Q&A WITH GEORGE R. R. MARTIN

This is an older interview that I did with Martin back in February for a feature on the HBO adaptation of his terrific fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire." I hadn't been assigned to review any of his books yet, but I knew I liked his writing and had read most of it since, as a 12-year-old, my friend Mark Crawford lent me a copy of a Hugo anthology that contained "Sandkings," which gave me horrible nightmares. I recommend it, and Martin's other science fiction stories unreservedly (you can pick up his big hardcover "greatest hits" collection "Dreamsongs" for a pittance these days, if you're interested). Martin was extremely pleasant and willing to talk for quite a while, which I appreciate a great deal as an interviewer. I don't always record my interviews - sometimes I just take notes - but I wanted to get this one down verbatim so I could put it up uncut for posterity. Enjoy.

Sam Thielman: So, why did "A Dance With Dragons" take longer to write than the other books in the series?

George R. R. Martin: Well, you know, that's a good question and I'm not sure I have an easy answer for that. #1, none of the books have been exactly fast, I mean, I'm a slow writer, I've always been a slow writer, and the books are huge. I mean, they're three, four, five times the size of most novels being published. And they have extremely complex interweaving storylines. I remember back when I did the first book, 'A Game of Thrones,' Asimov's Magazine wanted to publish an excerpt and I pulled out the Daenerys storyline from the first book, and they published that as an excerpt, and after I pulled out all the Daenerys chapters and put them together for Asimov's, I did a word count and discovered, technically, I had a novel, just about Daenerys.

I'm never gonna be one of those writers who has a book a year, or two books a year like some of my colleagues do. I simply can't write that fast. I do a lot of polishing and revising, and it's a big task.

SBT: You know, for a long time I didn't even know you'd written a fantasy series - I just knew "Sandkings," which I loved [Martin chuckling, apparently he gets this a lot]. One thing that struck me about the novels is that they're written with the same amount of care you put into your short stories, even though the stories are much, much smaller.

GRRM: Well, I think anything you do should be crafted with the same amount of care whether it's a short story or a giant megaseries. Obviously when I was first starting out, it was an accomplishment for me to write a short story, and then when I wrote a novelette, which is sort of a longer short story, it was a huge breakthrough and I said, 'Oh, my, I'm writing a novelette now.' I never would have dreamed what awaited me 30 or 40 years down the pike. But the stories get longer and more complex. I think they say that you like to write what you like to read. And I like to read these immersive kinds of stories with rich large casts of characters and the like."

SBT: I read, I think in "Dreamsongs," that you basically wrote ASOIAF to be unfilmable. Were you surprised when HBO optioned the books for series?

GRRM: Yes. I mean, delighted, but I was surprised. It was partly a reaction to my years in Hollywood. I was primarily in television and film for 10 years, from 1985 to 1995, so for a decade. And initially I was on the revival of 'The Twilight Zone' on CBS and then on 'Beauty and the Beast' [on ABC*]. I was a writer and producer on both those shows, and then I did five years in development, where I wrote a number of feature films and pilots for television shows that were never made. And during that period I was working in television, the one theme was that when I would hand in the first draft, the network or the producer or whoever I was working for would always say, "This is great, George, but it's too long and too expensive. We don't have the budget to make this." And so I would cut it, I would trim it, I would eliminate characters, I would make the big battle scene a duel between two people, I would make it produceable. But I kind of always loved my first drafts much more than I loved my final drafts.

My final drafts were produceable and they were generally more polished because I'd revised them the usual number of times before they actually went before the cameras. But my first drafts had lots of great stuff in them that I was subsequently required to take out in order to make a show that we could fit in the timeslot and fit within the budget.

When I returned to prose after doing all this other stuff, I said, "You know, I'm not going to worry about that anymore. I'm going to do something huge - something with a cast of thousands and gigantic battles and sets that will blow your mind." And I didn't worry about it, because when you're writing prose, you have an unlimited special effects budget. Anything you can describe, anything you can imagine, you don't have to hire actors to play these characters - someone can come on for just a moment; you can have a small character who only has a few lines in every book and yet is somehow memorable. And you don't have to worry about 'oh, how are we going to cast this?'** So I thought no one would ever produce this.

We did... when the books started coming out, and particularly when they started hitting the bestseller lists, I started getting inquiries from producers and studios and so forth, from people interested in optioning it. But mostly they wanted to make it as a feature film, particularly after the success of "Lord of the Rings," people were looking for other fantasy franchises, and I met with a few of them. But you know, I didn't think it could be done. My books are simply too big. They're much bigger than Tolkien's books; they're much more complicated than Tolkien's books, with the number of characters and the complexity of the plots. So when I met Dan and Dave and we talked about how they would do it, it was the one way I had thought from the beginning that it could be done - by somebody like HBO. It couldn't be done on a regular network, because you would run into too much trouble with the censorship. It was too-adult fare. And it couldn't be done as a feature film. But as a series of series on HBO was the one way I could see it working - we have 10 hours for this first book and not the two hours we would have for a feature film. And hopefully we'll have more series to tell the ongoing story.

SBT: Is there any fear that the television series will catch up with you while you're writing the final two books?

GRRM: [Laughs] I have a considerable head start. So I don't think they're going to catch up with me. But ask me again in five years and we'll see where both of us are. Put that in your calendar.

SBT: How involved are you in the production?

GRRM: I'm somewhat involved in the production; I have a great relationship with Dan and David and I've been to the set multiple times, I've met most of the actors and I'm writing one script per season. That's my deal. So I wrote episode 8 of this season and if we get renewed I'll write one episode of that script and so on.

SBT: Was it difficult to get back on the, uh, scriptwriting horse?***

GRRM: It was fun, actually. I was actually worried about it because it had been more than a decade since I'd done it and I thought, "Well, do I still know how to do this or have I forgotten?" But I did know how to do this again. It all came back to me. The only think that was different was that the software had changed, so I had to get used to new scriptwriting software. The ones that I had used in the old days aren't used anymore. They gave me Final Draft. I used to use WordStar and run it through Scriptor. I still use WordStar to write the novels; I haven't changed that at all. I don't like any of the new word processors.

SBT: Do you ever wish you could be more involved in the show?

GRRM: When I visit the set especially, it awakens something in me that wishes I could be more involved. I start to wish I could write three or four episodes of the script every season like Dan and David are doing - to be there every day for the producers' meetings, et cetera, but that's a full-time job and the only way I could do that would be if the books were done, because, as you know, the books take a long time. But if they don't catch up with me, and I finish the series, and they're still working on it, maybe I'll come to them and say, "Hey, I can do a few more things on the show now," and I'll be more involved. But I've got to finish this fifth book now and I've got two more to write after that.

SBT: Ever thing about doing a cameo?

GRRM: I wouldn't mind doing a cameo. I did a cameo in the pilot, but I wound up on the cutting room floor.

SBT: Have you gotten to watch it yet? HBO screened a couple of episodes for us and it was amazing.

GRRM: I haven't actually seen any finished episodes yet. I've seen scenes, I've seen all the trailers, when I was in Belfast I saw a 20-minute trailer they put together so I could see some of the scenes.

SBT: Do those scenes look the way you imagined they'd look?

GRRM: I have a very vivid picture of what it looks like in my head, because I've been working on this on and off since 1991. So things don't look exactly the way they do in my head. But, you know, it's sort of a double-take process for me. The first time I encounter anything, whether it's on the screen or on the set, it's usually me saying, "Oh, that's not right! That's not how it looks!" but then I step back and say, actually, it's pretty good the way they have it. I think that working in Hollywood for 10 years and having written so much television and film myself has given me batter perspective than a lot of novelists whose work is adapted to television and film. I know a lot of people in the science fiction and fantasy community who have a hard time dealing with something of theirs that's being changed - what do you MEAN the character has black hair? He has RED hair - And I've been on the other end of the process and I understand the realities of production. There's usually a good reason for stuff like that.

SBT: Just logistically, did you have to talk to people about what's going to happen in future books - who's going to die and who's going to surprise us by returning and so forth?

GRRM: I did do some of that, yes. David and Dan have used me for that. And that's a concern. That's one of the concerns as we go forward with the series and we do run for seven or eight seasons. Because I had never structured these books for a television series; I did not take the practical realities of that sort of thing into consideration and instead I've done what I thought was an interesting thing to do in the story, where people who are minor characters in book one assume great importance in book five. And you can do that in prose, and it's great. I like for people to reread my books and hopefully they'll discover things on rereadings that they didn't discover the first time.

SBT: How do you cast for someone who's going to have to disappear for thousands of pages?

GRRM: It's much more difficult in television, because what do you do? You need a really great actor, because he's going to have all this stuff to do in the fifth season, but in the first season he has three lines. So do you cast a major actor and pay him a ton of money to say the three lines and then say, "Five years from now, if we're still on the air, you'll have some great stuff?" That's hard to do. Or do you change actors, and suddenly you've got this guy in the fifth season who's important? Television deals with this all the time, and HBO has dealt with it on other shows. If you look at a show like "The Sopranos," you see a character like Ralphie Cifaretto who comes on in season three or something like that, and is like a major earner and captain for Tony's crew but he's never been mentioned before. Well, where did he come from? Did he transfer from the gang in Chicago? Well, no, he's been there all along, and you have to buy that. And the important characters who step up in season four or season three or season two, we'll just have to say they were there all along.

SBT: Does thinking about this kind of stuff have any effect on the way you write the books?

GRRM: The books have such momentum in my mind that so far I haven't noticed very much impact on it. I've often used the analogy of a journey; if you set out to drive from Los Angeles to New York, you probably know your destination and you know the first night you'll end up in Flagstaff and the second night you're in Kansas City, but you don't know what's around every turn. You don't know if you're going to pick up a hitchhiker or something; those are the adventures you have while making the journey. And as a writer I find certain things while making the journey. I still know my ultimate destination and I know the landmarks I'm going to reach long the way.

SBT: A friend of mine was reading the books and said something to the effect of, "These are terrific, but they can't possibly have any overarching structure, can they? They're just way too complex." And I kind of feel like we're beginning to perceive the bigger structure of these books, but reassure me - you have a plan, right?

GRRM: I mean, certainly for the major characters. Some of the minor guys we meet along the way, who knows? That's one reason it takes so long; I hope to have it all tied up fairly satisfactorily by the time I reach the end of that seventh book. There's a file on my computer, but I keep most of it in my head.

SBT: How?

My previous books were all stand-alone novels and I wrote them in one sitting, even though it took, you know, a year.

*And fwiw, anyone bitching about Martin killing your favorite television characters has had 20 years to prepare for the shock. Go back and watch "Beauty and the Beast" to remind yourself what I'm talking about.

**Except that you do now!

***This would clearly be an awesome horse to have and ranks among my worst metaphors as a writer. So proud.

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN AND AMERICAN LITERATURE, AND WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

A brief warning: if you've only watched the first season of the show or read the first book or two, there are a couple of minor spoilers below. Caveat lector. No "Dance with Dragons" spoilers, of course.

I grew to resent George R. R. Martin over the course of reviewing "A Dance with Dragons." It wasn't over the terror I felt for my favorite characters in Martin's latest gorgeous, populous novel, nor was it even over the time I spent away from my increasingly annoyed wife, who kept saying things like, "Please don't read that at the table" and "Did you hear what I said?" No, it was for the damage wreaked on my already fragile back by the 10-lb manuscript, which runs to more than 1400 pages and is, somehow, still too short.

It's difficult to know what trick to use on one's friends and neighbors to force them to begin reading Martin's vast fantasy series, "A Song of Ice and Fire," since talking about the books' events with fellow travelers through Martin's Westeros is half the fun (don't think for a moment that I'd want you to read the books in the hope that you'll enjoy them. I want you to suffer like me until the next one comes out). The titles don't inspire confidence, with the exception of "A Feast for Crows" and maybe "A Game of Thrones," which has come to adorn the HBO show based on the books. Certainly "fantasy series" isn't the sexiest phrase in the English language, nor the least likely to provoke a roll of the eyes or worse, a polite smile.

I have settled on the following method: like a drug dealer, I give the first book ("Game," buy it here, you'll like it, I promise) to a friend, entirely for free. "I've bookmarked it with the receipt," I tell this friend. "If you make it to the receipt and don't like it, just take it back to the store for something you like more."

The receipt, of course, sits, early in the novel, at the page after the first of the horrifying hairpin plot twists that most clearly distinguish "Ice and Fire" from other fantasy fare, and nobody has yet told me that he got to that place, stifled a yawn, and set out for Barnes & Noble. If it's not a series with universal appeal, what appeal it has certainly extends to my circle of friends.

Martin has taken nearly six years to turn out the fifth volume in his series, a length of time made to seem much longer for the fact that the series' moral center and its most widely beloved character, the brilliant and insolent dwarf (that is, a sufferer of the rare medical condition, not a mine-dwelling beard gardener) Tyrion Lannister, appeared nowhere in book four ("Feast"). Nor did Danaerys Targaryen, whose plot thread appears to be load-bearing. "Feast" is generally considered the weakest of the bunch, although I have a soft spot in my heart for it, given its devotion to damaged and entirely deranged points of view within its rich world.

On that point: Martin's reputation as a heartless disembowler of favorite characters is certainly earned (it's hard not to fling the third book across the room when you hit the big reversal at its halfway point, and you'll probably give "Dance" a heave, too, but both books are heavy and unlikely to fly far), but he maintains and nourishes in his readers a surprising sympathy for the maimed, the crippled, the ugly, and the unloved - a touching and frankly moral impulse that seems at odds with the books' brutal dedication to the nastier aspects of human nature, and their unsparing medieval milieu. Unlike Tolkien or C.S. Lewis or even contemporaries like Gene Wolfe and Philip Pullman, Martin takes his cues from history, not mythology or modern politics, and the five volumes (so far) of the series render in bleak detail the minutiae of living in a period approximately adjacent to War of the Roses-era England.

And because it's hard to express my affection for these books in sometimes too-distant language available to critics, I guess I might as well just come out with it: no contemporary American writer has produced a body of work I admire more than George Martin's. His novels are fucking awesome. The characters are cunningly drawn, the world is thoroughly imagined, and the plots are carefully and intelligently constructed and rewritten until they are of the highest quality. And best of all, they are surprising.

The stories - and there are many, all running simultaneously - in "A Song of Ice and Fire" are consistently, unambiguously shocking in the best possible sense, meaning that the surprises are of a piece with what we know of the characters we've come to love or despise - it's just that, somehow, Martin has laid out the story so that we're always looking left when he's about to turn right.

Reading these wonderful novels is a constant struggle to stretch our crania to contain the depth and breadth of their complexity, a race during which Martin is necessarily a few steps ahead, since he's doing the imagining first. Moreover, you can actually surprise yourself with them again, during a rereading - not because you get caught up again in the percussive action of the books' most harrowing passages, but because there are actually plot points hidden carefully in the story's darkest corners. Those paragraphs you read too quickly on your way to see whether or not your favorite character dies - read them again. You'll see people you recognize.

Which brings me to a point I'm sorry to be the first to make: George R. R. Martin is not "the American Tolkien," as all of his dust jackets proclaim him in the words of well-meaning Time Magazine critic Lev Grossman. Tolkien was not a very good writer.

He was a wonderful builder of worlds, and for that we must forgive him his prose style, but Martin is several orders of magnitude superior to Tolkien in nearly every respect - he writes intelligently about women, he delineates multiple points of view within a given conflict, he is not in love with war, and no two of his thousands of characters are easily confused with one another. Most of what Martin shares with J. R. R. Tolkien comes between his first name and his last. Any two of the "Ice and Fire" novels are, by themselves, longer than the entire "Lord of the Rings" cycle and any one of the books is three times as interesting.

This is not to call Tolkien worthless, merely to say that Martin is standing on his shoulders, and is thus taller. In addition to the older writer's gift for scope, Martin brings a gift for depth, illustrating wonderful absurdities within a given economic or political system. The Wildlings (unruly nomads beyond the Wall that marks the borders of the central kingdom of Westeros), for example, are considered uncivilized and worthless - violent, crude, and totally ineligible to be incorporated into Westerosi society. After a few characters say this, we take it as fact, until we find out the reason these people are such pariahs: they're democrats. For one man to have one vote, it seems, is totally unacceptable to the monarchial civilization at the books' core, and so the Westerosi national guard (the Night's Watch) goes to war with them in the third volume.

Another example: there's a religion (one of many) in these books so ridiculous that no one, not even its priest, a minor character named Thoros, believes in its tenets. Thoros vanishes for several hundred pages after being seen to carry through a joust a cheap sword dipped in napalm and set on fire in mimicry of a messiah he doesn't believe is coming, only to be found a book and a half later sitting sheepishly next to that messiah, watching in awe as his savior unsheathes a sword made of red flame and battles with it before his very eyes. These are the least surprising and interesting of the books' twists - I'd much rather not spoil the others for you, if you're planning on reading them, which you ought to do.

Given the level of quality here, I'm unsurprised that Martin's fans have turned on him to some extent. Devotees of "Ice & Fire," presumably unused to literature written on this level, have gone feral, taking to blogs that exist solely to harass their favorite writer into hurrying up so that he can finish the series before he dies (and are also given the time of day by, hilariously, The Wall Street Journal; presumably the WSJ ombudsman is on vacation).

This has come as a nasty shock to poor Martin himself, a very nice, married middle-aged New Jersey Native living a quiet life in New Mexico, who has been toiling in the genre fiction ghetto for several decades, where he has logged most of science fiction and fantasy's tonier prizes (his sci-fi short stories are a wonder to behold, but the medium has fallen out of favor and, by extension, print), but remained mostly untroubled by fame.

To his everlasting credit, Martin has let his perfectionism win over his vanity, and has kept "A Dance With Dragons" until it is as good as he can make it. It is pretty damn good, too. May he do

the same with "The Winds of Winter" and "A Dream of Spring," the final two installments in the series. There's something really incredible going on here - painful frankness and unstinting craftsmanship on the level of an Alfred Hitchcock or a Theodore Rousseau - that makes me happy to be alive while it's being produced. If there's a disadvantage to the books' length, it's that the series gives Martin so many opportunities to irretrievably screw up. The astonishing corollary, of course, is that he hasn't.

Next week: a Q&A with the man himself, from an interview I did for Variety back when the show was getting made.