Sorry to those awaiting breathtaking news, but the MG signing didn't reveal a whole lot of new information, most of the questions were geared on the how-do-you-write-such-and-such level. Someone asked if everything was planned out in advance and GRRM replied that while he had to outline in Hollywood he doesn't do it naturally. Although some writers do outline to a fare-thee-well, and he knows the broad strokes going in, it works better if some of the twists and turns are spontaneous along the way. And in the event of his untimely death, we're just SOL. Comments about his writing women characters really well (which he was pleased to hear, because when identifying with a character not of your own gender, you have to do it purely on empathy, and it's nice to hear you got it right). The reading we got was from the Jon Snow meeting Mance Rayder scene. He mentioned that he's picking a different passage for every reading.
I had dinner with him afterwards (weep with envy!), but being a spoiler-phobic person, I talked about a lot of Other Things instead (collecting things off e-bay, origami, comic books, cons, the Frankfurt bookfair (which he said was BIGGER than the ABA with ten halls and attendance in the 100,000s, waiting to see who was president [he'd stayed up until 3:00am while in Toronto the night before], Ran's working out of the Targaryen succession, etc., etc.) But I did get up the courage to blurt out one small SoIaF query, which was if we've met a descendent of Dunk's in the SoIaF. He said yes. I also asked if his older books were coming back into print and he said that Bantam does intend to re-release them, in the order of most-like-SoIaF to least-like: so (I think. I have teflon brain) Dying of the Light, Windhaven, Fevre Dream, and then Armageddon Rag.
I don't think I was very entertaining during dinner, and it was just me and him (or it could be the fact that he'd just lost three hours [shifted from Toronto, the signing was actually 10:30p, and he'd stayed up until 3am for the voting results]. As to how I managed it, I'm still not quite sure, but it started about a dozen years ago at the San Diego Comic-Con. GRRM was still guesting the SDCC because he was doing Wild Cards. At that time, I was having fun learning origami out of books, and I had learned to do a turtle. So, while at a panel, I folded one, and then gave it to him afterwards (for the Wild Card virgins, GRRM wrote a superhero character called The Great and Powerful Turtle for that series). I apparently did this in successive years, although, with my teflon brain, I'd forgotten.
But when I wrote him my first fan e-mail this last August after reading SoS, he remembered, and asked me in the e-mail if I was the person who'd handed him an origami turtle, and was I coming to the signing. I said yes and yes, and he sent me another e-mail asking if I'd like to have dinner with him aftewards. After recovering from the heart attack :^), I said "HELL YES!!!" So, I've had about a month to choose a restaurant and fold origami, and specifically one particular model from a book I had.
[Someone mentions GRRM's statement about how hard it was for him to kill characters, and that he would play computer games to distract himself.]
I loved that, too. Also the mention of Lord Vance as a tribute to Jack Vance (GRRM mentioned that the Dying Earth books are back into print as one volume), and that he starts to put in those kinds of names when he has to fill out a list of minor lordlings and can't come up with anything.
Oh, for the historical fiction fans, the author that GRRM most enjoys is Nigel Tranter (whom he said was often depressing because he wrote about Scottish history :^). We had an interesting conversation, because we were sort of mirror images of each other in our Scottish historical reading. I'd read one Tranter, and all but one (King Hereafter) of Dunnett, while he'd read a little bit of Dunnett and all of Tranter. He mentioned his frustration that Tranter books don't have maps since Tranter tends to describe journeys using ALL the available landmarks (I also stupidly complained about there not being a map of the landmass Dany's on in the books, and he VERY politely pointed out to me that there was one in SoS [O the shame!]). He also recommended that I compare and contrast how both Tranter and Dunnett write about MacBeth, going off in very different directions with essentially the same historical material. And also that while he'd read some of the Niccoló series, he'd never read Lymond. I told him to stop reading Niccoló and start reading Lymond, or he'd be really confused by Unicorn Hunt. He said he hadn't got that far with Niccoló, yet.
I asked GRRM if we'd met one of Dunk's descendents in the SoIaF, and he said Yes. I didn't ask him who, because I'd rather find out by reading or reason, only I'm lousy at the reasoning part and want to make you guys do it for me.
Found out from GRRM over dinner last night that the BosKone book will have four pieces in it. The two previously unpublished pieces already mentioned [the script for the pilot of Starport, a proposed SF tv series, and the first part of what would have been a mainstream historical/horror novel set during the height of yellow journalism in the late 19th century, Black and White and Read All Over, "Blood of the Dragon", and "The Skin Trade."
God, my teflon-brain worsens. Another driplet missing from my reports: I asked if we were going to Dorne in DoD, and GRRM said "Yes. Briefly." I guess that means we're gonna see at least a few more Dornishmen.
A couple more drips and dribbles of what I remember: I mentioned that Beauty and the Beast scene (in the episode "Snow") I'd found where Snow dressed all in black (Lance Henriksen) says to Gabriel (Stephen McHattie), "Cold Night." and Gabriel replies "Yes. Winter is coming." He laughed pretty hard and said something along the lines of no harm in using a good image over. I then got cute and asked him if Winter was ever gonna frickin' arrive. He said, "Yes. In Book 5: the Winds of Winter."
LE's description of the Rock jiggled loose another small piece from the San Diego signing. Someone complimented GRRM on his ability to write realistic swordfights, and he thanked the guy, and mentioned that he uses experts to help fact/feel check for him: he knows an architect who can help with the castle designs, an SCA combat expert to help with the swordfights and a horseowner (something he said made me guess Melinda Snodgrass, but not sure) to keep him from turning horses into "cars with legs," as one sees in lots of fantasy. All the names of the guilty parties :^) are listed and thanked for their help at the end of the books.
[Note: The precise date, beyond November 2000, is unknown.]
Min and me went to the Frankfurt book fair to meet George. I think Min will keep you posted on how it was. But here is just a short overview on new information that we got:
Since George has not started writing DWD everything though can be changed ...
DWD will be thinner and quicker.
No new POV
Catelyn will not be a POV
More attention on Casterly Rock
No introduction on what has happened between ASOS and ADWD, but POVs will "reflect" on what happened (so no flashbacks either).
A new story (presumably Dunk) after ADWD, quicker if we can get Silverberg to do a "Legends 2" and he'll as George to contribute. Action please, Ladies and Gentlemen!!!!
A Television station has asked for a meeting regarding an ASOIAF TV-Series. But nothing serious till now. Could change though, if LOTR becomes a box-office smash hit.
George was very precise on "reflections" as opposed to flashbacks. Flashbacks would be "Tyrion remembered being resurrected from the dead ...." while reflection would be "Tyrion wondered why anybody would have tried to resurrect him ..." (of course that resurrection thing is my own theory).
One more bit. George said that the male lead from "Beauty and the Beast" (I forgot his name) would be perfect for playing Sandor. And that the Eyrie is based on Neuschwanstein and Casterly Rock is based on Gibraltar.
... His reason for the gap is simply that he thought each of the first three books would cover a longer timespan. He told us that since he was able just to write down a fictional span of 1-1 1/2 years in these books he had to make the break, otherwise he ASOIAF would be 10 books long.
He said on The Eyrie that he imagines it like Neuschwanstein (esp. how he walked up there) and that CR should be like the Rock of Gibraltar. That means not a fortification on a rock, but a rock as fortification.
One more note. George said that there is no written plan on how ASOIAF will end. So let's all pray for his good health.
...In fact he did not state that he did not know how it will end, he just said that there were no notes on it...
...George _will_ continue the Wildcards series. He thought the books constantly lost appeal since they became too dark, but he really wants to revive the series.
I had planned to go to the Frankfurt Bookfair, where George had said to appear. Min was not too sure whether she'd find the time but she sent a mail to George, asking for a meeting the next friday. On wednesday he called her at work, very politely and quietly waiting to be redirected, even to dial again as she was not there- and confirmed to have lunch with us (Min, her boyfriend and me, that is) at friday, 13:00. We should pick him up at the Fanpro booth. Now Min _was_ sure that she'd go and off we went on Friday morning. Traffic was not too dense so we were there way early. We looked a bit around to find Fanpro and saw George sitting there already and all alone. So Min went up to him, introduced us and asked whether it's a problem or not to start right now (it was 11:00 !!). George said no and so we sat down and chatted a bit. He seemed to be very happy to meet fans as only recently people begin to be interested in him (He told us of an incident where he had a signing session and no-one had appeared for a few hours).
Half an hour later, he invited us to dinner in a restaurant inside the fair where we presented him our present, a Cambridge History of Germany. He was very happy about that since he'd tried to find a book about that topic in English in Germany, but couldn't find one. Then he talked about Leipzig, meeting Omer, and other writers. We talked about Jordan, Tolkien, Cook and Howard, about Arya, Sansa, Sandor, Catelyn (he said that he himself was very surprised by what she did, but he'd had to let her have it her way). About movie business, epublishing, Armageddon Rag, Gothic Rock and Beat-bands, Wild Cards (he constantly came back to that topic), written notes and why people should buy proofs for over $1000. I showed him my drafts for the Castles of Westeros, which he approved.
We went back to Fanpro, still talking about various subjects and later met Werner Fuchs, George's German agent, who showed us the t-shirts (George gave Min the pile to choose one from as gift and she actually picked a Stark one for me! Lady Enchantress, that is.). George willingly signed all the books we gave him. Later he told us that he'd be in Cologne next tuesday, so we agreed on meeting there in the eveing to have lunch together. This first meeting was 4 hours long!
On tuesday, George again called Min to pick him up at a cafe near the Cathedral, which he'd visited after he'd been to the Romanic-German Museum in Cologne. As the chinese restaurant was closed that day, they agreed for a Balinesian one. We met there at 18:30, George bringing Andreas with him, who is his translator. Another friend of Min came with us, so we were 6 people happily eating the balinesian rice-table offered to us. Again lots of talk about ASOIAF, about translations, about Kane and LOTR, about Role-playing with fellow authors and why John Maddox Roberts was not allowed to take part in it. Lots of anecdotes which I won't tell here, and after some beers George even said the one or other not-so-nice thing about some fellow authors, but all with his very warm, nice and touching humour he possesses. Around 23:00 we went to a local in-house-brewery, where Min presented George her personal present while George recollected some incidents that happened to him, e.g. how he was responsible for the fall of the berlin wall. Finally we said good-bye to each other (everyone of us equipped with t-shirts) about 01:00. I had volunteered to drive George back, which took about an hour in which we talked about more serious things, such as history, christianity, ethnic leansing, asimov etc. So after 02:00 I said good-bye to him at the reception of his hotel.
I've met a lot of famous people in my life, but not somebody like George. He was very easy to be around, very witty, funny and good-humoured. It was more like having a beer with your neighbour than with a guy who's received several awards. On two occasions I heard him talk to other people (his agent and his translator) about how proud he was having such "cool" fans. And although he meant Min, D. and me, I think he included the board itself too. He was so enthusiastic about the in-con Asoiaf con and was very proud about it. I'm very proud to have met him.
...About Asimov, I had asked him if he thought about writing an auto-biography, but he said that it would be too boring. He referred to the second part of Asimov's biography where he just writes about when and where he wrote which book and how much money he got out of this, but didn't give away any personal information on his divorce.
...George said that although he has no talent at all to remember people's faces in real life, keeping a cast of thousands inside his head was much easier. He'd forget you in real life, but if you were one of his characters he'll know you.
Yes, in fact he stated he was surprised by what Catelyn did. Those characters seem to have a life of their own that's what makes them so unpredictable.
...I'll not go into details but may point out that GRRM confirmed that there are parallels between christianisation and what's going on in Westeros.
[Note: The report concerning two new WILD CARDS books is confirmed in an e-mail here.]
There are gonna be two new WILD CARDS books, as well as reissuing some of the oldies.
And about A Dance with Dragons, Martin said that he could easily put in a new PoV character, but he probably won't, because it'll make the book thicker, and he has to make ADwD thinenr than ASoS.
... Martin said A Storm of Swords was on the Limit of how large a book can get. So it just CAN'T be any thicker.
And I'm pretty sure Martin's gonna edit the Wild Cards book, probably with Snodgras's help.
He also said he has 200 pages of an unfinished Historical Horror novel that are gonna be published at some sort of an anthology in the near future.
[Note: The following chat is made available through the Internet Archive. The precise date, beyond 2000 and after the publication of A Storm of Swords, is unknown.]
http://web.archive.org/web/20020608104927/http://www.darkestablishment.org/misc/grrmchat.htm
Westeros is likely to keep me occupied for the next few years, admittedly. I want to do some more Dunk & Egg stories to follow up on "The Hedge Knight" from LEGENDS, in between volumes of the series. It looks like WILD CARDS is coming back, though. We'll be reprinting some of the old books and adding two new ones. I'll be editing those, but probably not writing for them... but eventually, if the series takes root again and flowers, I'll want to do more Turtle and Popinjay stories.
I am just writing to congratulate you on Storm of Swords. I thought it was a very good book. However, in my view GOT and COK were better. One reason was I found SOS extremely depressing. Virtually every character I like went through some type of hell.
Yes, it is a dark book. But there's still hope.
Hopefully characters such as Tyrion, Arya and Bran will get some fun in their lives in Dance of Dragons. Jaime was a great POV, I hope we can continue to see his point of view, and that he and Tyrion can reconcile sometime in the future.
Jaime's POV will continue, definitely. A reconciliation... well, you'll have to wait and see.
By the way, there was an interesting theory put forward on the eesite message boards once that I always loved. It involved the whore at Chataya's who was successful in the bet that Tyrion would not give up Allaya (or in reality Shae). It was noted that she had silver hair, a cool demeanor, green eyes and read books. She isn't by any chance Tyrion's daughter by Tysha? (or by any other whore for that matter).
No comment.
Anyway, love the series, and hope the next three books are just as good (and hopefully quickly out :) ).
"Quickly?" Would that it were so... but these are huge books, and they take a long time to write. I'd look for A DANCE WITH DRAGONS sometime in 2002.
I will be leaving on October 3 for a month long tour of Germany.
Some of my time will be spent playing the tourist, visiting castles and Roman ruins, enjoying the scenery, and hunting for old toy knights and castles. However, I will also be making a number of public appearances.
The weekend of October 6-8 I will be the Guest of Honor at Elstercon, in Leipzig. Details of the convention can be found on Elstercon's website, at http://apple.rz.uni-leipzig.de/FKSFL.html.
On Monday, October 9, I will be speaking and signing books at UFO-Buchladen in Berlin.
From Tuesday October 17 through Monday October 23, I will be attending the Frankfurt Book Fair. As of this writing, I have no official scheduled appearances at the convention, but I expect to be around for most of the week. Ask for me at the Fantasy Productions kiosk in the German hall, or at the HarperCollins booth in the English hall, I plan to visit both.
From the 25th through the 29th of October, I plan to attend Spiel, the comics and gaming convention in Essen (Gruga). I may be doing a signing or a talk there, or perhaps just hanging around, but I should be findable.
I will return to Santa Fe on October 31, and enjoy two whole days at home before leaving again on my American book tour for A STORM OF SWORDS.
I looking forward to meeting some my German readers while I'm over there, and having a few of these good German beers I've heard so much of.
[Note: The following interview is no longer available on the Ottakars website, so they have kindly given us permission to repost the whole of it here. It remains © Ottakars. The precise date, beyond September 2000, is unknown.]
In the early part of your career you were chiefly known as a writer of short stories, winning I think it was 3 Hugo and 2 Nebula awards (please correct me if I'm wrong).
At present it's four Hugos and two Nebulas -- I picked up another Hugo a few years ago at the San Antonio worldcon, for the novella Blood of the Dragon, an excerpt from A Game of Thrones. Also a Bram Stoker and a World Fantasy Award, if it matters.
As time has passed, you seem to have gradually moved to longer and longer formats - first novels, then a series of long novels in A Song of Ice and Fire. I was wondering what you felt were the strengths of each form, and whether you were planning on staying in longer forms or revisiting the short story again.
I do want to do more short fiction in the future, definitely, though it is not likely I'll be doing true short stories. Even back in the '70s, I found I was more comfortable at novelette and novella length. I want to more more tales of Dunk and Egg, who were featured in my Hedge Knight story in Legends. Those will likely be novellas. It's a question of finding the time. The Ice and Fire books are huge undertakings, and don't leave me much time for other projects.
Many of your early stories were set in the same universe, last visited in the stories collected in Tuf Voyaging. Do you have any plans to write anything else set in the same universe?
Well, I would like to do more Tuf stories one day, and I also have a chunk of an SF novel called Avalon that I put aside to write A Game of Thrones. I have a lingering fondness for that old future history of mine, I must admit... even though certain aspects seem very outdated today. I expect I'll visit it again one day.
You have often been described as a Romantic writer in the widest sense, and as having the sensibility of a poet allied to an awareness of the brutal realities of existence. Your characters frequently live with loss and regret, and the failure to reach their goals or to live up to their ideals, a theme that runs from your earliest work through to A Song of Ice and Fire. Is there an autobiographical element in such flawed crusaders as Laren Dorr, the Great and Powerful Turtle and Ser Jorah amongst many others, or do they perhaps reflect more of a general view of life?
Hmmm... well, I mined my own life shamelessly when creating the Great and Powerful Turtle, I admit. Tom's childhood was my own, complete with pet turtles. Unfortunately, I never developed telekinesis... otherwise I might be out fighting crime from an armored Volkswagen, rather than writing novels. My other characters are less autobiographical on the surface, but down deep there's a lot of me in all of them. A writer observes other people and draws on all that he sees and hears and experiences, certainly, but observation can only take you so far. To make a character really come alive, you have to become that character, and that means delving down into your own psyche, using your own dreams and desires... and even your fears.
In many ways you were one of the precursors of the recent boom in vampire novels with Fevre Dream. What do you think is the appeal of vampire stories, and why is it that they seem to have become so popular now?
Vampires have always been popular. I have written stories about werewolves, ghosts, and zombies as well, but none of them have the sex appeal of the vampire. I think eroticism has a lot to do with it. There is a dark romanticism to the vampire that none of the other traditional monsters can match. In Fevre Dream, Joshua York quotes Byron at one point. "She walks in beauty, like the night..." He's speaking about the steamboat, but the words apply to vampires as well.
In the 1980s, you moved into television, working on series such as the new Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast. How did you find the experience differed from working in the medium of print? Did it teach you anything?
Ultimately it taught me that I wanted to go back to books. Oh, it was an exciting time, to be sure. I worked with some good people and did a lot of work that I remain proud of, but TV and film are collaborative mediums, and in the end I just got tired of collaborating. A book allows me to be the writer, director, producer, special effects artist, set designer, stunt man, and all the actors, rolled in one. I don't have to compromise my story to meet the demands of studio or network, or water it down because Standards and Practices thinks it's too violent or too sexy or too opinionated. And I don't have to worry about the budgets either! My scripts were always budget-busters out in Hollywood.
In the late 1980s you were the guiding light behind the excellent Wild Cards series of "mosaic novels", working with writers such as Roger Zelazny, Mellinda Snodgrass, Ed Bryant and Walter Jon Williams amongst many others. What was it like to collaborate so closely with so many very different writers?
It was frustrating and exhilarating by turns. We had a tremendous group of very talented writers, and a great world to play in, and some of our brainstorming sessions were as much fun as any I've ever been a part of. Of course, there were arguments as well. But since I was the editor, I always won them... unlike the arguments I had in Hollywood. We told some great stories, and I think we also took the "shared world" concept to a new level. No other shared world series ever attempted anything as ambitious as our mosaic novels.
Actually, it looks as though Wild Cards will soon be coming back. We are negotiating a deal that will bring many of the old books back into print and allow us to add a few new ones. I can't say more than that until the contracts are signed, but I'm looking forward to revisiting some of those characters.
Although you have always written both Fantasy and SF, A Song of Ice and Fire is, I believe, your first foray into the traditional epic Fantasy genre. Commercial considerations aside, what attracted you to the genre?
Actually, I had made several forays into high fantasy years and even decades before I began work on A Song of Ice and Fire -- The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr, The Ice Dragon, In the Lost Lands, etc. Even in my rock 'n' roll mystery horror fantasy, The Armageddon Rag, I named my fictional 60s rock band the Nazgul, and called their first album "Hot Wind Out of Mordor."
A Game of Thrones was my first attempt at epic Fantasy at novel length, but I'd loved the genre all my life. Growing up, I never made any distinctions between SF, Fantasy, and Horror. I would read Jack Vance's Dying Earth one week, and Asimov's Foundation the next, and enjoy them both. And The Lord of the Rings had as much impact on me as any book I ever read.
Fantasy novels are often set in a kind of idealised version of how we wish the Middle Ages had actually been. One of the unique features of A Song of Ice and Fire for me was the way in which it combines the brutal realism of the actual Middle Ages with elements derived from its own idealised versions of itself - the elaborate armour and heraldry evokes obvious echoes of Chaucer, Mallory and Spenser. Was this a conscious decision to illuminate the way a mediaeval society might view itself, or was it perhaps just too much fun to play with all that bizarre symbolism?
Well, I have to admit I enjoy the heraldry just for its own sake, although I have played fast and loose with some of the real world heraldic conventions. A lot of bad Fantasy takes place in a sort of Disney Middle Ages, and that had no appeal to me, but I did not want to write thousands of pages about mud and lice and plague either. That would be just as false, in the other direction. The real Middle Ages had room for both plagues and pageantry, and I wanted both sides in my books as well -- heightened somewhat, since this is Fantasy.
In the same vein, the society of the Seven Kingdoms seems to be caught in the dichotomy between its lofty ideals, as expressed by its codes of chivalry and heraldry, and its inability to live up to those ideals, as revealed by the appalling atrocities you describe as the civil war erodes away the masks that society wears. What are your thoughts on this?
Every society has tensions between its ideals and its reality, but in some the gulf is especially dramatic. The medieval period was one of those.
A Song of Ice and Fire is obviously an epic in almost every sense of the word. There are elements here from just about every Fantasy convention, such as war, magic and dragons. There's truly Machiavellian realpolitik, and even popular culture favourites such as mammoths, giants and what sounds suspiciously like velociraptors! The whole story has an epic feel to it, not least as a result of its sheer length. To take on a project like this must take tremendous commitment, but you obviously feel it's worth it (and so do I!). How have you found the whole experience and what are your thoughts on the epic genre?
This was the first major project I tackled after ten years of working in Hollywood, of keeping one eye always on the budget, of writing teleplays that had to fit into 46 minutes, and screenplays that dared not be longer than 120 pages. After a decade of that, I desperately wanted to do something that gave me more breathing room, something that was big and rich and grand in scale.
When I began, I was planning for a trilogy; three books of about 800 manuscript pages each, I estimated. Had I kept to that, I'd be done by now, with the final book about to come out -- but a story makes its own demands, and this one was simply too big to be contained in three books. Nor have any of the volumes completed to date been as short as 800 pages. Instead they have come in at approximately 1100, 1200, and 1500, respectively. And I still have three more books to go...
Had I known as I set out how huge these books would be and how long it would take me to write them, I would probably have been too intimidated to write the first sentence. But now that I am well into it, I am glad things worked out this way. I might have told a version of this story in three 800-page books, yes, but it could never have had the complexity of plot, the depth of characterization, or the richness of detail that I have been able to achieve with those added pages. Sometimes bigger is better.
Another element I liked about the series was the moral relativism of many of the characters. Too many Fantasies rely on the shorthand of truly evil villains in the absolute moral sense, but your characters, while they might commit terrible acts, generally do so either from short-sighted self-interest or because they truly believe they are acting for the best. Was this a deliberate decision, or is it just more interesting to write this way?
Both. I have always found grey characters more interesting than those who are pure black and white. I have no qualms with the way that Tolkien handled Sauron, but in some ways The Lord of the Rings set an unfortunate example for the writers who were to follow. I did not want to write another version of the War Between Good and Evil, where the antagonist is called the Foul King or the Demon Lord or Prince Rotten, and his minions are slavering subhumans dressed all in black (I dressed my Night's Watch, who are basically good guys, all in black in part to undermine that annoying convention). Before you can fight the war between good and evil, you need to determine which is which, and that's not always as easy as some Fantasists would have you believe.
Likewise, you show a willingness to kill off characters who are built up as if they will be pivotal elements who will see the whole thing through to the end. This sudden dispatching of characters who are often on the brink of achieving their goal seems to me to be of a whole with the often painfully realistic and unglamorous depiction of war and the random obscenities it often generates. Is it difficult to plan something which feels as if it reflects the arbitrary nature of life like this?
Difficult? No, not especially. Actually, I think there is something vaguely obscene about epic Fantasies that portray huge, world-rending wars and yet somehow never let any serious harm come to the main characters. Fiction is the art of lying convincingly, but I believe Mark Twain once said there were lies and damn lies (and statistics, but we won't get into that). During my years in television, I often ran up against the hypocrisy of the networks, who wanted shows full of "action" but not too much "violence". I'd had enough of that. There was a glory in war, at least before the gun made its appearance -- all our ancient and medieval sources agree on that -- but there was horror and pain and fear as well, and once battle was joined, anyone could die.
Would you say that this appearance of random fate is an integral part of what you're trying to say about the epic Fantasy genre, given that it is so often underpinned by a deterministic theme, even a prophecy?
Prophecy is one of those tropes of Fantasy that is fun to play with, but it can easily turn into a straightjacket if you're not careful. One of the themes of my fiction, since the very beginning, is that the characters must make their choices, for good or ill. And making choices is hard. There are prophecies in my Seven Kingdoms, but their meanings are often murky and misleading, and they seldom offer the characters much in the way of useful guidance.
Finally, one review I read praised the "sheer bloody-mindedness" of A Song of Ice and Fire. What's your reaction to this?
I took it as a compliment! Even so, A Song of Ice and Fire doesn't hold a candle to the stuff that went on in the real Middle Ages...
[Note: The address has been edited to accomodate the fact that Ottakars has moved the interview into their archives.]
[Note: The following is a summary of a "10 Questions" feature produced by Sulthon of Kingslanding.org, which is now defunct.]
Martin does a lot of research on any story that has a historical or quasi-historical setting. For the series, he immersed himself in the Middle Ages, reading everything he could about such things as castles, tourneys, knighthood, food, medicine, clothing, and customs. He also read histories of things like the Hundred Years War, the Wars of the Roses, the Crusades, and so on. In his opinion, the more you can take in of a period, the more your work will have a sense of truthfulness.
If any sort of accident would bring about an early end for our favorite author, such as a meteor flatting his home, the readers will be flattened with him. There is no "master outline" for the series, just a half-dozen pages of very rough notes that are largely out of date. If he should die unexpectedly, the publishers might hire someone to finish the series, but they'll be on their own and will be very unlikely to finish it the same he would. However, he's only 52 years old, and had had a full physical in February, so he doesn't think there'll be a problem.
We'll learn what "valar dohaeris" means in A Dance with Dragons
Tyrion is Martin's favorite character, but from the perspective of House Stark, he's certainly a villain -- someone once said that a villain was a hero on the other side.
At the time of the Sack, Aegon Targaryen was, "Still a babe at the breast. A year old, give or take a turn or two."
Martin had once stated that Gandalf should have stayed dead (in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings). He still holds to that position, despite some of the events in A Storm of Swords. However, if "he had returned as an evil flesh-eating zombie", that could have been different. Martin does not believe his "resurrections" are remotely similar to what Tolkien did. Death actually made Gandalf greater, improving him and increasing his power. And, quibbles aside, Martin still thinks that Tolkien was the greatest of all fantasists.
Martin has no central resource for his knowledge of the Wars of the Roses, but he has a bookshelf packed with related materials. Special mention goes to Thomas B. Costain's 4-volume history of the Plantagents, however. Though the wars are dealt with only in the final volume, the books are extremely readable and full of colorful anecdotes about the times and the people who lived in them.
Martin says that all young writers go through an imitative phase, and that it's not a problem. It can be a useful learning experience, and eventually one will find one's own voice.
Martin recommends Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, Robert E. Howard's Conan and Kull stories, the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place, Fritz Leiber's stories of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, C.L. Moore's Jirel of Joiry stories, and Jack Vance's Lyonesse, The Dying Earth, and Cugel's Saga. He also recommends historical writers such as Sharon Kay Penman, Nigel Tranter, Cecilia Holland, Thomas B. Costain, and Maurice Droun.
Martin likes all sorts of food. Living in Santa Fe, he's a bit of a snob about Mexican food, however. New Mexico has the best Mexican food in the world, much better than Sonoran or TexMex, so he never eats Mexican food away from home. He loves Chinese food as well, especially Hunan and Szechuan styles that are extra spicey. Greek food and pizza as well, but only the thin-crust New York style pizza.
I suppose that there must have been a Targaryen Valyrian sword ..what happened to it? it is never mentioned. Was it melted down like Ice?
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Being an great fan of your books, as well as a German i'm very interested in the nature of your appearances in Germany this autumn. I'm especially interested your appearance at the Frankfurt book fair, compared to the Elster Con, since i live only one hour from Frankfurt.
I will be hanging around the Frankfurt Book Fair from the afternoon of Tuesday the 17th through the end of the fair on Monday the 23rd, but as of this writing I do not have any official events scheduled. You might try asking for me at the booths of my various publishers, particularly HarperCollins (British) and Goldmann (German). I will also frequently be found at the booth of Fantasy Productions in the German hall, where my German agent Werner Fuchs will be based.
I hope this helps you find me.
I have attended Dragoncon in the past, but it is not likely I will returning in the near future. Dragoncon is moving its date to Labor Day weekend, which conflicts with the World Science Fiction convention. I have been attending worldcons since 1971, and would never dream of going to another con on worldcon's traditional weekend.
I may come to Atlanta for other events, however, and I do sometimes teach at the Clarion West writer's workshop.
Even the behavior of dungeon recruits on their way to the Wall seems atypical of criminals. This behavior could be read as evidence that those chosen from the dungeons are acting under a mild geas, even though that fact has been forgotten in present-day Westeros. Given the variety of options open to escapees, both in Westeros and across the Narrow Sea, it is difficult to accept that, e.g., Yoren's last band would set out without stringent security measures in place. But if generations of recruits have gone more or less docilely to the Wall, it is easy to see how the peculiarities of their behavior might not be noticed, except by someone like Tyrion.
There is no geas intended or implied, not even a mild one. I suspect that you and I just disagree on what constitutes the "typical" behavior of criminals. I don't find any peculiar anomalies in the behavior of Yoren's band of recruits, though I gather you do.
I don't have the time or energy to argue the point, alas -- except insofar as the book itself constitutes my side of the argument. Like any writer, I have to write my characters as I see them, based on my own observations and knowledge of history and human behavior... but I recognize that disagreement is possible, and probably inevitable. Hell, writers often disagree with one another.
As to Yoren's band... he did keep the three most dangerous men in chains, and many of the unchained were orphan boys, volunteers, or petty criminals like thieves and poachers, none of them likely to give him any trouble. But his success, such as it was, does not necessarily mean that =all= past recruits went "docilely" to the Wall. I have no doubt that over its long history the Night's Watch had its share of murders, mutinies, and runaways. But they were relatively rare events... as rare as shipboard mutinies, prison riots, and slave revolts have been in the real world.
It has been my intention from the start to gradually bring up the amount of magic in each successive volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, and that will continue. I will not rule out the possibility of a certain amount of "behind the scenes" magic, either. But while sorcerous events may impact on my characters, as with Renly or Lord Beric or Dany, their choices must ultimately remain their own.