of 1991. I was between Hollywood projects, so I decided to make a start on a new novel, see how far I got. The novel I began was an SF book called AVALON, set in the same "future history" as DYING OF THE LIGHT and many of my short stories. I actually worte three chapters. But then one day the opening chapter of A GAME OF THRONES came to me, so vividly I =had= to write it. Not the prologue, mind you, but the first chapters proper, where Bran sees the man beheaded and finds the direwolves in the snow. Next thing I knew AVALON had been put in a drawer and the fantasy had seized me completely. I knew I was lost when I started drawing maps. As it happened, of course, DOORWAYS got picked up and I was summoned back to Hollywood, but the book was never far from my thoughts.^[18]

Do you remember how Song of Ice and Fire started for you, the first moment where you realized you had this story you wanted to tell? -- Martin: I began the series in 1991, when I was still very much involved in Hollywood. I had a few months there where I had no immediate script assignments, and I started a science fiction novel, one that had actually been in my idea books for a long time, that I'd been thinking about writing for over a decade. So I started work on it, and it was going along well. But then one day, as I sat down to write, suddenly the first chapter of A Game of Thrones came to me. Not the prologue, which is the first thing you read in the book, but the actual first chapter, which is the Bran chapter where he's taken out to see his father behead a deserter, and his brothers Robb and Jon find the direwolf pups in the snow. That came to me so vividly that I knew I had to write it. So I put the other book aside and sat down and wrote that chapter, which came very easily. And by the time I finished it, I knew what the second chapter would be, so I started writing that. Before I knew it, the other novel was gathering dust in the drawer, and I was going headlong into A Game of Thrones. As it turned out, I had to put it aside in turn, because other things came up in Hollywood, there were deadlines to be met and all that, but I never went cold on the book, which I guess is a sign of how tight a hold it had on me.^[19]

A Clash of Kings (1998)

To fit A Game of Thrones into one volume, Martin had pulled out the last quarter or so of the book and made it the opening section of the second book, 1998's A Clash of Kings. In May 2005 Martin noted that his manuscript for A Clash of Kings was 1184 pages long.^[14]

A Storm of Swords (2000)

NG: Three more volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire wait to be written. What shape do you expect them to take, and are their titles finalized as yet? -- GRRM: Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies, although I tend to think of it more as one long story. The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. After that comes The Winds of Winter. I have been calling the final volume A Time For Wolves, but I am not happy with that title and will probably change it if I can come up with one that I like better.^[20]

One of the things I find encouraging about A Storm of Swords' success is that it's a vast book and people are reading it. That's wonderful. What is it? 120,000 words? More? -- Well, it's 1500 pages in manuscript. I was several months late turning it in and there was a lot of pressure there at the end to finish it.^[9]

A Feast for Crows (2005)

Martin began writing the intended fourth volume A Dance with Dragons in 2000 after the completion of A Storm of Swords. The story was to pick up five years after the previous volume, but Martin found it increasingly difficult to make this work without an over-reliance on flashbacks.^{[citation needed]}

Dargon: Here is the all-important question on many fan’s minds. How is book four coming along? Is there any chance it might come out earlier than expected? -- George: Not as far as I would like to be. Fall of next year (Fall 2002). But that depends on how quickly I can finish it. But you can’t really tell about that until you do It. Right now I’d say Fall 2002.^[17]

Dargon: We all enjoy your novels immensely. Can you give us a little heads up on what you are working on next and where your taking some of our favorite characters? -- George: I have scrapped the idea of a five-year gap, as I announced not to long ago. I was originally going to make the 4th book five years later. So I’m now picking it up immediately after the third book. Most of the characters will continue as they were so there will be some new points of view. Two, I think. Cersei and... well, another one, a character who I could not see just being idle for five years.^[17]

By May 2005, A Feast for Crows had become longer than A Storm of Swords (the manuscript for which had been 1521 pages) and Martin's publishers said they could not publish the book in one volume.^[14] They suggested splitting the book in two and releasing the volumes as A Feast for Crows, Volume I and A Feast for Crows, Volume II, but Martin was unhappy with this idea. After discussing the matter with his publishers and his friend and fellow writer Daniel Abraham, Martin decided to split the book by character and location instead. The published A Feast for Crows thus contained all of the characters in the South of the Seven Kingdoms, while A Dance with Dragons contains the characters in the North, the Free Cities and in Slaver's Bay. Martin said this move would likely require the series to have seven volumes, recognizing that "you [the fans] may be disappointed, especially when you buy A Feast for Crows and discover that your favorite character does not appear, but given the realities I think this was the best solution... and the more I look at it, the more convinced I am that these two parallel novels, when taken together, will actually tell the story better than one big book."^[14] Upon its release in October 2005, A Feast for Crows immediately won largely positive reviews. Time dubbed Martin "the American Tolkien",^[21] and the novel went straight to the top of the New York Times bestseller list.

Is 'A Feast for Crows' proving so far to be the hardest book to write in the series? -- It has been the hardest book, yes. I've made some mistakes on it which is why it's so late. First I wanted to skip some of the material and present it in flashbacks and just go on to 'A Dance with Dragons'. I spent about a year doing that when I realised it wasn't working. So I then had to go back and start all over and not do the five year gap that I was going to do.^[22]

This unwieldiness is a familiar problem for Martin. The reason fans have been driven so wild over the six-year delay is because the fourth and fifth books were meant to be one. The sheer size of A Feast for Crows forced the author to split the narrative in two, meaning that some of the viewpoints of Martin's best characters – the scheming dwarf Tyrion Lannister, the dragon princess Daenerys – are missing, to be revealed in A Dance with Dragons.^[16]

ADWD is in a way half a novel; as GRRM struggled with the multiplying threads of his fourth novel, he decided to cleave it in two, not by chronology but by character: he followed some of the point-of-view characters through whom he writes his chapters and left others for later. The resulting fourth book, A Feast for Crows (AFFC), took ASOIAF to strange and dark places, but it suffered for the division. It occupied us with characters we hadn’t gotten close to—we got really, really familiar with Dorne and on the Iron Islands—while some favorite characters were MIA for eleven long years.^[23]

And why, Mr Martin, did you decide to split the book in two, leaving your readers on tenterhooks? "I had too much material to fit in one book. I was late, I was late with A Feast for Crows and I was going to be later. I looked at the book and at that stage I had 1,500 pages and yet wasn't anywhere near the end. I was near the end on some characters, but the books have like eight viewpoint characters which I intercut between, so on some characters I'd hardly even started yet. And then it occurred to me, the notion of splitting the book in two came up.^[24]

"One way to split it in two was chronologically: OK, I'll do the first six months of the story with all the characters. But I couldn't split it that way because I didn't have even the first six months of the story about all the characters. It did occur to me, I could take the stories which were almost done and split it by character and not by chronology. And once I did that it really fell into two books. It's in parallel, not sequentially. Although Dance does go further than Feast. Dance extends – if you say Feast covers a year, Dance covers a year-and-a-half."^[24]

The series probably will take six volumes to be fully told, said Martin, who's working on the fourth installment. It will called "The Dance with Dragons." He initially envisioned a trilogy, "But even before I finished the first, it became clear that I had too much story." The series itself crept up on him, Martin recalled. He was working on a science-fiction novel when a scene -- the discovery of direwolf pups in the snow beside their dead mother -- popped into his head. The image of pups became a scene-setter in the first chapter of "A Game of Thrones." Martin gave up the novel and began exploring a new world of fire and ice, and thus was the series born.^[25]

How many books are you planning for this series? -- There's eventually going to be six. Right now there's three. A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords.^[9]

Are you already working on book four? -- I am. -- Does it have a name yet? -- A Dance With Dragons. The fifth one will be The Winds of Winter. And the sixth one will be named later. [Laughs] I don't have that title yet.^[9]

The tale also got stalled. There has been no addition to the “Song of Ice and Fire” series since 2005, when the fourth volume appeared. And that book, titled “A Feast for Crows,” was only half a novel: it had been surgically removed from a manuscript that, at twelve hundred pages, still wasn’t complete nearly five years after the publication of the third volume. Because “A Feast for Crows” followed the adventures of a number of new characters—and left the fates of several popular characters unresolved after the previous book’s cliffhanger ending—some fans were disappointed by it. Martin included a postscript in “A Feast for Crows,” explaining what he’d done—and then, as he told me, “I made the fatal mistake of saying, ‘But the other book is half-written and I should be able to finish it within a year.’ ”^[10]

Do you have titles for the fifth and sixth books yet? -- Martin: The fourth book is A Dance With Dragons, the fifth book is The Winds of Winter. The sixth book, I'm not entirely certain yet.^[19]

A Dance with Dragons (2011)

Despite initial hopes of A Dance with Dragons being published quickly after A Feast for Crows, the writing and revision process for this fifth novel proved more difficult than anticipated. After almost six years, A Dance with Dragons was released on July 12, 2011. The book length is slightly longer than A Storm of Swords, making it the longest book yet published in the series. During the long writing period, Martin insisted that he would not be bullied and works at his own pace, on this and several other projects, to make sure they come out as good as he can possibly make them.^[26]

After spending six years writing it, Martin has very nearly completed a book that is whopping even by his standards: over 1,600 pages in manuscript.^[16] At 1,040 pages, Dance is Martin's longest book in the series, yet is actually shorter than the author intended in terms of the amount of story that's covered. There's at least one large battle sequence that Martin didn't have time to include, and several character threads end in tantalizing cliff-hangers.^[6]

GRRM has said that part of what delayed the book so long was untangling “the Meerreenese knot”—that is, if I understand him correctly, making the chronology and characters mesh up as various threads converged on Dany. And if there’s a weakness to the early Meereen sections, they seem to be marking time (and making Dany uncharacteristically indecisive) to allow time for all the pieces to fall into place. ADWD eventually catches up with the end of AFFC, at which point several of its point-of-view characters return, including Arya Stark, apprenticing with the Faceless Men in Braavos; the aforementioned Victarion; and imprisoned Queen Cersei Lannister back in King’s Landing. (Remember King’s Landing?)^[23]

Nevertheless, I pointed out, “A Dance with Dragons” has taken him longer than any of the preceding four novels. “Maybe I’m rewriting too much,” he suggested, after a fretful silence. “Maybe I have perfectionist’s disease, or whatever.” Martin explained that he’s been tinkering with some parts of “A Dance with Dragons” for ten years. He has a “real love-hate relationship” with a chapter that focusses on Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf: “I ripped it out and put it back in, I ripped it out and put it back in. Then I put it in as a dream sequence, and then I ripped it out again. This is the stuff I’ve been doing.”^[10]

The Winds of Winter (planned)

Which leads to the dreadful question: When can the devoted expect book 6? I'm not going to say, Martin says. I've gotten in constant trouble for that. There's an element of fans who don't seem to realize I'm making estimates. I've repeatedly been guilty of an excess of optimism. He says he's already made some headway on The Winds of Winter and expects to return to it in January.^[6]

One big concern has been what if the TV series surpasses where you are in the books. For awhile, that seemed premature. Now that season one has done well, it’s worth asking. -- There’s two questions here. The first is: How long will it take me to write the next book. Will Winds of Winter go smoothly or is it going to be Feast and Dance all over again? I certainly hope it’s not the latter.^[8]

In June 2010, Martin had already finished four chapters of the sixth book, The Winds of Winter, from the viewpoints of Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, and Arianne Martell.^[4] He said to have written over 100 pages for the book.^[27]

By the publication of A Dance with Dragons in July 2011, Martin had already started the next book. He hopes to return to it mid-way through January 2012.^[28] Martin hopes not to repeat separating the characters in the six book, however he acknowledges that "Three years from now when I’m sitting on 1,800 pages of manuscript with no end in sight, who the hell knows".^[8]

"Hopefully, the last two books will go a little quicker than this one has, but that doesn't mean they're going to be quick," says Martin. "Realistically, it's going to take me three years to finish the next one at a good pace. I hope it doesn't take me six years like this last one has.^[16]

Martin hopes that, after he surmounts the particularly thorny problems of “A Dance with Dragons,” the final two books will come much faster. Some detractors insist that he’ll never complete the series, and they like to kibbitz about who ought to fill in for him if he pulls a Jordan. Martin, however, has indicated that he will not permit another writer to finish “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The story begins and ends with him.^[10]

A Dream of Spring (planned)

And fans can reassure themselves that Martin is working toward a conclusion, since he's often said he'll end the series with the seventh novel...right? I'm as firm as I am, Martin says, until I decide not to be firm. ^[6]

Fans, meanwhile, fret about the possibility that the show — which so far is covering one book per season — will ultimately overtake Martin's recent glacial publishing pace. I'm still in denial about that, he says. I'm telling myself that won't happen. I have a considerable head start on them. ^[6] I think I’ll have Winds out by then, but they could catch up with me before [Book 7] A Dream of Spring.^[8]

Martin had said in 2006 to have chosen A Dream of Spring as the title for the seventh and expectedly last book of the series.^[5]

Martin knows the ending in broad strokes, but not every little twist and turn that will get him there. He knows the future of the main characters, but not of every secondary character. He also told major plot points to the Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, knowing that fans are worried he might die before the end of the book series.^[8]

CCI: Do you still anticipate the series being seven books long? -- Martin: Yes, that’s the plan. It was originally three books, but the tale grew in the telling, as Tolkien used to say.^[29]

CCI: As the series has continued and grown, are you still working toward the same conclusion you first created, or is that subject to change? -- Martin: Everything is subject to change, but at this point the conclusion in my head remains the same as it did in 1991, when I first conceived of this project and began work on A Game of Thrones.^[29]

Q: Do you have an ending planned for your saga, and are you going to stick to it? -- I'm trying to stick to it. When I started, my goal was three books. Now I plan to wrap it up in seven book. THe story is more involved now, but I have already planned the ending. Yes, I know how it's going to end.^[30]

Can either series ever come to a happy ending? Is there such a thing in your worldview? -- Martin: [Laughs, pauses.] I think there's happiness. [Pauses.] You know, the completely happy ending where everybody lives happily ever after, I don't know. I think there's always going to be a little element of bittersweet. But that remains to be seen. We haven't gotten to the endings yet.^[19]

After the series

"I certainly get letters from fans, asking me to continue writing the series," he said. "When I finish, the question arises, 'What will I do next?' I think: something different." He doesn't rule out additional stories on the seven kingdoms, but probably won't continue in that vein immediately, Martin said.^[25]

GRRM: I think my work has gotten longer as I’ve gotten older and deeper into my career. I don’t think, when I finish Ice and Fire, that I am ever going to do anything on that scale again. I’m not immediately going to start another seven-volume mega-opus. I can be pretty certain of that. But I am not sure I am going to go back to writing short stories either. The truth is, I haven’t done a true short story in years. Even when I do write short fiction, it tends to come out at novella length. But I might very well, once Ice and Fire is done, do some novellas and maybe even a few novelets and certainly a stand-alone novel or two. -- WT: Of course once The Song of Ice and Fire is done, the publisher could say, “This is so successful, here’s five million dollars. Write me another one.” What then? -- GRRM: I do wrestle with that. I figure it remains to be seen what will happen to me after Ice and Fire, the reception the next book will get. In some ways you never know. Is your audience going to follow you when you do something different? I now have hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of readers, but are they Ice and Fire readers, or are they George R.R. Martin readers? Until I do my first new book after the series, I’m not going to know. ... I am not going to say that I am going to be done with Westeros forever, this world I have created, but it is certainly not the only thing I want to write. So once it is done, I certainly will attempt to do other things in science fiction or horror or even in other genres that I haven’t touched on yet, and the question remains, will my audience follow me there?^[7]

I have a lot of short stories – I love the short story. But I've got to finish this first and then I'll decide what I'm inspired by at that point. If I'm not in some old folks' home." And if he is, no doubt his fans will be haranguing him even there.^[16]

Inspiration and writing

Genre

I read H.P. Lovecraft. I read Robert E. Howard and I read Tolkien, and of course I read Robert A. Heinlein and Eric Frank Russell and Andre Norton, so I have always loved all three genres of science fiction and horror and fantasy; and I have moved between them pretty freely.^[7]

Dargon: Was there anyone who inspired you, or whom you feel helped you pursue your dream of being a novelist? -- George: A lot of people inspired me. Tokien inspired me. Certainly for any fantasy writer it is [hard] working under [his] great shadow. LORD OF THE RINGS defined the genre of fantasy itself. So he was certainly a huge inspiration for a Song of Ice and Fire.^[17]

Well my favorite contemporary author is Jack Vance. I enjoy many genres, fantasy, sci-fiction and even mystery.^[17]

Dargon: Why did you choose fantasy (as a genre) to write in? What interests you about the genre? -- George: I read many genres as a child -- Tolkien and Robert E. Howard , Robert A. Heinlein, Andre Norton, Asimov, Eric Frank Russell, H.P. Lovecraft. I didn’t make distinctions. My father used to call it always “weird stuff”. It didn’t matter if the book had a castle or a spaceship, it was all the same to me. You write what you read, in the end. I knew sooner or later I’d work in all these genres and I have.^[17]

On his website, Martin has acknowledged historical fiction authors such as Bernard Cornwell and George MacDonald Fraser to be influences on the series. Martin has cited the cover blurb by Robert Jordan for the first book to have been influential in ensuring the series' early success with fantasy readers.^[31]

Jack Vance is the greatest living SF writer, in my opinion, and one of the few who is also a master of Fantasy. His The Dying Earth (1950) was one of the seminal books in the history of modern Fantasy, and I would rank him right up there with Tolkien, Dunsany, Leiber, and T.H. White as one of the fathers of the genre. All that being said, I don't think A Song of Ice and Fire is particularly Vancean.^[20]

The most profound [influences] are the ones you experience when you're young. Writers that you have read growing up. I read science fiction, fantasy and horror interchangeably. My father would call them all "weird stuff". They influence the fact that I write from all these generes easily.^[30]

Writing process

Martin has days where "I really enjoy writing and there are days I f–king hate it. I can see it in my head and the words won’t come. I try to put it on the page and it feels stiff and wooden and it’s stupid. Writing is hard work. He throws written material away, especially as the story goes deeper. He doesn't know if it is his age or the book series getting more complicated. Because of good reviews and comparisons to Tolkein, he has developed a "desire not to blow it".^[8]

So what did happen during those six years, when fan impatience became so intense that a mere blog post by Martin suggesting he was doing anything other than writing Dance drew outraged rants? I never had the sort of writer's block where I didn't go near the typewriter, Martin says. But I had days where I would sit there and couldn't write and I would spend all day answering emails, or I would rewrite and couldn't go forward.^[6]

Martin strives, he said, to finish each installment in 18 months. And sorry, book No. 4, "The Dance with Dragons" is only a few months along. Devotees of his mythical world will just have to wait. ^[25]

So not much writing going on while you're on tour? -- None whatsoever. I need my own place. I need my office and my settings. I've tried. I have occasionally taken a laptop with me or in the old days a notepad or something like that. But I can't write, really, except in my own setting with my office around me where I can really get lost in the world that I'm creating instead of the world around me. -- Where is your office? -- In Santa Fe, New Mexico. I've lived there for the last 20 years. Originally I'm from New Jersey.^[9]

Do you have a writing schedule? -- I get up every day and work in the morning. I have my coffee and get to work. On good days I look up and it's dark outside and the whole day has gone by and I don't know where it's gone. But there's bad days, too. Where I struggle and sweat and a half hour creeps by and I've written three words. And half a day creeps by and I've written a sentence and a half and then I quit for the day and play computer games. You know, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. [Laughs]^[9]

On a good day, which starts with coffee, I start writing at 10a, and often look up and it's dark already. I spend all day.^[30]

Q: When you have a time where you don't think you can write another word, that is it that gets you going again? -- Sometimes re-writing helps. The first thing I do every morning when I'm working on a new book is look at what I did yesterday. Then I start changing and polishing it.^[30]

What's the writing process like? Do you write the individual chapters in the order they appear in the books? -- Martin: Oh, no. [Laughs.] I start off trying to do that, and I certainly outline what order I want the chapters in, but both of those things are subject to change. I usually wind up rearranging the chapters two dozen times before the book is done, trying to get the optimal arrangement of intercutting from one character to another to maximize the suspense. Sometimes there's a certain irony, or a certain interesting point-counterpoint effect you can get by properly ordering certain chapters, juxtaposing events with each other. But you also have the chronology to worry about. It's tricky, and I'm always changing my mind on that, trying to optimize it. As for writing the chapters, well, particularly when a work is going well--if I'm writing a Tyrion chapter and I finish it, but it's really rolling, and I know exactly what's going to follow, then instead of whatever chapter comes next, I'll just go on ahead and write the next Tyrion chapter, even though it may not occur until seven chapters later in the book. I may write three or four before I finally hit the point where I'm struggling a little, and then I'll go back and pick up whatever character was supposed to be next, and write about them for a little while.^[19]

What's the timeline like for publication of the rest of the series? -- Martin: It all depends on how long it takes me to write it. They're big books, they take me a year and a half, at least, to write, and sometimes I go over those deadlines, though obviously I try not to. So unfortunately, I think we're looking at 18 months to two years for each volume, and that means we're looking for the next three books, and the ultimate end of the series, in five or six years.^[19]

I’ve never been good with deadlines. My early novels, I wrote by myself. No one knew I was writing a novel, I didn’t have a contract. Many writers will get a contract by selling chapters and outlines or something like that. I wrote the entire novel and when it was all finished, I would give it to my agent and say, "Well, here's a novel, sell it if you can." And they would do that and it was good because I never had anyone looking over my shoulder. But obviously you can’t do that with a series. And so I do have contracts and I do have a series and people are expecting it to come out. So, it has produced this pressure and with this book. It’s obviously the worst I’ve ever blown a deadline, although I had blown deadlines before. And I am very aware of that. ^[32]

Ryan: Does that ever change what you're doing? Do you read message boards and all that? -- Martin: I try not to let it influence me. Sometimes people will figure out a twist that you're contemplating, so the temptation is to change what would have been the twist. That way lies madness and disaster. So I read some [comment areas on GRRM-related sites] early on [but not now]. No matter what, it's exciting as an artist to have a response to your work. Sometimes you put so much work into a book and it’s carefully crafted and it’s got secondary meanings and subtext and a little foreshadowing and you have no idea when they go, "Oh, I like your book," that anybody is getting any of it. But when they’re responding to that, you can see that they’re getting [what you're trying to do]. You’re trying to do something and it’s not coming across. You invented this character and everybody hates it. Or everybody completely misunderstands the character, so you might not be doing it right, you know?^[32]

World building

"I’m sure you’ll know that the last book took over five years to write which was a lot longer than I thought. But then I’ve thrown a lot of balls into the air and I’m juggling them madly. There are days when I wish I’d not thrown so many into the air as it’s a complicated process and there were a lot of traps and missteps. That said, once I’d done it I was committed to service those characters and do the best I can with them. Hopefully the results bear out the effort which goes into it. I’m happy with the series as a whole so far and of course I have two more books to do.^[28]

Q: What would you say was the hardest part of the entire process involved in the writing of the A Song of Ice and Fire? Each new addition reveals yet more depth to a series which has shown just how rich and complex it truly is. -- GRRM: The hardest part is keeping it all straight. I do have notes, of course, but not as many as you might think. Most of it is in my head... somewhere...^[33]

WT: Let me guess that you are a writer who draws the story out of emotion and image rather than idea. -- GRRM: Yes, I think that’s true. And if you believe in all this left-brain/right-brain stuff… but certainly the power of my fiction comes from the emotional side of things and not the rationalist side of things. I prefer, for example, not to outline. I did outline during my Hollywood decade, because it’s required of you there, but on my own stories I have usually a general idea of where the story is going, but I do not break it all down and design it ahead of time. I just sort of fill in the blanks during the writing. The characters come alive and they take me to that destination, if the story is working.^[7]

In the case of fantasy, of course, it’s a little different. The most conspicuous aspect of the world of Westeros in The Song of Ice and Fire is the nature of the seasons, the long and random nature of the seasons. I have gotten a number of fan letters over the years from readers who are trying to figure out the reason for why the seasons are the way they are. They develop lengthy theories: perhaps it’s a multiple-star system, and what the axial tilt is, but I have to say, “Nice try, guys, but you’re thinking in the wrong direction.” This is a fantasy series. I am going to explain it all eventually, but it’s going to be a fantasy explanation. It’s not going to be a science-fiction explanation. -- WT: In a fantasy you have to have a supernatural or mythic core to the story, rather than a scientific one. -- GRRM: Right. Yes. Exactly.^[7]

Some questions about 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series. You took a lot of care to describe your world down to the smallest detail, also inventing many sigils and coats of arms. Is there any particular reason for that? Do you like heraldry? -- Yes, I love heraldry. It's a lot of fun. I always wanted to create an epic with a large cast of characters. Before 'A Song of Ice and Fire' I've been working in Hollywood for a long time and you are very constricted there. When you write a television show or a movie you only have an hour or two hours. You have a budget that limits the number of sets you can have and the number of actors, and extras you can have in some of the scenes because everything costs money; so my work for Hollywood was almost always too big and too expensive. I was always having to cut it down, make it a little bit smaller, and after ten years of that I was sick of it and I wanted to do something expensive, something large, so I created Westeros. I think part of the appeal of fantasy, ever since the time of Tolkien certainly, and maybe even going back to Robert E. Howard and the Hyborian Age, is the setting. You want to create an entire world, an entire secondary universe and to do that you need a lot of detail. You need a lot of space. Creating the details is part of the fun for me and hopefully part of the enjoyment for the readers.^[22]

There are no maps of the complete world in the books or on the Internet. Does such a map exist? -- No such map exists. -- Will it be available later? -- Each new book will have a couple of new maps. Each book so far has added a map or two so maybe by the end of the series you will be able to take all the smaller maps and piece them together into the map of the world. Partly I did that deliberately because, again, I'm going for the feel of the real middle ages. The truth is that in the real middle ages, if you go back to 12th century or so, they didn't have a really good idea about what the rest of the world looked like. Their concept of geography was pretty shaky. They knew what their own country looked like and the next country over, maybe the one beyond that but then things started getting a little hazy. People didn't travel very far for the most part. We still talk about people like Marco Polo who went to China but the fact that his name is still known hundreds of years later shows how rare that was. The actual geography of the world was not understood and I think you get some of that feel by not having maps, particularly of the farther away places.^[22]

One issue was that Martin had created a world so detailed and sprawling that the story became unwieldy. Hardcore fantasy lovers sometimes become lost in mythical worlds, but this is a case where the author himself seemed mired in his own complex plotline. After a cohort of minor characters seized command of the story in book 4, Martin wrestled his narrative back on track in Dragons. I do sometimes think I've thrown too many balls in the air, but having thrown them in the air, it's my obligation to juggle them, Martin says, then jokes: Why did I have to make it the Seven Kingdoms? Wouldn't Five Kingdoms have been sufficiently complicated?^[6]

I know the ultimate destination, I know the principal landmarks and things that happen along the way, like [big event redacted] which had been planned from the beginning and all of that. But some of them I discover in the writing. Essentially I know the big stuff, but a lot of little stuff occurs in the course of the writing. And of course some of the little stuff is very, very important. The devil is in the details. The devil is what makes the journey more than just an outline or a Cliff’s Notes kind of experience. So I may know the ultimate fates of Jon Snow and Daenerys and Arya and some of the other principal characters. But I don’t necessarily know the ultimate fates of Dolorous Edd or Hot Pie, you know. Well, I have a few ideas about those, but still.^[34]

Q: Is there any particular piece of worldbuilding that you are especially proud of? -- GRRM: I like the Wall. So far as I know, it's unique in fantasy.^[33]

Well, certainly I wanted the series to have some of the feel of historical fiction as well as the feel of traditional fantasy. I wanted that sense of gritty reality. So I did a lot of research and for someone like me, an American who speaks only English, the easiest source of medieval history to research is the history of England. Of course, we don't have any medieval history in America and while places like France and Germany and Spain have fascinating histories of their own, a lot of the detailed books about their middle ages are not available in English and therefore not accesible to me. That probably gave it somewhat of a British flavour. Also I am writing in English for an English speaking audience; the books have been translated into many other languages which is great, but the language and the culture and tradition that I really understand is the British one.^[22]

His agent initially sold it as a trilogy: Martin had no idea it would eventually stretch to what will be seven books, thousands of pages and a cast list that, in its latest incarnation, tops 50 pages. He's no Tolkien, who had vast appendices and invented languages lurking behind The Lord of the Rings; these days it's getting harder and harder for him to keep track of his own creation. "I have no special system," he admits. "I keep it in my head – or try my best to. Maybe I tossed a few too many balls in the air, but I have to keep juggling with them now." So will he try to rein himself in for the sixth and seventh novels? Possibly – though fans probably shouldn't hold their breath.^[16]

There is no such thing as a stock character or a cardboard village there: every person, every wood and stream and street corner has its own tale.^[35]

Is there a lot of back story in your books that we're not really ever able to see? -- There's more back story than I reveal. Of course, I reveal a little more in each volume. In my series in particular, much of the key to the future lies in the past and the successive revelations of what happened 16 years ago and what we think is true maybe isn't necessarily true. In that process of revelation sometimes I'm taking the story forward, but I'm also taking the story backwards with each successive book where you're learning a little more of what happened. But there's more back story than I'll ever reveal. I have notes and details on many of the kings who were just sort of mentioned in passing and again Tolkien, who was the master of this form, showed the way to do that. He published all his appendices -- I don't think I'll actually publish my notes and appendices -- but if you look at the back of The Lord of the Rings there are pages and pages of appendices and the detail with which he created that world was amazing.^[9]

Do you bring some of that with you? Some of those film production values? -- To an extent, yeah. I mean, I'm a very visual writer. And when I describe a scene, I see it in my head much as a director would see a shot. I see how the light is falling and where the characters are standing -- "blocking" they call it in Hollywood -- and I think working in Hollywood sharpened my dialog. That's something you spend a lot of time with in Hollywood: polishing your dialog.^[9]

Are your books very carefully plotted? A room with maps or anything? -- I keep maps but, no. I don't do any of that. I have a general idea of where I'm going but I let the characters meet me and the twists and turns along the road come out in the writing.^[9]

He thinks of himself as a “gardener”—he has a rough idea where he’s going but improvises along the way. He sometimes fleshes out only as much of his imaginary world as he needs to make a workable setting for the story. Tolkien was what Martin calls an “architect.” Tolkien created entire languages, mythologies, and histories for Middle-earth long before he wrote the novels set there. Martin told me that many of his fans assume that he is as meticulous a world-builder as Tolkien was.^[10]

But world building. Like Frank Herbert [author of Dune] was inspired by political unrest and ecology and things. So I was wondering about the seasons. Was that based on something that interested you or did it just seem like a cool thing? -- I think I liked the symbolism of it. Winter and summer and what they mean. We all have winters in our lives and it doesn't just mean the cold seasons. Summer is a time of growth and plenty and joy. And winter is a dark time where you have to struggle for survival.^[9]

Martin is in the unusual position of being a writer whose work is attended to even more closely by his readers than by himself. And, as the panorama of “A Song of Ice and Fire” has grown ever more expansive, Martin has become increasingly afraid that he’ll make mistakes. He has already made some tiny ones: “My fans point them out to me. I have a horse that changes sex between books. He was a mare in one book and a stallion in the next, or something like that.” The eyes of one supporting character are described as green in one passage and blue in another. As Martin puts it, “People are analyzing every goddam line in these books, and if I make a mistake they’re going to nail me on it.”^[10]

“I don’t want to come across as a whiner or a complainer,” Martin said, as tinted light from the afternoon sun filtered through the stained-glass windows. “No! I’m living the dream here. I have all of these readers who are waiting on the book. I want to give them something terrific.” There was a pause. “What if I fuck it up at the end? What if I do a ‘Lost’? Then they’ll come after me with pitchforks and torches.”^[10]

How do you keep track of all the details? There are so many minor characters, lesser houses, lists of names--how do you remember who's where, and what their banners and relationships are? -- Martin: I do have certain lists and charts that I have to hand, but most of it I just need to remember. It's locked in my head. And it is a lot to keep in mind, there's no doubt about it. I do make mistakes from time to time, and when I do, the fans are quick to let me know about it. I have some very sharp readers. Obviously I try not to do that very often.^[19]

Narrative structure

The series is told in the third-person through the eyes of a number of point of view characters. By the end of the fourth volume, there have been 17 such characters with multiple chapters and eight who only have one chapter apiece. Several new viewpoint characters are introduced by the conclusion of the fifth volume, setting the stage for the major events of the sixth novel.

Martin finds it difficult where to break each book since it is one story. At the same time, he wants each book to represent a phase of the journey. I try to end each character with a cliffhanger or some kind of resolution. And I try to make the cliffhangers the smaller portion — I don’t want eight cliffhangers. A Dance with Dragons had more cliffhangers than he ideally would have liked.^[8]

There’s a point in the series where you feel like you’re reading a bunch of separate stories. Toward the end of Dance, you feel the threads starting to come back together. Is that accurate? -- That’s certainly the intent, and always was the intent. Tolkien was my great model for much of this. Although I differ from Tolkien in important ways, I’m second to no one in my respect for him. If you look at Lord of the Rings, it begins with a tight focus and all the characters are together. Then by end of the first book the Fellowship splits up and they have different adventures. I did the same thing. Everybody is at Winterfell in the beginning except for Dany, then they split up into groups, and ultimately those split up too. The intent was to fan out, then curve and come back together. Finding the point where that turn begins has been one of the issues I’ve wrestled with.^[8]

Dance with Dragons seemed to push together a lot of the stray plotlines though. -- “Yes, hopefully the storylines have begun to converge. One of the things that have happened with the books is that the storyline has spread out further and further which is deliberately the structure I intended from the beginning. But perhaps I’ve spread a little further than I initially intended. Now comes the tricky part where I tie everything together as I move towards the ending, which I hope the majority of readers would like. But I realise how difficult endings are and in any work like this where people are reading it for years they have visions in their head of what the endings should be. Inevitably I’ll disappoint some of them because whatever you deliver won’t be what they wanted. I’m hopeful though that most will enjoy it, but hey that’s still about 3000 pages away! I’ve got a lot of writing to do before I get there.”^[28]

One thing I was struck by when I started reading the books was how the chapters would break the way that an HBO drama might. Would you say that having written for series television influenced at all the way you develop and structure the story? -- I think so. I think it did. You know, one of the things you learn when you are working for network television, the importance of the act to break because unlike HBO, network TV requires people to come back after the commercial. So you know, you always want to have an act break that it’s a moment of revelation, a twist, a moment of tension, a cliff hanger what it is, but each act has to go out on something, you know. The da, da, da, da moment as my wife, Parris, calls them when we watch “Law and Order,” you know. … I want to keep I want to keep people turning the pages here, keep them engrossed. And so I tried to end every chapter with an act break. A cliff hanger is a good act break certainly, but it’s not the only kind of act break. It can just be a moment… a character moment, a moment of revelation, it has to end with something that makes you want to read more about this character.^[36]

Dargon: I have seen a few e-mails and message board posts concerning certain errors in some of the books and seeing how much rich history is involved in the entire series, I was wondering if at times the process of keeping track of the plot and subplots becomes difficult? -- George: Yes. It is becoming increasingly difficult. I know the broad strokes of the plot. It is the little details that slip your mind. But fortunately I have editors and copy editors and keen eyed fans. It is difficult and I’m keeping more notes then I have before. In some of my previous books I kept the details in my own head.^[17]

Martin wrestles greatly with the chronology. His original intention was to set out with the young characters and have them grow up during the series. The chapters were intended to be one or two months apart so that by the end of the book a year will have passed. However, Martin found that "it doesn't make sense that a character will take two months to respond to something that happens. So you wind up writing the whole book and very little time has passed. After the third book I thought I would jump forward five years, then the kids would be older. That was part of the delay. I tried to write it with a gap but it just didn’t work, so I wound up scrapping all that.^[8]

You started writing the first book of the Saga, A Game of Thrones, in 1991 and published it in 1996. Now, when you look back at it, is there anything you would change? -- Hum, I may have structured it so that the kids could grow up a little more, so that months pass between the chapters instead of only days between the chapters, but you know, if I would have done that it would be a much more different book than what I have, so I don’t know if I would really have done that, but looking back at it, if I would have done that it would have solved now problems that I am encountering. On the other hand if I would have done that I could have created other problems, so you know, what I have here is working pretty well, but that is the only thing sometimes I wonder about.^[37]

The actual structure of the Ice and Fire books, with their multiple POVs and interwoven storylines, was inspired by the Wild Cards shared world books that I’ve been editing and writing for since 1985. Many of the Wild Cards books are mosaic novels, where each of my writers tells the story of his or her own character, and I braid the tales together to make a whole, sort of like a Robert Altman film in prose. Structurally, the Ice anf Fire books are Wild Cards mosaic novels with me writing all the parts.^[15]

I won't say the plotlines have diverged, but the process of getting from here to there has taken more time and more pages than I initially estimated... perhaps because I found the places and people I encountered along the way so interesting. The secondary and tertiary characters are largely to blame, the spearcarriers who keep insisting that they're human too, when all I want them to do is stand there and be quiet and hold that spear. Yes, some of my initial plans have changed along the way. If they hadn't, I would just be connecting the dots, and that would drive me mad. Some writers are architects and some are gardeners, and I am in the second camp. The tale takes on a life of its own in the writing.^[33]

A Dance with Dragons follows, by my count, 11 major story lines, as well as assorted minor ones, each with its own rhythm, written in its own voice, and each playing off all the others. Martin will never win a Pulitzer or a National Book Award, but his skill as a crafter of narrative exceeds that of almost any literary novelist writing today. The complexity of Martin's design ensures that we experience the struggle for Westeros from all sides at once. It's as if he's trying to show us that every fight is both triumph and tragedy, depending on where you see it from, and everybody is both hero and villain at the same time. Or maybe not even that. "There are no heroes, only whores," says Theon.^[35]

It's set mostly in the Seven Kingdoms, an unstable amalgamation of nations caught in the act of vigorously ripping itself to shreds following the death of King Robert Baratheon. Martin shoots the action from many angles, with a dozen narrators, the better to reflect its gritty, twisty, many-sided nature and its vast cast of would-be queens and kings, rogues, bastards, bandits, madmen, mercenaries, exiles, priests and various uncategorizable wild cards. Martin may write fantasy, but his politik is all real.^[21]

Martin has acknowledged his debt to the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, Jack Vance and Tad Williams.^[12] According to Martin, "Although I differ from Tolkien in important ways, I’m second to no one in my respect for him. If you look at Lord of the Rings, it begins with a tight focus and all the characters are together. Then by end of the first book the Fellowship splits up and they have different adventures. I did the same thing. Everybody is at Winterfell in the beginning except for Dany, then they split up into groups, and ultimately those split up too. The intent was to fan out, then curve and come back together. Finding the point where that turn begins has been one of the issues I’ve wrestled with."^[8]

The serial nature of “A Song of Ice and Fire” is key to the involvement it elicits. Although story lines conclude in each of the novels, the larger narrative arc remains unresolved, encouraging readers to speculate about what might ultimately happen. Online forums are an ideal place to debate rival theories, allowing participants to forge the emotional bonds that define contemporary fandom.^[10]

The proliferation of plot elements is a major reason that Martin’s writing pace has slowed. “A Song of Ice and Fire” primarily takes place over several years on a continent about the size of South America. Each chapter is narrated in the third person, from the point of view of a single character. The first book had eight major viewpoint characters, but by “A Feast for Crows” the total for the series had grown to seventeen, each in a different location and enmeshed in a complex plot—fighting in wars, journeying through arduous terrain, scheming to steal a throne.^[10]

Making sure that the chronologies of the different stories line up has particularly bedevilled Martin. He said, “I have to ask myself, ‘How long is it going to take this character to get from point A to point B by ship? Meanwhile, what’s happened in the other book? If it’s going to take him this long, but in the other book I said that he’d already arrived there, then I’m in trouble. So I have to have him leave earlier.’ That kind of stuff has driven me crazy.” Last year, he wrote on his blog, “I know perfectly well that as soon as ‘Dance’ is published, some of you out there are going to attempt to correlate its chronology with that of ‘A Feast for Crows.’ . . . Well, it may well make your head explode. It did mine. The ‘Dance’ timeline alone is a bitch and a half.”^[10]

Speaking of brutality, your practice of ending your books on cliffhangers is somewhat brutal to your audience, particularly with two years' wait between the books. -- Martin: [Laughs.] I'm not entirely sure I agree with the characterization that I end the books on cliffhangers. Remember, in these books I'm juggling seven or eight or nine storylines. So when I'm choosing where to end the book, essentially I'm not picking one ending so much as I'm picking eight endings, because I have to see where I'm going to leave each of the characters. And what I've been mostly trying to do is to find a place where there's some sense of closure for most of those characters, where some portion of their story has been told, something has been resolved, an important transition has been gone through. But I do usually include at least one of the eight that ends on something that is an out-and-out cliffhanger. And maybe occasionally more than that. But certainly I don't end all eight on cliffhangers. As to the reason for cliffhangers, it's the same as the reason for cliffhangers always is, to make sure the reader comes back for the next book.^[19]

Storm of Swords was the first book in the series so far that contained a seemingly crucial scene that couldn't appear "on stage" because there was no POV character present--the confrontation between Ser Loras and Brienne of Tarth over Renly. When you reach a situation like that, do you consider introducing a new point-of-view character, or using a character that only appears once, or do you try to rearrange the plot so that kind of situation won't come up? -- Martin: Those point-of-view characters that I use just once tend to have a very short life span. I've so far restricted them to the prologue and epilogue. It's tricky, because when I do a point-of-view character, I don't like to put them in simply to be a pair of eyes. If I'm going to have a point-of-view character, I want to tell a story about them. Each of the viewpoints in the series has a story. It may be a story that ends in death and tragedy, in some cases it may be a story that ends in triumph and happiness, but it will be a story, with a beginning, a middle and an end, and what we call in Hollywood a character arc. I used to write screenplays and teleplays, and people would always use that term--a series of events that changes the character in some way or another. But I don't like just sticking in, as some writers do, a new character so he can see someone doing something because I have no other pair of eyes there. That kind of character is convenient, but really has no character arc. You have no place to go, you have no story to tell about that character, he's just an observer to someone else's story.^[19]

Characters

For the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros are indeed made up of a cast of thousands. Among those thousands are some deeply realized characters in what are (even by fantasy-literature standards) freshly imaginative and intricate situations.^[25]

The character that is the most fun to write is Tyrion Lannister, my poor tormented dwarf, because he is witty and very complex and his chapters really seem to write themselves. The characters that are hardest to write for me are probably the children. Particulary the younger children. I think Bran is probably the single hardest character.^[22]

Our kids have actual dramatic roles where they have to deal with grief and loneliness and anger and a lot of very adult stuff.^[36]

Dargon: Where do you get your inspiration for different characters? Are any of them based on people you know? -- George: Not directly. But I think ultimately they are based on me. The person you know best is usually yourself. I also look around and make observations of friends, people I meet, personalities in the news. I’ve also used history as resource.^[17]

Dargon: There are many characters in your books, if you were to choose one as a favorite; who would it be and why? -- George: In Ice and Fire it is certainly Tyrion Lannister. As to why -- he is easy to write about, I admire his wit. He is a tortured soul, but an articulate one, and he is full of so many contradictory yearnings and desires that there are always more depths to explore.^[17]

He will admit to a favorite character among his cast of thousands -- Tyrion Lannister, the dwarf of Casterly Rock. A "bad guy" at first glance, Tyrion develops into a mini-Machiavelli with a cutting, David Letterman-like wit. "I forget who it was who said that the villain is a hero to the other side," Martin said. "(Tyrion's) chapters are easy to write."^[25]

But uh, the characters are the heart of it. I love the characters, even the bad guys. I’ve spent so many years with them now, decades of my life, they’re like the children I never had.”^[28]

Martin: Arya, Tyrion, and Jon Snow are probably the characters who generate the most feedback, with Dany close behind them.^[29]

But I do believe in portraying grey characters. I think grey characters are more interesting then black and white ones. If someone is always heroic he can get pretty boring to write about and I think he's going to get pretty boring to read about. Also, it's not real. I don't see any people like that in real life.^[22]

Yeah, I’ve always been attracted to grey characters. I’ve always taken it as a code William Faulkner’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech from the early ‘50’s, where he said that the human heart in conflict with the self was the only thing worth writing about. And I think that’s true. The battle between good and evil is a theme of much of fantasy. But I think the battle between good and evil is thought largely within the individual human heart, by the decisions that we make. It’s not like evil dresses up in black clothing and you know, they’re really ugly. These are some of the things that Tolkien did; he made them work fabulously, but in the hands of his imitators, they become total clichés.^[38]

By García’s count, there are already more than a thousand named characters in “A Song of Ice and Fire,” although many of them are mentioned only in passing. Martin was startled by the size of García’s census, but he enjoys being surprised by his own work.^[10]

Tyrion is the easiest character to write. His wit and humor make him interesting to me. I also empathize with him. It is something I do with my writing, especially for all the point of view characters. When writing from inside someone's head, you tend to see the world through their eyes. Requires certain amount of empathy. Even with the viallains, I get into their psyches.^[30]

You say often in interviews that Tyrion Lannister is the easiest Song character for you to write, and that he's personally your favorite character, if you were forced to pick one. What about him particularly is appealing to you? -- Martin: There's a number of things. I think his wit is appealing. He gets off a lot of good iconoclastic, cynical one-liners, and those are fun to write. He's also a very gray character. All my characters are gray to a greater or lesser extent, but Tyrion is perhaps the deepest shade of gray, with the black and white in him most thoroughly mixed, and I find that very appealing. I've always liked gray characters more than black-and-white characters. ^[19]

If Tyrion's the easiest character to write, who's the hardest? -- Martin: Thus far I'd say the hardest character has definitely been Bran, on two counts. Number one, he is the youngest of the major viewpoint characters, and kids are difficult to write about. I think the younger they are, the more difficult. Also, he is the character most deeply involved in magic, and the handling of magic and sorcery and the whole supernatural aspect of the books is something I'm trying to be very careful with. So I have to watch that fairly sharply. All of which makes Bran's chapters tricky to write. It should be easier in the next book, I would think, with the five-year break. Then I'll have a 14-year-old, and in terms of the Seven Kingdoms, that's almost an adult.^[19]

There seem to be two different styles competing throughout the series: historical fantasy in the Seven Kingdoms series, and a softer Roger Zelazny/Arabian Nights style for the scenes abroad. Is there a conscious split between the two for you, or is it just an aspect of the setting? -- Martin: I try to vary the style to fit each of the characters. Each character should have his or her own internal voice, since we're inside their heads. But certainly the setting has great impact. Dany is moving through exotic realms that are perhaps stranger to us than Westeros, which is more based in the medieval history with which we're more familiar in the West, so perhaps those chapters seem more colorful and fanciful.^[19]

I suspect another reason is that one of your strongest themes is the nature of justice. You often place your characters in very unjust situations, and I think readers react strongly to that. Do you personally get emotionally involved in the lives of your characters? -- Martin: Very much so. Especially when I'm writing them. To write these characters as such, I have to become them. I have to put on my Tyrion hat for a while, get inside his head and feel things as he would feel them, and see his choices as he would see them. Then I take that hat off and put on another one. And there are some dreadful things that happen in some of my books to some of the characters, and sometimes those chapters are very, very difficult to write. I know what I have to do because the plot demands it, and because as the story unfolds, that is what would happen at that point. But actually putting the words on paper has a finality to it, and when something really dreadful happens--I find myself drawing back from the abyss sometimes, writing other chapters instead, wasting time playing computer games, because I know I've got a very difficult task to do, particularly if it's a character I've learned to love. But I do it eventually.^[19]

John: What inspired the Starks? The Stark family in A Game of Thrones was just marvelous -- George R. R. Martin: Well, that's a difficult question to answer. I think, partially, I wanted to do a book about a family. I’ve written a lot of novels and I realize that for the most part, the heroes of those novels, the protagonists, are always loners. They're young people who are unattached, or they are older people who have never made attachments. Abner Marsh from Fever Dream, is a loner, Dirk Tellarian, in Dying of the Light, is a loner. So I thought it would be interesting to tackle a family unit for once. Also, there's a lot of inspiration in Clash of Kings from history and I read a lot of historical fiction and a lot of history when doing it and was struck by the great family units of the middle ages; power was a familial thing then. That dynamic seemed interesting to me and worth exploring.^[39]

Themes

Martin’s fantasy novels, the source material for HBO’s new Game of Thrones (see a scene from the pilot above), are known for moral ambiguity, complexity and cruelly brilliant plot twists.^[36]

Martin has an astonishing ability to focus on epic sweep and tiny, touching human drama simultaneously. The supernatural plays a role, but only rarely. What really distinguishes Martin, and what marks him as a major force for evolution in fantasy, is his refusal to embrace a vision of the world as a Manichaean struggle between Good and Evil. Tolkien's work has enormous imaginative force, but you have to go elsewhere for moral complexity. Martin's wars are multifaceted and ambiguous, as are the men and women who wage them and the gods who watch them and chortle, and somehow that makes them mean more. A Feast for Crows isn't pretty elves against gnarly orcs. It's men and women slugging it out in the muck, for money and power and lust and love.^[21]

Though the author describes his books as "epic fantasy", A Song of Ice and Fire is no magic-and-maidens Tolkien rip-off. Dark and gritty, steeped in sex (some incestuous), it features minimal magic, maximum machiavellian machinations and, as favourite characters are variously beheaded, gored and poisoned, lashings of violence. Loosely based on the wars of the roses, centring around the drawn-out rivalry between the fictional Stark and Lannister clans, the series is set in a world where seasons last for years, and a colossal wall of ice protects the lands from an unknown evil beyond.^[16]

On the face of it, Thrones follows the established fantasy rules: an imaginary realm requiring a big map (the continent of Westeros), a northern European medieval vibe, funny character names (Daenerys Targaryen, Khal Drogo, er, Jon Snow), and an almighty power struggle. But the "we're not in Middle Earth now" message is rammed home in the opening episode by way of two graphic beheadings, ... On the other hand, Thrones' feudal society doesn't leave much scope for social commentary or progressive values, and although the story is almost Wire-like in its complexity, with dozens of characters and multiple subplots to keep track of, many of them wouldn't look out of place in a Greek tragedy or even a 1980s soap opera.^[40]

The difference in tone from Tolkien's world is stark, says Bean: "You think of fantasy and you imagine it's going to be enchanting rather than disturbing, but this has got that edge to it. It's sexy, it's brutal, it's horrific, it's moving, but it's for a good reason. The characters are so poisonous. The monsters are the people!"^[40]

Dargon: Has a current event ever impacted direction of the plot in any of your books? -- George: Not really.^[17]

In all, the series stands at 2,647 total pages, and describes a world where summer can last for more than a decade and dark winter can grip a generation. The families of the kingdom's great houses scheme and pitch battle with hosts of knights and soldiers for the Iron Throne, while sinister, otherworldly forces mass to the far north beyond the Wall, an ancient, 700-foot barrier of ice. Martin makes no apologies for the length of the series. "I wanted to do something that was epic in scale," said Martin. "And I wanted to tell it with the best power, not necessarily the best economy. I wanted a certain richness."^[25]

"A Song of Ice and Fire" is thoroughly grounded in the brutality of the age, and the author's descriptions are far more frank than those found in the works of other fantasy authors. Still, mature as the themes sometimes are, they remain true to the story, and to the many central characters who are revealed in delicious detail as the chapters unfold. Each chapter is devoted to a different character, and the story weaves through differing points of view in a skillful mix of observation, narration and well-crafted dialogue that illuminates both character and plot with fascinating style.^[25]

As a result, illegitimate children play prominent roles throughout the series. This has led to the series being cited as the forerunners of a 'gritty' new wave of epic fantasy authors that followed, including Scott Lynch^[41] and Joe Abercrombie.^[42]

Martin: The books are grittier and more realistic than most other novels in the genre, drawing as much on the traditions of historical fiction as on those of high fantasy, but readers will still find plenty of knights, castles, dragons, swordplay, and jousts therein, along with treachery, incest, trees with faces, and a gigantic wall made of ice. There’s also a dwarf.^[29]

The story he's been telling over the last three books and will continue to work on for three more is a vast fantasy tale that has entranced both aficionados of the fantasy genre as well as more mainstream readers. Too intricate a tale to synopsize easily here -- the most recent book, A Sword of Storms, is over 350,000 words -- "A Song of Fire and Ice" takes place in an imaginary world not entirely dissimilar to mediaeval Earth, but with some magic, the relatively recent recollections of dragons and unpredictable seasons that can last for years.^[9]

In 1996, he published a novel of seven hundred pages, “A Game of Thrones,” the first volume of a projected trilogy called “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The series chronicles the struggle for power among several aristocratic families in the Seven Kingdoms, an imaginary medieval nation. In a genre crowded with stale variations on what Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey,” with plots distilled from ancient legends, Martin took his inspiration from history instead of from mythology; he based his tale, loosely, on the Wars of the Roses, the bloody dynastic struggles in medieval England. Compared with most epic fantasy fiction, Martin’s story contained relatively little magic, and it felt dangerous, lusty, and real.^[10]

Benioff once told New York that “Game of Thrones” was “ ‘The Sopranos’ in Middle-earth,” and although he now winces at the formulation, it remains sound; the book’s intricate, racy narrative practically feels custom-built for HBO. The series especially resembles “Rome” and “Deadwood,” although, unlike them, it’s free from even the most perfunctory obligation to be historically accurate.^[10]

Fantasy and magic

The series differs from Tolkien's inspiration in its greater use of realistic elements. While Tolkien was inspired by mythology, A Song of Ice and Fire is more clearly influenced by medieval and early modern history, most notably Jacobitism and the Wars of the Roses.^[43] Likewise, while Tolkien tended toward romantic relationships, Martin writes frankly of sex, including incest, adultery, prostitution, and rape.

This may be a silly question, but: When you think of the world you’ve created, where seasons last for years, where is it? It is another planet? -- It’s what Tolkien wrote was “the secondary world.” It’s not another planet. It’s Earth. But it’s not our Earth. If you wanted to do a science fiction approach, you could call it an alternate world, but that sounds too science fictional. Tolkien really pioneered that with Middle Earth. He put in some vague things about tying it to our past, but that doesn’t really hold up. I have people constantly writing me with science fiction theories about the seasons — “It’s a double star system with a black dwarf and that would explain–” It’s fantasy, man, it’s magic.^[8]

I was also reading a lot of historical fiction. And the contrast between that and a lot of the fantasy at the time was dramatic because a lot of the fantasy of Tolkien imitators has a quasi-medieval setting, but it’s like the Disneyland Middle Ages. You know, they’ve got tassels and they’ve got lords and stuff like that, but they don’t really seem to grasp what it was like in the Middle Ages. And then you’d read the historical fiction which was much grittier and more realistic and really give you a sense of what it was like to live in castles or to be in a battle with swords and things like that. And I said what I want to do is combine some of the realism of historical fiction with some of the appeal of fantasy, the magic and the wonder that the best fantasy has.^[38]

As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what’s going to happen. You know, if you’re reading about the War of the Roses, say, you know that the little princes are not going to come out of that tower. Fantasy, of course, doesn’t have that constraint. You can still have that driving force, which I think is one of the things that people read books for, what’s gonna happen next? I love this character, but god, is he gonna live, is he gonna die? I wanted that kind of suspense.^[38]

I mean, my fantasy is quite low magic compared to the majority of it out there.^[38]

I love how the books are almost like you’re in a post-magic world. You have this history that there were once dragons and now people don’t think they exist anymore. A lot of people don’t believe in the Others. There’s Valyria, which almost seems like Rome before the Dark Ages, this high civilization that used to exist but now it’s history. It gives this sadness, this kind of poignancy to the world, like it’s a half fallen civilization. -- ... my wife and I came to the realization that I’ve always had this affection for [decay]. ... We had no money and we lived in the projects, but my mother came from a family that had had money. ... There’s a lot of family mythology about that. But the point of it was, we had no money at all by the time I came along in 1948. ... this sense of a lost golden age of, you know, now we were poor and we lived in the projects and we lived in an apartment. We didn’t even have a car, but God we were… once we were royalty! It gave me a certain attraction to those kinds of stories of I don’t know, fallen civilizations and lost empires and all of that. And that may be one reason why Tolkien’s world appealed to me so much. Middle Earth is in decline as well. I mean, the elves are going away, magic was leaving the world. Many of the great places we visited in Middle Earth, like the Mines of Moria—I mean, Moria was once this great city and now it’s this hideous ruin and crumbling, this dark place under the earth inhabited by these monstrous creatures.^[44]

Tolkien created the genre of epic fantasy, and it is still dominated by his example. Martin is widely credited with taking such fiction in a more adult direction.^[10]

The series uses magic in some very unusual ways, as the supernatural element becomes stronger with each book. Is this pattern going to continue? -- Martin: The amount of magic certainly is going to increase, yes, and that's been part of my design from the first. However, I think even by the end, it's still not going to have as much overt magic as many of the other fantasies out there.^[19]

Medieval history

The concept of knighthood always interested me. Chivalry in the Middle Ages was among the most idealistic codes the human race has ever come up with for a warrior. These are men who were sworn to defend the weak. Then you look at the reality, and their brutality was extreme.^[6]

Martin had a longtime love of miniature knights and medieval history, but his early novels and short stories mostly fit into the science fiction and horror genres.^[11]

NG: Like earlier novels such as Dying of the Light and Windhaven, A Song of Ice and Fire is very rich in feudal atmosphere: there's an enormous amount of aristocratic regalia evident, not least in your very extensive Appendices. What underlies your fascination with mediaevalism? -- GRRM: The medieval setting has been the traditional background for epic Fantasy, even before Tolkien, and there are good reasons for that tradition. The sword has a romance to it that pistols and cannon lack, a powerful symbolic value that touches us on some primal level. Also, the contrasts so apparent in the Middle Ages are very striking -- the ideal of chivalry existed cheek by jowl with the awful brutality of war, great castles loomed over miserable hovels, serfs and princes rode the same roads, and the colorful pageantry of tournaments rose out of a brown and grey world of dung, dirt, and plague. The dramatic possibilities are so rich. Besides, I like the heraldry.^[20]

Q: What extensive research did the writing of the A song of Ice and Fire entail? -- GRRM: I've filled up several bookcases with books about medieval history. Feasts and fools and tournaments, warfare and women, various popular histories of the Hundred Years War, the Crusades, the Albigensian Crusade, the Wars of the Roses, etc. You can't read too much. You never know what information you may need.^[33]

This is the first of your books that I've had the opportunity to read. It seems very closely tied in to history, but would you call it a fantasy novel? -- It's definitely a fantasy novel. It has dragons and so forth in it. It does have the feel of historical fiction. I love history. I wanted to get a lot of sense of history in A Storm of Swords and the other books and some of the feel of historical fiction. Historical fiction is wonderful to read, but the only problem I have with historical fiction is that I know too much history. So I always know what's going to happen. So you're reading a novel about the War of the Roses and no matter how good or bad it is, you know who is going to win. With this sort of thing you can take people by surprise. It reads like historical fiction, it feels like historical fiction but you don't know how it's going to come out. Most epic fantasy or high fantasy has a quasi-medieval setting. Ever since Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. So, in that sense, it's squarely in the tradition of many of the writers that have gone before. What I try to do is give it a little more of the feel of historical fiction than some of those other books had before it which have, I suppose, a more fantasy or fantastic feel. My take on the genre has somewhat less magic and sorcery onstage and more emphasis on swordplay and battles and political intrigue and the characters. Most of all: the characters.^[9]

Where did this world building come from for you? Can you isolate it? -- Some of it comes from my historical researches. I don't do one-for-one kind of translations. Some readers have tried to do that: This character is Richard III and this character is... -- Don't you hate that? Like your own creativity isn't enough. -- I do. But I do draw inspiration from things I read in history but I lot of it just comes from imagination.^[9]

I draw a lot of inspiration from history and enjoy reading historical fiction. When I set out to write my current series, I wanted to create a fantasy setries that had the flavor of historical fiction. You are right, the War of the Roses was an influence, as well as the Hundered Years Wars and the Crusades. BVut I did not want to do a straight one-for-one comparison- It's not that simple.- I took a bit of this and that, plus imagination, and made somthing unique. The problem with historical fiction is that of you know history, you know how it's going to end. You know hwat happens next. In fantasy, you don't. By inventing original characters, you get more suspense. Readers are more interested in what happens and you can take make them "feel" things more.^[30]

You focus quite a bit on the mundane details of medieval life, which makes it sound like you've done a lot of research into the subject. -- Martin: I've read as much as I can about medieval history and medieval life, into specific areas--clothing, food, feasting, tournaments. All of these particular areas. Rather than look up a specific point when I need it, I prefer to use the research process of total immersion, and kind of soak up as much about the period as I possibly can, so it'll come across when I'm writing about it, that sense of verisimilitude.^[19]

Heraldry certainly seems to be a personal obsession. -- Martin: Ah, yeah, I have to admit I enjoy the heraldry a lot. There's a wonderful Web site which has been done by two fans of mine from Sweden, the Westeros Web site, which includes pages and pages of heraldry of all the houses of the Seven Kingdoms. Not just the major houses, but some of the lesser, minor houses, other knights and minor lordlings as well. I've helped work with the fans who are doing that--they send me the shields for approval, and I send them suggestions. We have something like 400 shields up there now. It's been a real kick to do that.^[19]

Politics

George RR Martin also draws on historical sources to build his fantasy world. Westeros bears a startling resemblance to England in the period of the Wars of the Roses. One throne unifies the land but great houses fight over who will sit upon it. With no true king the land is beset with corrupt, money-grubbing lords whose only interest is their own prestige. Two loose alliances of power pit a poor but honourable North against a rich and cunning South. And the small folk must suffer through it all, regardless of which side wins. Many things change over the course of five centuries, but not politics it seems.^[45]

Well, a good man is not always a good king. And a bad man is not always a bad king. You know, it’s much more complicated than that. It’s you know, I look at in my lifetime, I think probably the best man to serve as President in my lifetime was Jimmy Carter. As a human being, the best human being, but he was not a good President. He was not. General goodness did not automatically make flowers bloom.^[38]

And then you look at what I think are bad men, like Richard Nixon. Nixon was a bad President too in some ways, but in other ways, he was a very effective President doing things like opening China and things like that. [Spoilery discussion redacted, about two of his characters who encounter difficulties in ruling.] I wanted to show what decisions they made and the possible consequences of those decisions and how thing worked or how things failed to work. So that sort of stuff has always interested me.^[38]

I mean, the class structures in places like this had teeth. They had consequences. And people were brought up from their childhood to know their place and to know that duties of their class and the privileges of their class. It was always a source of friction when someone got outside of that thing. And I tried to reflect that.^[38]

But if Martin had only transposed a historical and political context to a fantasy world his books would never have achieved such staggering popularity. Their author's real strength is his compendious understanding of the human stories driving the grand political narrative. There does not seem to be a single living soul in the land of Westeros that Martin does not have insight into, from the highest king to the lowest petty thief. Martin does not compartmentalise evil on one side of the map and good on the other. It is a world of high stakes, where the winners prosper and the losers are mercilessly ground under heel. Against this tapestry every one of Martin's characters is forced to chose between their love for those close to them and the greater interests of honour, duty and the realm. More often than not, those who make the noble choice pay with their lives.^[45]

"Against this background," Martin says, "you have a dynastic struggle going on for control of the kingdom: the Seven Kingdoms which is actually one kingdom, though it was formerly seven kingdoms. Now it's all ruled by a single king. Several of the great houses are contending for control of that throne."^[9]

Moral ambiguity

NG: A Song of Ice and Fire undergoes a very interesting progression over its first three volumes, from a relatively clear scenario of Good (the Starks) fighting Evil (the Lannisters) to a much more ambiguous one, in which the Lannisters are much better understood, and moral certainties are less easily attainable. Are you deliberately defying the conventions and assumptions of neo-Tolkienian Fantasy here? -- GRRM: Guilty as charged. The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black. I wanted to stand much of that on its head. In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.^[20]

Martin speculated that his fantasy series is in part a reaction to the strictures of film and television -- an attempt to satisfy a longing to create a richly textured world and people it with compelling characters that small and large screens cannot deliver. "A lot of fantasy, unfortunately, is so simplistic that it colors our reading habits," said Martin. "Someone is described as a bad guy, but you never hear his viewpoint, his reasoning, or why he wanted to do what he did." To Martin, whose stories feature heroic characters capable of violence and marital infidelity, where even children can be targets of murder plots, it's much more rewarding to explore characters from many sides. Forget about white hats and black hats. "Gray characters, to my mind, are more interesting to write about," he said.^[25]

I suppose I am still a believer in the now unfashionable "heroic" school, which says that history is shaped by individual men and women and the choices that they make, by deeds glorious and terrible. That is certainly the approach I have taken in A Song of Ice and Fire.^[20]

Martin’s characters indulge in all the usual vices associated with the Middle Ages, and some of them engage in behavior—most notably, incest—that would shock people of any historical period. Characters who initially seem likable commit reprehensible acts, and apparent villains become sympathetic over time. Martin transgressed the conventions of his genre—and most popular entertainment—by making it clear that none of his characters were guaranteed to survive to the next book, or even to the next chapter.^[10]

You tend to write protagonists with strongly negative personality quirks, people who certainly don't fit the standard mold of a hero. Do you deliberately inject your characters with unattractive elements to make readers consciously think about whether they like them and why? -- Martin: [Laughs.] Well, I don't know that I'd choose the word "unappealing," but I look for ways to make my characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish, well-mixed in their natures. Yes, I do certainly want people to think about the characters, and not just react with a knee-jerk. I read too much fiction myself in which you encounter characters who are very stereotyped. They're heroic-hero and dastardly-villain, and they're completely black or completely white. And that's boring, so far as I'm concerned. It's also unreal. If you look at real human history, even the darkest villains had some good things about them. Perhaps they were courageous, or perhaps they were occasionally compassionate to an enemy. Even our greatest heroes had weaknesses and flaws.^[19]

Your fans are also very emotionally involved in your work. What aspect of your writing do you think hits people's emotional triggers? -- Martin: Well, I think it's the characters. To the extent that I've been able to make the characters real, people invest in them emotionally, they identify with them, and they like or dislike other of the characters. They argue about them--I find that very gratifying. It's one of the things that suggests to me that what I'm doing with the characters is working. When I hear from different fans who have varying opinions about a character, about who's a good guy and who's a bad guy, and who they'd like to live and who they'd like to die--it's not always the expected ones, and they disagree sharply with each other. That's a good sign. In real life, people don't always like the same people. People make moral judgments that differ sharply with each other--witness some of the arguments we see going on about the current election. People should respond to fictional characters in the same way. If you introduce a character who everybody loves, or who everybody hates, that's probably a sign that that character's a little too one-dimensional, because in real life there's no one that everybody loves, and there's no one that everybody hates.^[19]

Violence

Dance is heavily stocked with such favorites as Jon, Daenerys, and Tyrion, along with plenty of Martin's trademark shocking twists and the surprise return of one tragic character. The author's ruthlessness about killing beloved characters who make poor decisions has been a hallmark of the series, and has famously led fans to throw their books across the room — only to go pick them up again. Martin credits Tolkien with inspiring him to stun readers with character deaths. I remember when I was 13 years old and read that Gandalf fell into the pit. It was devastating, he says. Gandalf can't die! But it was so great that he did die. And what the f--- are they going to do now? Gandalf is the one with all the answers!^[6]

For me, and I suppose that for most of the readers, it was really shocking when Eddard Stark got killed in the first book of the Ice & Fire saga. For example nobody would ever expect Frodo getting killed at the beginning of Lord of the Rings. Did you want to break concepts and mark a new line with that conception, did you know from the beginning that it would happen? -- Oh yeah. Well, you kill an important character right on and you kind of establish that you are not playing for kids, you know, that it is not going to be that kind of fantasy where the hero goes through all kind of dangers and never gets scratches.^[37]

When fans complain about a character killed off, what do you say to them? -- In some cases I sympathize. It’s hard to kill characters, they’re my children. Obviously some were marked for death in the beginning like Ned. There are plenty of books out there for fans who want comfort reading, who want to enjoy an exciting story with nothing to upset or disturb them. It’s fun to go to an Indiana Jones movie and watch him kill 40 Nazis, but there’s a place for Schindler’s List too. Schindler’s heroism resonates more with me than Indy’s — one is fun, but the other is profound and says something about human nature. I don’t know if I’m achieving it, but that’s what I’m striving for. I think fantasy after Tolkien had become Indiana Jones. They were imitating a lot of Tolkien’s tropes without capturing the spirit of Tolkien. His books are not all happy fun books.^[8]

You do tend to be very brutal to your characters. -- Martin: Well, yes. But you know, I think there's a requirement, even in fantasy--it comes from a realm of the imagination and is based on fanciful worlds, but there's still a necessity to tell the truth, to try to reflect some true things about the world we live in. There's an inherent dishonesty to the sort of fantasy that too many people have done, where there's a giant war that rips the world apart, but no one that we know is ever really seriously inconvenienced by this. You see the devastated villages where unnamed peasants have lived, and they're all dead, but the heroes just breeze through, killing people at every hand, surviving those dire situations. There's a falsehood to that that troubles me. A writer can choose not to write about war. You don't have to write about war if that's not a subject that interests you, or you find it too brutal. But if you are going to write about war, I think you need to tell the truth about it, and the truth is that people die, and people die in ugly ways, and even some of the good guys die, even people who are loved.^[19]

Sexuality

George R. R. Martin, author of the “Song of Ice and Fire” novels from which “Game of Thrones” is adapted, said his books, set in a medieval period on a fictional continent called Westeros, were alluding to the historical practice of incest in the Ptolemaic dynasty of ancient Egypt and the European monarchies of more recent centuries, which believed that it kept their bloodlines pure. “There’s an element of sociopathy to it,” Mr. Martin said, “where it’s the two of us and no one else really counts, especially outside their family. They’re twins, they were born together, they have a feeling that they’re going to die together. There’s this bonding that they’re two halves of a whole, so who else would they pair with? Anything else is lesser.”^[46]

Die, or get gang-raped, in many cases in Song of Ice and Fire. Sex and sexuality have a very central and intense place in your books, which is less common in fantasy and historical fantasy than the kind of realistic violence you're talking about. -- Martin: Well, a lot of what I just said about that is also true on this subject. If you investigate the real Middle Ages, one of the most interesting things about the period is the contrasts. The whole concept of chivalry on the one hand, and these incredibly brutal wars that they fought on the other hand. And yet both concepts existed side by side. The same thing is true of sexuality. The traditional tenets of chivalry put women on a pedestal, and some of the knights might make poems to their ladies or wear their favors in tournaments, in this kind of gallantry, and yet armies would think nothing of raping every woman they got hold of, in some of these more brutal battles. The Hundred Years' War, for example. Sexuality, once again, I think it's an important driving force in life. It motivates most of the things we do, and it's one of the root things that defines who we are. And yet you find it strangely missing from fantasy, even from some very good fantasy. I admire J.R.R. Tolkien vastly, I think all modern fantasy derives from Tolkien, and Lord of the Rings is one of the great works of this century. Nonetheless, it does have flaws, and I think its almost complete absence of women, and of anything even approaching sex and/or romantic love--it reflects its time and its place, but it's certainly not something I wanted to do.^[19]

Q: Your work has strong adult themes (incest for example, strong language, abuse) - what has been your reader reaction to the explicit material in your work? -- There are some negative comments from angry fans, especially about the sex. There is a strong double standard. No one seems to object to graphic violence. I cen describe an axe gong through someone's head and no one objects to it. But they object to a penis going into a vagina. I just say that there are plenty of other writers they can read. The majority of my readers like the adult fantasy angle that is aware of human sexuality. Sex and lov are dsome of the most powerful forces that drives all of us. In too many fantasy worlds, it is treated in ajuvenile way or neglected completely. Characters, and many of my characters, are driven by sexual demons, and I think by reflecting that, it makes the book truer.^[30]

Religion

There’s a line in book 5 where character says, “The gods are good.” Jaime thinks, “You go on believing that.” You talk about religion a lot in the stories, but what are your views? -- I suppose I’m a lapsed Catholic. You would consider me an atheist or agnostic. I find religion and spirituality fascinating. I would like to believe this isn’t the end and there’s something more, but I can’t convince the rational part of me that that makes any sense whatsoever. That’s what Tolkien left out — there’s no priesthood, there’s no temples; nobody is worshiping anything in Rings.^[8]

But in all that verbiage, there’s a lot of delicious detail in ADWD. More than any book in the series, for instance, it gets deeply into the varying religions of Westeros and Essos, and their temporal power for good and evil. Each of the religions reflects its culture’s temperament. No religion seems to be the true faith—there are eerie displays of power on many sides—nor do they have a monopoly on virtue. In Westeros, for instance, you may have cheered to see the zealous High Septon throw Cersei in the clink at the end of AFFC, but in ADWD we see the pettiness and misogyny that inform his judgment of her (“All women are wantons”), whatever actual crimes she is guilty of.^[23]

And as for the gods, I’ve never been satisfied by any of the answers that are given. If there really is a benevolent loving god, why is the world full of rape and torture? Why do we even have pain? I was taught pain is to let us know when our body is breaking down. Well, why couldn’t we have a light? Like a dashboard light? If Chevrolet could come up with that, why couldn’t God? Why is agony a good way to handle things?^[8]

Feminism

There’s a lot of debates about whether Thrones is feminist or anti-feminist. Were you surprised by those reactions? -- Not really. I think it’s good people were debating those points. Obviously I don’t think I’m misogynistic or racist as some of those critics say, I think they’re reading it too simplistic. Certainly, I’m a 62 year old white male and none of us entirely escape the values that we’re inoculated with at an early age, even if we reject them — like me leaving Catholicism. I don’t hold myself up as a paragon of feminism. But I’m very gratified — that idiot critic at the New York Times notwithstanding — on the fact I have so many female fans who love my women characters and I tried to provide a variety of female characters. With all my characters, I try to show that we’re all human.^[8]

One of my favorite chapters, perhaps of the whole series, was Cersei’s walk of shame. I was riveted. -- That was an interesting chapter to write, and based on actual medieval events. Jane Shore, mistress of King Edward IV, was punished that way after Edward died. It’s going to be a controversial scene when it comes out — is it misogynistic or feminist? It wasn’t a punishment ever inflicted on men. It was a punishment directed at women to break their pride. And Cersei is defined by her pride.^[47]

[About TV] The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to “The Hobbit” first. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.^[48]

Food

^[49] Cooking dishes from popular fantasy books—from "Harry Potter" to "A Game of Thrones" to the "Twilight" vampire tales—has become a pastime for fans seeking to immerse themselves in their favorite fictional worlds. "The food enables you to connect on a deeper level with the books," says Chelsea Monroe-Cassel, 26 years old, a devotee of George R.R. Martin's medieval fantasy series, "A Song of Ice and Fire." She has cooked dozens of dishes from the books, including grilled rattlesnake with mustard sauce and honeyed crickets. "I'm now a food geek as well as a geek geek," she says.^[49] there are two rival coming cookbooks based on Mr. Martin's series,^[49]

Food is so central to Mr. Martin's series—set in a medieval world populated with dueling nobles, dragons and zombies—that some critics have accused him of "gratuitous feasting," he says. In the books, he lavishes attention on dishes his characters eat, ranging from peasant meals to royal feasts featuring camel, crocodile, singing squid, lacquered ducks and spiny grubs. "At one point I had someone eating a seagull, which I think was a mistake," Mr. Martin says. "I got a number of letters about that saying that seagull is nasty tasting." Over the years, he's gotten repeated requests to write a cookbook. He demurred. "I'm very good at eating, but I'm not too much of a cook," says Mr. Martin.^[49]

This past spring, Mr. Martin got an email from two food bloggers in Boston who had been recreating dishes from his books. The women, Ms. Monroe-Cassel and her roommate, Sariann Lehrer, had been chronicling their culinary efforts on their blog, Inn at the Crossroads, named for a location in "A Game of Thrones," the first book in the series. The blog has received more than a million hits. Mr. Martin put the women in touch with his editor at Bantam Books, who offered them a cookbook deal. ^[49]

Reception

Misc

But his superb fantasy saga, A Song of Ice and Fire, has raised Martin to a whole new level of success. He is now a mega-bestseller, and this can only continue as the series — which critics and fans alike agree is one of the best fanasy series ever written — is now being developed for television by HBO.^[7]

Although “A Game of Thrones” was not initially a hit, it won the passionate advocacy of certain independent booksellers, who recommended it to their customers, who, in turn, pressed copies on their friends. A following was born, albeit a spotty one.^[10]

Such indecision, Martin suspects, may be fuelled by the mounting expectations for “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The reviews for the series have been “orders of magnitude better” than he’s received for anything else. After the fourth volume came out, Time anointed him “the American Tolkien.” Many readers have told Martin that his tale is the greatest fantasy story of all time. With the HBO show and his online critics breathing down his neck, the pressure has become even more intense.^[10]

But few would dispute that his most monumental achievement to date has been the groundbreaking A Song of Ice and Fire historical fantasy series. Initially conceived as a trilogy, A Song of Ice and Fire rapidly expanded during the writing process; it's currently projected as a series of six massive volumes. An excerpt from the first volume, A Game of Thrones, was published in 1996 as a stand-alone novella and won Martin his fourth Hugo; the second book, A Clash of Kings, was published in 1999 to huge acclaim. The third volume, A Song of Swords, came out this Halloween and promptly debuted at no. 12 on the New York Times bestseller list. Martin's magnum opus, a convoluted and intense series that leaps among many different character perspectives in describing the political clashes between noble families in a proto-medieval world, has gained his old writings new attention; currently, most of his pre-Song books are out of print, but Martin reports that Bantam will soon be reprinting his solo novels.^[19]

Sales

Martin did not expect the success of he books. I learned early on was that it’s a fool’s game to think anything is going to be successful or to count on it. Every book, every movie is a crapshoot. You try to do your best work and make it as good as you can possibly can but it’s up to the fans and the readers out there how well it does. My readers have made the series as successful as it’s been it’s not as if we came out of the gate in 1996 and had this giant series. Every book has built on that. Primarily it’s been spread by word of mouth with friends recommending it to other friends. So it’s been a long strange trip as they say.”^[28]

The result was 1996's A Game of Thrones, a genre-busting saga of warring families set in a medieval-like world where seasons last for years. Though his publisher expected a best-seller, the book was a disappointment. Yet as Martin continued the complex story in subsequent volumes (A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords), the series' popularity skyrocketed. The fourth installment, A Feast for Crows, went straight to No. 1 on the best-seller list when it was released in 2005.^[6]

Bantam, George R. R. Martin’s publisher, reports^[50] that 4.5 million copies of the first four volumes are currently in print. Martin noted^[51] on his blog last October that the paperback edition of the first volume, “A Game of Thrones,” was in its 34th printing and had surpassed the 1 million mark. Volume 4, “A Feast of Crows,” went directly to the top of the New York Times fiction bestseller list after publication in 2005. Presumably boosted by the publicity associated with the HBO series, “A Game of Thrones” appeared on the paperback fiction bestseller list two weeks ago, and is currently in the 12th position.^[52]^[53]

HBO's upcoming "Game of Thrones" skein has boosted sales of the fantasy book series it is based on, even though the show doesn't premiere until April 17. The lengthy tomes by George R. R. Martin are approaching triple-digit growth in year-on-year sales, according to publisher Bantam Books. The complex fantasy novels were already popular -- the most recent volume (2005's "A Feast for Crows") hit the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list -- and as Martin nears the end of the fifth in a projected series of seven, Bantam is looking forward to seeing the tie-ins boost sales further. Not that tie-in editions have contributed to the current uptick in sales -- they haven't even shipped yet. "We started seeing a bump last year just as it was announced -- before anything was really released," said Bantam paperbacks publisher Scott Shannon.^[50]

Bantam says it currently has 4.5 million copies of the books in print. Barnes & Noble buyer James Killen told Variety that he expects further success for the fantasy epic. "I believe that this television series will do for the novels what 'True Blood' has done for Charlaine Harris' 'Sookie Stackhouse' series," he said. Harris' Ace Books-published horror/romance novels made the leap onto the bestseller list after the series sent vampire fans flapping into bookstores, and now Bantam is reaping similar rewards. It helps, Shannon said, that booksellers like Martin's writing -- the series has a large following and book buyers are among them. Killen concurred, and predicted an uptick in sales not just of Martin's books, but of similar novels. "Recently, much of the focus in fantasy has been fixed on vampires and werewolves, urban fantasy or paranormal romance," he said. "I think the dark medieval fantasy of 'Game of Thrones' has the potential to revitalize interest in ambitious heroic epics."^[50]

The most recent novel in the series, 2005's A Feast for Crows, achieved the rare feat for a fantasy novel of reaching the top five of the New York Times bestseller list, suggesting that Martin's books are now attracting mainstream readers, too.^[16]

The book is already number one on Amazon, the US is printing more than 650,000 hardbacks, and, says Martin, a sixth print run was already on the go even before publication.^[54]

The Ice and Fire series has been translated into more than 20 languages.^[55]

Critical reviews

It was a quest that would eventually result in five novels (two more are planned) with more than 8.5 million copies of the books in this country alone; a breakout HBO series, Game of Thrones; and acclaim that borders on fantasy blasphemy: Time magazine anointed him The American Tolkien.^[6] I called him "the American Tolkien." The phrase has stuck to him, as it was meant to.^[35] The world Martin writes about may bear a passing resemblance to Olde Englande, but it is not a Merrie one. ... Martin isn't the best known of America's straight-up fantasy writers. ... this is as good a time as any to proclaim him the American Tolkien.^[21]

The success is all the more remarkable because when the series debuted in 1996, it did so without mass market publicity or any kind of buzz in the fantasy/SF scene. George R. R. Martin earned his following the hard way, by word of mouth, by hooking his characters into the psyche of his readers to an extent that most writers of fantasy only dream of.^[53]

Within the story proper there is plenty more of that kind of thing. By the second page of the story proper, a sword is given a name (Ice, unexcitingly). There's an intensely irritating wandering minstrel (although Martin has at least given his the hilarious name Marillion). There's a silly castle called the Eyrie high up "steps carved into a mountain" and a path "too steep even for mules" - but presumably not too steep to transport food supplies and the tonnes of lumber needed to build the place. After sex, women are left with "aching loins". There are also plenty of other frequent and heinous archaisms: "Would that I were a pumpkin" and "Lord Tywin is greatly wroth." There are other less cosmetic problems, too. Martin has a great talent when it comes to placing his reader inside the heads of his characters, and his character-per-chapter format gives an intimate and interesting perspective on his world. But the people he describes are too often one-dimensional and dull, and they exist on a simplistic George W Bush-style moral plane of black and white, good and evil. The good guys are generally insufferably good: their nobility comes attached to pomposity, preachiness and predictability. The bad guys are camp pantomine villains given over to deviant sex, the slaughter of innocents and laughing at others' pain. There's a dumb princess who thinks only of handsome princes and good manners and pink fluffy cliché. There's a court surrounding a declining king made up of consummate liars, sycophants and poisoners. There's a brattish heir to the kingdom with severe entitlement issues. It's daft. It's unsophisticated. It's cartoonish. And yet, I couldn't stop reading. And it wasn't with the kind of self-loathing desperation for closure that took me to the end of The Da Vinci Code. I read A Game Of Thrones with genuine pleasure. It may be a cartoon, but it's one that is brilliantly drawn. Archaic absurdity aside, Martin's writing is excellent. His dialogue is snappy and frequently funny. His descriptive prose is immediate and atmospheric, especially when it comes to building a sense of deliciously dark foreboding relating to a long winter that is about to engulf his fictional land.^[56]

All this makes for a thousand-page book that feels half as long, that moves dextrously, answers key questions and gobsmacks you with convincing feints and change-ups. As in AFFC, there are sections that feel like they could have used an editor. In some chapters you suddenly find yourself in a strange land with a character you have little attachment to, wondering where this thread is going, as if you had stayed too long at a party after the friends you came with have left.^[23]

Perhaps what you're expecting me to say here is that George RR Martin's novels are different. But they're not. Sure, there are some alterations to fantasy convention (he kills major characters with alacrity; no one is clearly and indisputably good; some of the most forceful characters are women), but there's no getting away from the fact that all five novels are filled with dragons, magic, wraiths from beyond death, shapeshifting wolves and banished princes.^[57]

What I discovered reading A Song of Ice and Fire is something I knew when I was a kid, but had forgotten in adulthood. That when things are, on the whole, pretty crappy – worries about family health, about work, about money – it's a deep joy to dive headfirst into something so completely immersive, something from which there is no need to surface from hours at a time. And if that immersion involves dragons, magic, wraiths from beyond death, shapeshifting wolves and banished princes, so be it. George RR Martin, I thank you. Trollope can wait.^[57]

Readership and fandom

Bad things happen in “A Song of Ice and Fire” — but maybe that offers a clue as to why readers seem to care so much. We don’t know what’s going to happen next, which makes us even more desperate to turn the page. As Laura Miller reports^[10] in the New Yorker, Martin has taken so long writing the fifth volume, “A Dance of Dragons” (due out this summer), that some of his fans have turned against him, angry at what they see as his breach of authorly duty to their obsessions. Could there be any greater affirmation about how deep a chord Martin has struck?^[53]

Not that this has put people off. I was convinced that I should embark on the Ice and Fire books, thanks to the many enthusiastic posts on the Gemmell blog, alongside the novels' fearsome reputation as "dragon-crack". The series' fanbase literally can't get enough of the stuff. George RR Martin hasn't finished the fifth book yet (long after original projected publication dates) and the delay is causing so much angst among readers that Martin himself has been moved to ask them to stop haranguing him, and Neil Gaiman has had to explain (to someone intent on pressing Martin for more) the important principle that "George RR Martin is not your bitch".^[56]

Do you feel like you owe your fans anything? At end of the day, is there a responsibility? -- I think owe is the wrong word. I try to give them a good story. And I like my fans — the vast majority are great. I probably have more interaction with fans than any author I know. By and large, I’m very nice to my fans. But I don’t owe it to them to be nice. And if I wanted to withdraw, that would be my right. I certainly believe it’s my right to take off Sundays and watch NFL football and go to conventions and work on other projects — the more hardcore trolls, that’s what they object to. You met [his assistant] Ty, he think it’s generational. That people who are angry [about Book 5 taking six years] are younger people from what he calls The Entitlement Generation. They want instant gratification — something that they’re used to from the Internet. I’m from the Baby Boomer generation, and we had to wait for s–t, man. If I heard about a book, it might never come to the spinner rack at the local drugstore. If I wanted to see a movie, we’d have to hope they’d show it on television at some time. It’s Ty’s theory, not mine, but maybe it’s true.^[8]

Fans' vocal impatience for the next instalment reached such a pitch last year that Martin issued an angry statement to stem a rising tide of anger. "Some of you are angry about the miniatures, the swords, the resin busts, the games. You don't want me 'wasting time' on those, or talking about them here. Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall," the author wrote. "Some of you don't want me attending conventions, teaching workshops, touring and doing promo ... After all, as some of you like to point out in your emails, I am 60 years old and fat, and you don't want me to 'pull a Robert Jordan' on you and deny you your book. OK, I've got the message. You don't want me doing anything except A Song of Ice and Fire. Ever. (Well, maybe it's OK if I take a leak once in a while?)"^[58]

Martin has now sold more than fifteen million books worldwide, and his readership will likely multiply exponentially after the launch, this month, of “Game of Thrones,” a lavish HBO series based on “A Song of Ice and Fire.” He is committed to nurturing his audience, no matter how vast it gets. “It behooves a writer to be good to his fans,” he says. He writes a lively blog, and though he has an assistant, Ty Franck, who screens the multitude of comments that are posted on it, he tries to read many of them himself. A fan in Sweden, Elio M. García, Jr., maintains an official presence for Martin on Facebook and Twitter, and also runs the main “Ice and Fire” Web forum, Westeros.org. (Westeros is the name of the fictional continent that is home to the Seven Kingdoms.) When Martin is travelling, which is often, he attends the gatherings of the Brotherhood Without Banners, an unofficial fan club with informal chapters around the world, and he counts its founders and other longtime members among his good friends.^[10]

An entire community of apostates—a shadow fandom—is now devoted to taunting Martin, his associates, and readers who insist that he has been hard at work on the series and has the right to take as much time as he needs. Even Gaiman got dragged into the feud when he responded, on his own blog, to an inquiry about Martin’s tardiness by issuing this reproof: “George R. R. Martin is not your bitch.”^[10]

The Brotherhood, whose origins can be traced to a convention ten years ago in Philadelphia, doesn’t charge a membership fee or have a defined organizational structure. Anything too official, in McBride’s opinion, “is not the fannish way.”^[10]

Elio García estimates that he spends up to thirty-five hours a month supervising Westeros.org, the “Song of Ice and Fire” discussion site. García, a Cuban-American, moved to Sweden to be with his girlfriend in 1999, the same year that the two of them established Westeros.org. She had introduced him to Martin’s series, and he soon shared her obsession with it. The site now has about seventeen thousand registered members.^[10]

García is a superfan. His knowledge of Martin’s invented world is so encyclopedic that the author has referred HBO researchers to him when they have questions regarding the production of “Game of Thrones.” Although García’s participation in Westeros.org is voluntary, his involvement with Martin’s work has become semi-professional. He is being paid to consult with licensors creating tie-in merchandise and to write text for a video game based on the series. He and Martin are collaborating on a comprehensive guide to the books, “The World of Ice and Fire.” Martin himself sometimes checks with García when he’s not sure he’s got a detail right. Martin told me, “I’ll write something and e-mail him to ask, ‘Did I ever mention this before?’ And he writes me right back: ‘Yes, on page 17 of Book Four.’ ”^[10]

In Verhoeve’s telling, disaffected fans—who sometimes call themselves GRRuMblers—formed a renegade movement in 2009, after Martin posted a blog entry titled “To My Detractors.” It was Martin’s attempt to deliver a definitive response to “the rising tide of venom about the lateness of ‘A Dance with Dragons.’ ” He went on, “Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall.” Other online posters, he noted, objected to him “visiting places like Spain and Portugal (last year) or Finland (this year).” The post ended, “As some of you like to point out in your e-mails, I am sixty years old and fat, and you don’t want me to ‘pull a Robert Jordan’ on you and deny you your book. Okay, I’ve got the message. You don’t want me doing anything except ‘A Song of Ice and Fire.’ Ever. (Well, maybe it’s okay if I take a leak once in a while?)”^[10]

The site is called Is Winter Coming?—a snide play on “Winter is coming,” the motto of the Starks, one of the central families in the series. Is Winter Coming? is humming with hostile creativity. ... A small publishing house made a deal with Verhoeve to compile some of his blog postings into a book, to be titled “Waiting for Dragons.” This is an astonishing amount of effort to devote to denouncing the author of books one professes to love. Few contemporary authors can claim to have inspired such passion.^[10]

He does think of himself as being bound by an informal contract with his readers; he feels that he owes them his best work. He doesn’t, however, believe that this gives them the right to dictate the particulars of his creative process or to complain about how he manages his time.^[10]

As far as the detractors are concerned, Martin’s contract with them was for a story, their engagement with it offered on the understanding that he would provide them with a satisfying conclusion.^[10]

Contrary to what his more extravagant critics allege, Martin insists that he has been working continuously on “A Dance with Dragons.” “They have all these insane theories that the book has been finished for years, but I’m sitting on it until the HBO series comes out so I’ll make more money,” he says. “Or I farmed out the book to another writer, or I’ve lost all interest in the series and now I just want to do other stuff.”^[10]

Before the internet, I might get a few fans letters a year. Now I get tons of e-mail from fans. Right now, I'm about 2000 letters behind, and some go unanswered for years.^[30]

Ryan: Yeah, exactly. I just want to briefly ask you about coming to conventions - is that at the request of your publishers? -- Martin: Well, you know, I started out as a fan. I went to my first convention in 1971 when I had sold one story. But there are different types of conventions these days and they all came out of the science-fiction culture, which goes all the way back to the ‘30’s. But comic book fandom has become much bigger than science fiction fandom, and [now there are] media conventions, which really mean television and film. I tend to go to three or four science-fiction conventions a year, just because that’s where my roots are, I have a lot of friends there, etc. So I go to those just for myself, really.^[32]

Awards and nominations

A Game of Thrones (1996) - Locus Award winner, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards nominee, 1997^[59]
A Clash of Kings (1998) - Locus Award winner, Nebula Award nominee, 1999^[60]
A Storm of Swords (2000) - Locus Award winner, Hugo and Nebula Awards nominee, 2001^[61]
A Feast for Crows (2005) - Hugo, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards nominee, 2006^[62]

Derived works

Excerpt-based novellas

There are three novellas based on chapter sets from the books:

Blood of the Dragon, taken from the Daenerys chapters in A Game of Thrones. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella in 1997.
Path of the Dragon, based on the Daenerys chapters in A Storm of Swords.
Arms of the Kraken, based on the Iron Islands chapters from A Feast for Crows.

Tales of Dunk and Egg

There are three separate novellas set in the same world, known as the "Tales of Dunk and Egg" after the main protagonists.

The Hedge Knight (1998)
The Sworn Sword (2003)
The Mystery Knight (2010)

The stories are set about ninety years before the novels and for now have no direct connection with the plot of A Song of Ice and Fire. However, there is mentioning of both characters in both A Storm of Swords (p. 620 lists Duncan the Tall as a Lord Commander of the Kingsguard) and A Feast For Crows (Brienne has her shield painted over with his sigil; a tree beneath a falling star. - Egg and Duncan are mentioned by Maester Aemon on the ship to the Citadel; Egg wished Aemon to help him rule but instead has Ser Duncan escort him to the Wall.)

The Hedge Knight and The Sworn Sword are also both available as graphic novels from Dabel Brothers Productions. The author has said that he would like to write a number of these stories (varying from six to twelve from interview to interview) covering the entire lives of these two characters. The first two installments were published in the Legends and Legends II anthologies. The third "Dunk and Egg" novella, titled The Mystery Knight, was published in March 2010 in the anthology Warriors, edited by Martin and Gardner Dozois. A fourth installment is currently planned for an as yet untitled sequel to the Warriors anthology. It will focus on Dunk and Egg in the North. Martin announced on his 2011 national book tour that the Dunk and Egg series will be collected into a book and published by Bantam Spectra after the fourth novella is first published in an original anthology he and Gardner Dozois are editing.

Is one of the other projects another Hedge Knight story (a series of tales set in the same world as the Ice and Fire books)? -- “I’m editing an anthology with my friend Gardner Dozois. We’ve worked on a number of these anthologies and I sometimes contribute a short story to them. We’ve got one coming out called ‘Dangerous Women’ which we’re working on right now and yes I’m writing the fourth Hedge Knight novella which will be for that volume. I’ll have that finished for Christmas hopefully.”^[28]

You've talked about ideas you have for new novellas, including Song of Ice and Fire-related pieces like the story about Dunk and Egg which you did for Robert Silverberg's Legends anthology. Is that going to have to wait until six years from now? -- Martin: I'm hoping I can stick them in around some of the later books of the series, but that partially depends on whether I can deliver those books on time. Obviously if I'm running late, if I'm not meeting my deadlines, then there's less time between books. If I can deliver A Dance With Dragons in a timely manner, as I hope I can, then maybe I can buy myself a month to write a new Dunk and Egg novella before I start the fifth book.^[19]

A World of Ice And Fire

A companion volume for the series is in development by George R. R. Martin and co-authors Elio M. García, Jr. and Linda Antonsson, although no publication date has been confirmed as yet. García and Antonsson run the largest A Song of Ice and Fire community on the web and assisted in the writing of the first role-playing game. The companion volume was given the working title The World of Ice and Fire at the 2006 Worldcon during a discussion among the writers. They confirmed that the book will open with a historical overview of the setting, have a "who's who" of characters and have a large amount of heraldry and at least the Targaryen family tree, and possibly more. The book will contain a large amount of artwork and will be published after A Dance with Dragons is released.^[63] The artist Ted Nasmith, best known for his work on illustrated editions of J. R. R. Tolkien books, has been asked to do some landscape and castle portraits for the book. In his correspondence with the publishers, Nasmith was told that the target release date was spring 2008,^[64] although the book was subsequently moved back.

Television adaptation

The growing popularity of the series led to it being optioned by HBO for development of a television adaptation, Game of Thrones, after the first novel.^[65] A pilot episode was produced in 2009 and a series commitment for nine further episodes was made in March 2010. The series premiered on April 17, 2011 to great acclaim and ratings, and two days later the network picked the show up for a second season.^[66] Shortly after the conclusion of the first season, the show received 13 Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Drama and Outstanding Supporting Actor.

There was a fair amount of explicit sex in the series and some fans of the books were taken aback. -- One of the reasons I wanted to do this with HBO is that I wanted to keep the sex. We had some real problems because Dany is only 13 in the books, and that’s based on medieval history. They didn’t have this concept of adolescence or the teenage years. You were a child or you were an adult. And the onset of sexual maturity meant you were an adult. So I reflected that in the books. But then when you go to film it you run into people going crazy about child pornography and there’s actual laws about how you can’t depict a 13 year old having sex even if you have an 18 year old acting the part — it’s illegal in the United Kingdom. So we ended up with a 22 year old portraying an 18 year old, instead of an 18 year old portraying a 13 year old. If we decided to lose the sex we could have kept the original ages. And once you change the age of one character you have to change the ages of all the characters, and change the date of the war [that dethroned the Mad King]. The fact we made all these changes indicates how important we thought sex was.^[8]

Was the viewer reaction to killing off Ned Stark bigger than you anticipated? -- It was. It was fascinating to see the intensity of the reaction. You have to remember I wrote that scene in 1994 and it came out in 1996. So people were reacting with extreme shock in 2011 to something that’s been a hallmark of the books. On one level it was good, you don’t want to kill an important character and nobody gives a damn. You should grieve when a character dies. I will say your column after the death of Ned, and then a week later about the ratings, was news I was pleased to see. Because there were people saying they were giving up on the show.^[8]

The big question is what’s going to happen in the ratings between seasons. But I suspect, if anything, it’s going to come back bigger. -- Well, Natalie Dormer [cast as Margaery Tyrell] is a great choice to start with. She was best thing about The Tudors and the best Anne Boleyn I’ve ever seen.^[8]

Are there any changes the TV show made that you particularly liked? -- I loved some of the new scenes they added. As a novelist, I have certain tools like internal monologue and the device of the unreliable narrator. I can have flashbacks and dreams, which are pretty hokey in a TV series. So they had to insert some new scenes. I loved the interplay between Varys and Littlefinger, which never occurred in the books since neither is a viewpoint character. I loved the scene of Drogo ripping out Mago’s throat, which was entirely new. But that’s going to have ramifications if we go the full length down the pike. I’ve talked to Dan and Dave about the butterfly effect — you’re familiar with the classic Ray Bradbury short story?^[8]

A Sound of Thunder. One of my favorites. -- Step on a butterfly in the Pleistocene Era and it changes everything in year 2000. [MILD BOOK 6 SPOILER WARNING] So Mago is not dead in the books. And, in fact, he’s going to be a recurring character in Winds of Winter. He’s a particularly nasty bloodrider to one of the other Khals that’s broken away after Drogo dies. This is the challenge the shows face as we go forward. There will be divergences, they’re trying to be faithful and Dan and David are doing a wonderful job. But the books are plotted so intricately that you do step on a butterfly in season one and in season four you’re going to have to deal with that. There’s also another character, [the singer] Marillion, who also got his tongue ripped out in season one, and that doesn’t happen with the books. Joffrey makes that decision, but it’s an unnamed bard. Marillion [has more to do]. We ought to call it The Tongue Effect instead of The Butterfly Effect.^[8]

Was there anything you missed from the book? -- I wish the tournament was much bigger. They originally scripted in the first draft a parade of knights and a dozen jousts that they had to cut for budgetary reasons. And I would have liked the crowd to have been much bigger. This is like the Super Bowl in the books and draws people from all over the Seven Kingdoms.^[8]

Is there any performance in the TV show that’s caused you to think differently about a character? -- The performances have been great, but they’ve been great at capturing the characters as I saw them. The one exception is Natalia Tena as Osha. Cause she’s very different than in the book, but I think she’s more interesting. When I bring Osha back in Winds of Winter, I’ll have Natalia in mind and perhaps give the character more interesting things to do.^[8]

What do you think about 'The Lord of the Rings' movies? If a movie or a series based upon 'A Song of Ice and Fire' was being made and you had an unlimited budget, whom would you cast? -- Yes, I love 'The Lord of the Rings' movies. I can't wait to see the third one and I think they are terrific. I have some quibbles about one or two decisions they made but for the most part they are marvellous. As for an 'Ice and Fire' movie, I don't know. I don't think they would be able to do it, the books are just too big. I mean, 'The Lord of the Rings' is requiring these three enormous movies, but if you actually look at the book it's... all three books are not as big as 'A Storm of Swords' which is only one of my books. So if it took three movies to do the Tolkien trilogy it would probably take like 27 movies to do my story, and I don't think any studio is going to commit to 27 movies. -- Still, do you have some particular actors in mind? -- Not really for all the roles, but I have a few people in mind. I think Nicole Kidman would be good as Cersei. I always liked Ron Perlman, the actor I worked with on 'The Beauty and the Beast'. He would be great as Sandor Clegane. Ron is very good in heavy make-up and he's also a big, strong kind of guy. He has a great voice that he can do all sorts of wonderful things with. I think he would be terrific as the Hound. For Jamie Lannister, a couple of years ago I would have said Cary Elwes but he might be too old now. I don't know...^[22]

Our kids have actual dramatic roles where they have to deal with grief and loneliness and anger and a lot of very adult stuff. [I thought] my God, how the hell, are we going to do this, you know? But then you find that one in a hundred, or one in a thousand that suddenly… oh my God, thank God, this is great. And Maisie Williams, who plays Arya, was one of those. I mean, just from the moment we saw her audition, I knew she was, she was our Arya and you know, the same was true for Sansa and Bran; two good actors who played those roles too. They were extraordinary.^[36]

They aged the kids up a couple of years for the script, right? -- They aged everybody up. Not just the kids. I mean, Sean Bean is, what in his 50’s, I think [He turns 52 the day GoT premieres. --JP], and Ned Stark is in his… Ned Stark is like 33? So, yeah. Robb and Jon are both 16 and 17 on the TV show and they’re 14 when the book opens. So, everyone is aged up I think. It was probably most crucial with Dany, who begins as a 13-year-old in the books. But, you have the whole issue of sexual activity on behalf of a 13-year-old, which was accepted in the Middle Ages, which I was using as my model. Many high born women, particularly noble women, were married at 13 or even younger. But it’s not so accepted in today’s society and we didn’t want to get into that whole bag of worms.^[36]

And I said, well, the entire book, Lord of the Rings–which Tolkien actually wrote as one novel, of course, not as a trilogy–is about the same size as A Storm of Swords. So, just with the three books I had out at that time, it would take like nine movies and I thought what studio is going to guarantee nine movies. Well, they’re not. They’re going to do one movie and we’ll see how it goes. And in the one movie you’re going to lose 90% of the characters and subplots. I mean, I’ve been a screenwriter myself. You have to go into a big book like this and you have to say, well, what’s the arc? Who’s the major character? Well focus on him and/or her and we’ll follow that major character through and we’ll pare away all these secondary characters and secondary stories and then we’ll get a movie out of it. Not only didn’t I want that done, but I didn’t think it could be done because in the early books, I’m deliberately disguising who the major characters are. I thought, well, it might work better as a TV series, but we’d run up to huge problems with the network censors with all the sex and the violence and that is much more graphic than anything is on television.^[36]

There was no such thing as an HBO drama when you first started writing them. -- Well, there was [by the time the second book made the bestseller lists]. That was my final conclusion where I said if we’re gonna do this, it has to be done as like either a giant epic miniseries, like “Shogun” or “Roots,” you know, one of those 27-part miniseries, which they don’t make anymore, or it has to be done as a series. And then the huge factor was when David and Dan came onboard. So my agents got the books for them and we got a meeting and we hit it off right away and you know, they wanted to do the same thing I wanted to do, so… the rest is history or infamy or something like that.^[36]

I was sort of hoping for 12 hours. Some of their other shows are 12 hours, I know The Sopranos usually got 12 or 13 even. So did the first [book] in 10 hours. If they pick up Clash of Kings, is it going to be 10 hours or are they going to do 12 hours? Clash of Kings is a slightly longer book than Game of Thrones, but 10 or 12 hours, it can still be done in one season. The real crucial point comes with the third season with Storm of Swords. Storm of Swords is a monster of a book, a gigantic book. It’s 500 pages longer in manuscript than Clash of Kings was. And Clash of Kings was 100 pages longer than Game of Thrones. You cannot do Storm of Swords in 10 hours. I think they need to make two seasons out of that. You know, break it somewhere in the middle, maybe at [spoilery plot point redacted]. And then you get to the Feast for Crows and Dance with Dragons books I’m now finishing, which are really two halves of a book that dwarfs even Storm of Swords because they take place simultaneously. Those books have to be recombined and broken up into a least two seasons, or maybe even three seasons because there is a tremendous amount of material in that.^[36]

So at some point further down the line, HBO is going to have to either give us multiple seasons for some of these longer books or, or they’re going to have to say, no, we’re just going to stick to 10 hours, and in that case, we’re going to lose a lot of material. If they take the second choice, if they do 10 hours of Storm of Swords, then yeah, they may catch up with me at some point down the road. But if they go the way that I hope they, then I think I’ll be finished. I don’t think they’ll catch up with me then. You know, barring me getting hit by a truck.^[36]

"I knew [it] couldn't be done in a film – the scope was too big," he says. Nor could Thrones have been done on regular television, given its adult content: "The only way to do this series was with HBO." A new era of epicness beckons.^[40]

What is what is HBO going to do if we get a third season and beyond? Storm of Swords is a gigantic book. I was hoping they’d give us 12 episodes for Clash. So I don’t know how they’ll get everything in. But there’s no way they can get Storm into 10 or even 12. My hope is they’ll split that into two seasons. There’s nothing in the law that says each season must cover one book. The only danger of catching up is if we have to do all of Storm, and then Feast and Dance have to be re-combined. Then there’s a danger they would catch up with me.^[8]

All this suggests a big adaptation challenge, assuming that the HBO series survives to make it to this point in the novels. It would be ludicrous to adapt nearly 2,000 pages of two books as one season, and yet there isn’t a natural chronological dividing line in the middle of the narrative for each character’s arc. (That is, I can think of several potentially dramatic final scenes and stopping points, but other storylines would just stop, midway.) It will take some creativity on the part of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to slice this leviathan in half. (I briefly wondered whether it would work to split it into an Essos season and a Westeros season, but I assume fans, HBO executives and casting agents alike would rebel.)^[23]

As a former TV producer, have you ever considered the possibility of adapting Song of Ice and Fire as a TV series? -- Martin: Well, I'm going to have a meeting tomorrow with some people who have some ideas about that, so we'll see what comes of it. Sure, you could do it as a TV series if you had a) the time, and b) the budget, but those are huge issues. It would be a huge series. You could not do it as a four-hour movie, or even as a series of three movies, as they're doing Lord of the Rings. You would need a miniseries on the scale of Shogun, or Lonesome Dove, one of the old kinds of 24-hour series they used to do, but don't seem to do any more.^[19]

Martin: My deal calls for me to write one script this season. It's script eight this year and next year, I’ll do another one if we get another season. I really can’t do more than that because I still have the [next 'A Song of Ice and Fire'] books to write. The books take an enormous amount of time. There’s a part of me that would love to be more involved than I am involved, attending the meetings and all that, but I can’t. ^[32]

You know, years ago when the books started hitting the New York Times Best Seller List we started getting interest from Hollywood. Initially it was from feature people because Time had called me the American Tolkien and then Peter Jackson's ["Lord of the Rings"] movies had made so much money. So people came sniffing around my books to see whether they would work [as a film]. And we got a number of inquiries and basically, I told my agents, no. Because I didn’t see how they could possibly be done as a feature film. I mean, I was talking seven gigantic books by that point -- "The Storm of Swords," which is the longest book in the series so far, is itself bigger than the entirety of Tolkien’s ["Lord of the Rings"] trilogy. All three of his books combined are about the length of "The Storm of Swords." And it took three movies to for Peter Jackson to do [that trilogy of books]. Well, no one was going to commit to three movies for me [and] to do the whole series, they would have to commit to 27 movies. So I knew that they couldn’t do it as a feature film. The only way would be is if some studio wanted to commit to nine feature films and that wasn’t going to happen. ^[32]

Merchandise

There are board games^[67] and tabletop role-playing games^[68] based on the available novels, as well as two collections of artwork based on and inspired by the Ice and Fire series.^{[citation needed]} The French video game company Cyanide has announced that they have partnered with Martin to create a video game adaption of the books, entitled A Game of Thrones: Genesis.^[69] There are licensed full-sized sword and war hammer reproductions available; paintable white metal character miniatures; larger resin cast character busts; Westeros coinage reproductions; a forthcoming series of graphic novel adaptations of the "Ice and Fire" series; and a large number of gift and collectible items from HBO based on their cable television series. In 2011, Game of Thrones released as a comic, with the first issue released in September with a $3.99 cover price (US). The release, through Dynamite, features a new issue every month.

CCI: Does “Sandkings,” your Hugo and Nebula Award winning novelette which has been adapted into both film and comics, hold the record for the most incarnations of one of your works? -- Martin: If you count games as an “incarnation,” then A Song of Ice and Fire would be on top. There’s been a role-playing game, a collectible card game (with numerous expansion sets), several versions of a board game. A miniatures game and range of collectible fi gures is on the way, as is a calendar, and all sorts of other things are in the discussion stage. Also, we’ve had The Hedge Knight comic book and graphic novel from DBPro, which is based on a prequel.^[29]

todo

^[70] ^[71] ^[72] ^[73] ^[74] ^[75] ^[76] ^[77] ^[78] ^[79]

Transfer

Martin is not going to address whether Jon Snow is dead or not. He thinks the narrative made perfect sense. Looking back through the books, all the decisions Jon’s made, and all the foreshadowing that was there, yes, you played fair. At the same time, it was devastating and I suspect fans will howl, the most since– -- The most since the Red Wedding, I suspect. Martin intended for this incident to happen for many years. Some of the stuff about Melisandre warning Jon of “daggers in the dark” was written 10 years ago. He thinks the fans are going to split and argue about it until the next book comes out.^[47]

I also wasn’t sure whether Ramsay was telling the truth in his letter when he said the battle had already been fought and won, whether we were supposed to take that as gospel. -- My readers should know better than to take anything as gospel, unless they see it for themselves, and even then I do sometimes use “unreliable narrator.” No. They should not take that as the truth. What about Mance Rayder, did you think he was really dead?^[47]

Yes. And I liked the reveal that he’s the bard in Ramsay’s court at Winterfell, but I was so dense I didn’t realize it was him until I read Ramsay’s letter near the end. -- Aside from the fact Mance goes south and says he’s going to take six spearwives, there’s a legend that Jon hears from Ygritte about Bale the Bard who was a King of the North who posed as a bard and infiltrated Winterfell. Mance is calling himself “Abel” which is “Bael” with the letters moved around. It’s amazing what people pick up on and what they don’t. The whole controversy over Renly and Loras, [viewers saying] “HBO made these characters gay!”^[47]

References

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^ "George R.R. Martin: At the top of his Game (of Thrones)". M.theglobeandmail.com. 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ ^a ^b "Dancing in Circles". Not a Blog. June 27, 2010.
^ ^a ^b "Not a Blog: this, that, and the other thing". Grrm.livejournal.com. 2006-03-28. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Hibberd, James (2011). "The Fantasy King". ew.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g "George R.R. Martin on magic vs. science". weirdtalesmagazine.com. 2007. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y Hibberd, James (2011). "EW interview: George R.R. Martin talks 'A Dance With Dragons'". ew.com. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p Richards, Linda (2001). "January interview George R.R. Martin". januarymagazine.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y ^z ^aa ^ab ^ac Miller, Laura (2011). "Just Write It! A fantasy author and his impatient fans". Time. Retrieved 2010-04-23. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b Biographical author summaries in Dreamsongs
^ ^a ^b Q&A Summary on Westeros.org - September 1999, Author statement on Westeros.org - 11 November 1998, Author statement on Westeros.org - 4 December 1999
^ "Ansible #79, February 1994". News.ansible.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Martin, George R. R. (May 29, 2005). "Done". GeorgeRRMartin.com (Author's official website). Retrieved March 6, 2010.
^ ^a ^b "On the Spot at BSC – George R.R. Martin interview". boomtron.com. 2006. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help) See also http://web.archive.org/web/20080620230502/http://www.fantasybookspot.com/node/1209 and Endorsed by GRRM
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Flood, Alison (2011). "George RR Martin: Barbarians at the gate". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Cogan, Eric "Dargon" (2002). "George R.R Martin Interview". fantasyonline.net. Archived from the original on ??????. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |archivedate= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Endorsed by GRRM
^ "Prime Time Replay: George R. R. Martin on A Game of Thrones". omnimag.com. 1996. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |archive_date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |archive_url= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v Robinson, Tasha (2000). "Interview: George R.R. Martin continues to sing a magical tale of ice and fire". Science Fiction Weekly. 6, No. 50 (190). scifi.com. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |archive_date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |archive_url= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Gevers, Nick (2000). "Sunsets of High Renown - An Interview with George R. R. Martin". infinityplus.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)(I interviewed George R. R. Martin, quite briefly, by e-mail )
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Grossman, Lev (2005-11-13). "Books: The American Tolkien". Time. Retrieved 2010-04-23.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Zadravec, David (2003). "An Interview With George R. R. Martin". mezmera.posluh.hr. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Poniewozik, James (2011). "The Problems of Power: George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b Flood, Alison (2011). "Getting more from George RR Martin". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Baum, Michele Dula (2001). "'A Song of Ice and Fire' - Author George R.R. Martin's fantastic kingdoms". cnn.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Martin, George R.R. (2009-02-19). "Not a Blog: To My Detractors". Grrm.livejournal.com. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ "Dancing". Not a Blog. July 31, 2010.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "Q&A George R.R Martin". scotcampus.com. 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e "A Song of Ice And Fire And Much More: George Martin on Fantasy Writing, Movies, Comics..." (PDF). Your Complete Guide To Comic-Con International Update. 2. comic-con.org: 34–35. 2006. Retrieved 2012-02-01.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h "Interview: George Martin". Deep Magic. 41: 19–21. 2005.
^ "Free Books!!". grrm.livejournal.com. 16 September 2007. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Ryan, Maureen (2010). "George R. R. Martin talks 'Game of Thrones' as the HBO show's 'Daenerys' departs". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Patrick (2006). "George R.R. Martin". sffworld.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Poniewozik, James (2011). "GRRM Interview Part 3: The Twilight Zone and Lost". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c Grossman, Lev (2011). "George R.R. Martin's Dance with Dragons: A Masterpiece Worthy of Tolkien". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Poniewozik, James (2011). "George R. R. Martin Interview, Part 1: Game of Thrones, from Book to TV". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b Díaz, Antonio (2009). "Interview with fiction writer George R.R. Martin". freemagazine.fi. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Poniewozik, James (2011). "GRRM Interview Part 2: Fantasy and History". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ John (1999). "Famous Writers: A Quick Interview With George R. R. Martin". Originally from Elder Gods' Rave #14, for Gothik APA. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c Rose, Steve (2011). "Game Of Thrones: The Sopranos with swords or Dynasty in chainmail?". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ "Interview with Scott Lynch". Retrieved 2012-01-21.
^ "Influences, Ideas, and A Game of Thrones". joeabercrombie.com. 2008. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
^ Rodger Turner. "Featured Review: The Hedge Knight". Sfsite.com. Retrieved 2011-08-16.
^ Poniewozik, James (2011). "GRRM Interview Part 4: Personal History". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b Walter, Damien G (2011). "George RR Martin's fantasy is not far from reality". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ "A Family Affair as Old as Oedipus". variety.com. 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Hibberd, James (2011). "George R.R. Martin on 'Dance With Dragons' shocking twist (Spoilers)". ew.com. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Bellafante, Ginia (2011). "A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Alter, Alexandra (2011). "These Literary Tastes Include Eel Pie, Grilled Snake". wsj.com. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b ^c Thielman, Sam (2011). "'Thrones' tomes selling big". variety.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Martin, George R.R. (2010). "Odds and Ends and More Odds". grrm.livejournal.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ "Paperback Mass-Market Fiction". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21.
^ ^a ^b ^c "The essential guide to "Game of Thrones"". salon.com. 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
^ Flood, Alison (2011). "A Dance with Dragons sends George RR Martin flying into charts". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ "Gallery of different language editions". Georgerrmartin.com. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ ^a ^b "Getting hooked on George RR Martin". guardian.co.uk. 2009. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
^ ^a ^b Hann, Michael (2011). "I'm hooked on George RR Martin's flights of fantasy". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ "Excitement as George RR Martin announces he's 1,200 pages into new book". guardian.co.uk. 2010. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)
^ "1997 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.
^ "1999 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.
^ "2001 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.
^ "2006 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.
^ Hippoi Athanatoi: Memoirs - Worldcon: Day 3
^ Posted by Ted on November 29, 2006 (2006-11-29). "Long Time No Post-My Apologies, Friends!". Ted Nasmith. Retrieved 2011-08-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
^ Fleming, Michael (January 16, 2007). "HBO turns Fire into fantasy series". Variety. Retrieved March 2, 2010.
^ Lee, Patrick (2010). "HBO says yes to Game of Thrones series (plus 1st pic!)". SciFiWire.com. Retrieved March 3, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ A Game of Thrones board game homepage at Fantasy Flight
^ "''A Song of Ice and Fire'' RPG homepage". Greenronin.com. 2008-06-21. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ "Focus Home Interactive press release". Focus-home.com. 2010-07-16. Retrieved 2011-08-18.
^ "George R.R. Martin: The Gray Lords". locusmag.com. 2005. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ MacLaurin, Wayne (2000). "A Conversation With George R.R. Martin". sfsite.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Redman, Bridgette (2006). "George R.R. Martin Talks Ice and Fire". book.consumerhelpweb.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Kirschling, Gregory (2007). "By George!". ew.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Jennings, Dana (2011). "In a Fantasyland of Liars, Trust No One, and Keep Your Dragon Close". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ "Best Sellers Weekly Graphic: Fantastical Sales". nytimes.com. 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Bosman, Julie (2011). "A Fantasy Book Revives Store Sales". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Orr, David (2011). "Dragons Ascendant: George R. R. Martin and the Rise of Fantasy". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Sacks, Ethan (2011). "George R.R. Martin surprises "Song of Ice and Fire" fans with free chapter of next book". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
^ Wightman, Catriona (2011). "'Game of Thrones' season three 'will depart from books'". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_vile_hobbits-1] Smith, Dinitia (2005). "A Fantasy Realm Too Vile For Hobbits". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[wsj-2] Alter, Alexandra (27 May 2011). "The Season of the Supernatural". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 28 May 2011.

[globeandmail-3] "George R.R. Martin: At the top of his Game (of Thrones)". M.theglobeandmail.com. 2011-07-11. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[dancingincircles-4] "Dancing in Circles". Not a Blog. June 27, 2010.

[grrm_blog_060326-5] "Not a Blog: this, that, and the other thing". Grrm.livejournal.com. 2006-03-28. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[ew_fantasy_king-6] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l Hibberd, James (2011). "The Fantasy King". ew.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grmm_iv_weirdtm-7] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g "George R.R. Martin on magic vs. science". weirdtalesmagazine.com. 2007. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grmm_iv_ew-8] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y Hibberd, James (2011). "EW interview: George R.R. Martin talks 'A Dance With Dragons'". ew.com. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_iv_januarymagazine-9] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p Richards, Linda (2001). "January interview George R.R. Martin". januarymagazine.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[newyorker-10] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v ^w ^x ^y ^z ^aa ^ab ^ac Miller, Laura (2011). "Just Write It! A fantasy author and his impatient fans". Time. Retrieved 2010-04-23. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[autogenerated3-11] Biographical author summaries in Dreamsongs

[poorsourcesreplace-12] Q&A Summary on Westeros.org - September 1999, Author statement on Westeros.org - 11 November 1998, Author statement on Westeros.org - 4 December 1999

[ansible-13] "Ansible #79, February 1994". News.ansible.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[Done_2005-14] Martin, George R. R. (May 29, 2005). "Done". GeorgeRRMartin.com (Author's official website). Retrieved March 6, 2010.

[grrm_iv_boomtron-15] "On the Spot at BSC – George R.R. Martin interview". boomtron.com. 2006. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help) See also http://web.archive.org/web/20080620230502/http://www.fantasybookspot.com/node/1209 and Endorsed by GRRM

[guardian_barbarians-16] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Flood, Alison (2011). "George RR Martin: Barbarians at the gate". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[fantasyonline-17] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j Cogan, Eric "Dargon" (2002). "George R.R Martin Interview". fantasyonline.net. Archived from the original on ??????. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |archivedate= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) Endorsed by GRRM

[omnimag-18] "Prime Time Replay: George R. R. Martin on A Game of Thrones". omnimag.com. 1996. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |archive_date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |archive_url= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[scifi_magical_tale-19] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j ^k ^l ^m ⁿ ^o ^p ^q ^r ^s ^t ^u ^v Robinson, Tasha (2000). "Interview: George R.R. Martin continues to sing a magical tale of ice and fire". Science Fiction Weekly. 6, No. 50 (190). scifi.com. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |archive_date= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |archive_url= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_iv_infinityplus-20] Gevers, Nick (2000). "Sunsets of High Renown - An Interview with George R. R. Martin". infinityplus.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)(I interviewed George R. R. Martin, quite briefly, by e-mail )

[time_american_tolkien-21] Grossman, Lev (2005-11-13). "Books: The American Tolkien". Time. Retrieved 2010-04-23.

[grmm_iv_polish-22] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Zadravec, David (2003). "An Interview With George R. R. Martin". mezmera.posluh.hr. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[time_problem_power-23] Poniewozik, James (2011). "The Problems of Power: George R.R. Martin's A Dance With Dragons". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[guardian_gettingmore-24] Flood, Alison (2011). "Getting more from George RR Martin". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[cnn-25] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Baum, Michele Dula (2001). "'A Song of Ice and Fire' - Author George R.R. Martin's fantastic kingdoms". cnn.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_blog_090219-26] Martin, George R.R. (2009-02-19). "Not a Blog: To My Detractors". Grrm.livejournal.com. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[grrm_blog_200721-27] "Dancing". Not a Blog. July 31, 2010.

[grmm_iv_scotcampus-28] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f "Q&A George R.R Martin". scotcampus.com. 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)

[grmm_iv_cc-29] "A Song of Ice And Fire And Much More: George Martin on Fantasy Writing, Movies, Comics..." (PDF). Your Complete Guide To Comic-Con International Update. 2. comic-con.org: 34–35. 2006. Retrieved 2012-02-01.

[deepmagic41-30] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h "Interview: George Martin". Deep Magic. 41: 19–21. 2005.

[grrm_blog_070916-31] "Free Books!!". grrm.livejournal.com. 16 September 2007. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[chictrib_daenerys-32] Ryan, Maureen (2010). "George R. R. Martin talks 'Game of Thrones' as the HBO show's 'Daenerys' departs". chicagotribune.com. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_iv_sffworld-33] Patrick (2006). "George R.R. Martin". sffworld.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[time_grrm_ivp3-34] Poniewozik, James (2011). "GRRM Interview Part 3: The Twilight Zone and Lost". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[time_masterpiece_tolkien-35] Grossman, Lev (2011). "George R.R. Martin's Dance with Dragons: A Masterpiece Worthy of Tolkien". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[time_grrm_ivp1-36] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Poniewozik, James (2011). "George R. R. Martin Interview, Part 1: Game of Thrones, from Book to TV". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_iv_freemagazine-37] Díaz, Antonio (2009). "Interview with fiction writer George R.R. Martin". freemagazine.fi. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[time_grrm_ivp2-38] ^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g Poniewozik, James (2011). "GRRM Interview Part 2: Fantasy and History". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_iv_qusoor-39] John (1999). "Famous Writers: A Quick Interview With George R. R. Martin". Originally from Elder Gods' Rave #14, for Gothik APA. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[guardian_sopranos-40] Rose, Steve (2011). "Game Of Thrones: The Sopranos with swords or Dynasty in chainmail?". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[randomhouse-41] "Interview with Scott Lynch". Retrieved 2012-01-21.

[joeabercrombie-42] "Influences, Ideas, and A Game of Thrones". joeabercrombie.com. 2008. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)

[sfsite_hedge_knight-43] Rodger Turner. "Featured Review: The Hedge Knight". Sfsite.com. Retrieved 2011-08-16.

[time_grrm_ivp4-44] Poniewozik, James (2011). "GRRM Interview Part 4: Personal History". time.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[guardian_reality-45] Walter, Damien G (2011). "George RR Martin's fantasy is not far from reality". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_oedipus-46] "A Family Affair as Old as Oedipus". variety.com. 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)

[grmm_iv_ewshock-47] Hibberd, James (2011). "George R.R. Martin on 'Dance With Dragons' shocking twist (Spoilers)". ew.com. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_feuding_kingdoms-48] Bellafante, Ginia (2011). "A Fantasy World of Strange Feuding Kingdoms". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[wsj_food-49] Alter, Alexandra (2011). "These Literary Tastes Include Eel Pie, Grilled Snake". wsj.com. Retrieved 2011-02-02. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[variety_selling-50] Thielman, Sam (2011). "'Thrones' tomes selling big". variety.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_blog_101006-51] Martin, George R.R. (2010). "Odds and Ends and More Odds". grrm.livejournal.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_bestseller-52] "Paperback Mass-Market Fiction". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21.

[salon_primer-53] "The essential guide to "Game of Thrones"". salon.com. 2011. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)

[guardian_charts-54] Flood, Alison (2011). "A Dance with Dragons sends George RR Martin flying into charts". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_languages-55] "Gallery of different language editions". Georgerrmartin.com. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[guardian_getting_hooked-56] "Getting hooked on George RR Martin". guardian.co.uk. 2009. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)

[guardian_flights_fantasy-57] Hann, Michael (2011). "I'm hooked on George RR Martin's flights of fantasy". guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[guardian_exitement-58] "Excitement as George RR Martin announces he's 1,200 pages into new book". guardian.co.uk. 2010. Retrieved 2012-01-21. {{cite web}}: |first= missing |last= (help); Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |name= ignored (help)

[WWE-1997-59] "1997 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.

[WWE-1999-60] "1999 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.

[WWE-2001-61] "2001 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.

[WWE-2006-62] "2006 Award Winners & Nominees". Worlds Without End. Retrieved 2009-07-25.

[hippoiathanatoi-63] Hippoi Athanatoi: Memoirs - Worldcon: Day 3

[ted-64] Posted by Ted on November 29, 2006 (2006-11-29). "Long Time No Post-My Apologies, Friends!". Ted Nasmith. Retrieved 2011-08-18.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

[variety2007-01-65] Fleming, Michael (January 16, 2007). "HBO turns Fire into fantasy series". Variety. Retrieved March 2, 2010.

[SciFi_2010-03-02-66] Lee, Patrick (2010). "HBO says yes to Game of Thrones series (plus 1st pic!)". SciFiWire.com. Retrieved March 3, 2010. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[fantasyflight-67] A Game of Thrones board game homepage at Fantasy Flight

[greenronin-68] "''A Song of Ice and Fire'' RPG homepage". Greenronin.com. 2008-06-21. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[focus-69] "Focus Home Interactive press release". Focus-home.com. 2010-07-16. Retrieved 2011-08-18.

[grrm_iv_locusmag-70] "George R.R. Martin: The Gray Lords". locusmag.com. 2005. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_iv_sfsite2-71] MacLaurin, Wayne (2000). "A Conversation With George R.R. Martin". sfsite.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[grrm_iv_consumerhelpweb-72] Redman, Bridgette (2006). "George R.R. Martin Talks Ice and Fire". book.consumerhelpweb.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[ew_by_george-73] Kirschling, Gregory (2007). "By George!". ew.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_adwdreview-74] Jennings, Dana (2011). "In a Fantasyland of Liars, Trust No One, and Keep Your Dragon Close". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_graph-75] "Best Sellers Weekly Graphic: Fantastical Sales". nytimes.com. 2011. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_sells_well-76] Bosman, Julie (2011). "A Fantasy Book Revives Store Sales". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nytimes_rise_fantasy-77] Orr, David (2011). "Dragons Ascendant: George R. R. Martin and the Rise of Fantasy". nytimes.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[nydailynews_sample_chapter-78] Sacks, Ethan (2011). "George R.R. Martin surprises "Song of Ice and Fire" fans with free chapter of next book". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

[digitalspy_comiccon-79] Wightman, Catriona (2011). "'Game of Thrones' season three 'will depart from books'". nydailynews.com. Retrieved 2011-01-21. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |day= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

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