Here are some photos of George R. R. Martin at the Edinburgh International Book Festival earlier this week. Yes, he still hasn’t hunkered down to finish those books. Part of me likes that he’s enjoying his fame, that a fantasy writer who has been at this for decades is something of a rock star these days. The other part of me wants to know how these GD stories end. Well, while Martin was in Edinburgh, he did some press and fielded some nosy questions about how it all ends and whether he ever takes readers’ requests. You can read the full Telegraph piece here. Some highlights:
He receives letters from women asking him for MOAR SEX: “I put gay characters in the books, but they’re not the viewpoint characters so I did not have any explicit gay sex scenes in the early books. [Since the TV show] I’ve had letters from fans who want me to present particular explicit male sex scenes. Most of these letters come from women. I don’t pretend to understand this, I just read my email. I’m not going to do it just for the sake of doing it. If the plot lends itself to that, if one of my viewpoint characters is in a situation, I’m not going to shy away from it.”
He kills characters on his own time table: “I don’t think I can insert things just because everyone wants them. If it was a democracy, Joffrey would have died much earlier than he did.”
The fantasy/sci-fi literary ghetto: “I’ve certainly been aware of this since I was a kid. I take heart from the fact that it is changing. When I was 12 or 13, I had teachers take science fiction books away from me, and told me you’re a smart kid, you get good grades, why are you reading this sh-t? … There’s a lot of prejudice against science fiction, particularly against genre fiction. And it’s still there but it’s not nearly what it was. I think these things are breaking down. Literary fiction in its present form is a genre itself and we should recognise it as that. The real test is what books are going to survive. Tolkien has certainly survived. All you can do is write the best story you can and put it in the hands of posterity. The fact that people are arguing about my books is a sign that I take very well. A writer’s real enemy is obscurity.”
He also talked about how he storyboarded the broad strokes of which characters die and when, but he admits that for some of the minor characters, he still doesn’t have everything figured out and he will “make that up as I go along.” As for the issue of fan theories and perhaps even the all-inclusive R + L = J theory, Martin has a lot to say:
“I’ve wrestled with this issue, because I do want to surprise my readers. I hate predictable fiction as a reader, I don’t want to write predictable fiction. I want to surprise and delight my reader and take them in directions they didn’t see coming. But I can’t change the plans. That’s one of the reasons I used to read the early fan boards back in the 90s but stopped. One, I didn’t have the time, but two is this very issue. So many readers were reading the books with so much attention that they were throwing up some theories and while some of those theories were amusing bulls— and creative, some of the theories are right. At least one or two readers had put together the extremely subtle and obscure clues that I’d planted in the books and came to the right solution. So what do I do then? Do I change it? I wrestled with that issue and I came to the conclusion that changing it would be a disaster, because the clues were there. You can’t do that, so I’m just going to go ahead. Some of my readers who don’t read the boards, which thankfully there are hundreds of thousands of them, will still be surprised and other readers will say: ‘see, I said that four years ago, I’m smarter than you guys’.”
Hm… “at least one or two readers had put together the extremely subtle and obscure clues”…? He’s kissing his own ass and underestimating how popular the R + L = J Theory really is amongst the book-readers (and probably some of the TV series watchers). Or maybe he’s trying to throw some people off the scent. But still, this is good news. At least he’s not going to pull some wacky deus ex machina bullsh-t where all of a sudden the entire saga was just Hodor’s fever dream (HODOR!!). I mean… sh-t, don’t give him any ideas.
Photos courtesy of WENN, Pedro Pascal’s Instagram.
Put down that sangria and go finish the books dammit. Some of us aren’t getting any younger.
If the series stays on the air you will probably see the end before the last book is done. Supposedly he has told the producers the end of the series.
GNAT: I just snorted from laughing! I tried the books and I’m ngl, I couldn’t keep up with the books. I struggle with who’s who on the show.
That is hysterical- and I totally concur!
And he doesn’t write during the NFL season, which starts September 4, which means he has 22 days to crank out the sixth book. GET WRITING, GEORGE!!!!
FINISH THE BOOKS GEORGE!!! Goddammit!
Better yet, hand me the sangria, leave me to entertain Pedro 😉
… and go finish the books dammit!
Oh, your idea was way better than mine! Lol
I hate it when fans try and dictate what storylines or scenes a writer should put in their books. If you want things to happen a certain way, either write your own book or create some fan fiction. And then STFU.
Good for him for writing ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ the way he wants to.
I’ve read a few of the theories out there (there’s a really good one on Reddit but I can’t find the link) and it’s way more complex than just R+L=J. I mean, that’s sort of common knowledge these days.
I won’t divulge my own theory because I’m probably way off, but right now I just keep my fingers crossed that the next book will come out before I turn 40…which isn’t for a few years yet. 😛
I just turned 40 so I demand to hear your theory immediately. Speak in code if you must. 😉
I feel like I’m the last person on earth who learned that Ned isn’t supposed to be Jon’s father. I then thought it’s Benjen Stark, because he always called him son. Now I’m a fan of the the R+L=J theory. I love Jon Snow.
Someone said that the end is foreshadowed in a dream (of Ned Stark I think?) in the first book and a vision in the second book. Does anyone know which one is that supposed to be?
Agreed, there is way, way more to the story than that. Martin has put together a cohesive and compelling eventual storyline… it would be disappointing if he just throws it away because he wants to surprise people.
If this were Reddit, someone would post the link to that thread 🙂
That’s what happens when you take decades to write your series: people have plenty of time to parse out all your clues and find all the hints. You want it to be a surprise? Write faster.
Hodor’s fever dream :)) That made my day!
HODOR!
HODOR.
And Balls.
Omg Hodor’s balls!!
Love it too. It’s inspried!
Thank you for my morning shot of Pedro.
“I’ve wrestled with this issue, because I do want to surprise my readers. I hate predictable fiction as a reader, I don’t want to write predictable fiction. I want to surprise and delight my reader and take them in directions they didn’t see coming.”
And because of that, I hope that the R + L = J theory is wrong. It seems way too obvious.
I’m glad that he doesn’t take the fans wishes into account. That nearly never works well.
But it’s obvious because he’s steered the story in that direction for so long. And to be honest, a lot of the over-arching storyline just won’t work as well if it turns out that Jon really is just Ned’s illegitimate child, and not the second head of the dragon meant to fight the Others. The series is called “A Song of Ice and Fire” because that’s the BIG conflict: the Others (Ice) coming in to try to destroy all life, and the dragons (Fire) being the only thing that can stop them. The whole Jon thing is kind of a linchpin story element, but it’s not the ONLY story.
I mean R+L=J is just a PLOT POINT not an ending and it’s just the most popular of all the theories. Honestly when I first read the books I figured out by the end of book one that was who was J’s parents. He also said he stopped reading boards in the ninties.
So true. That potential plot point has no bearing on the cliffhangers which ended the last book or the potential actions and fates of any of the characters.
Kaiser, you’ve come a long way since you first started covering GOT; you officially sound like a GOT geek (and that’s a compliment, btw).
Kaiser shut it!
Don’t give him any ideas! I HATE when at the end everything was only a dream or a premonition.
It’s just so disappointing and it feels like you’ve wasted time on something that never existed even in the fictional world!!
When ‘Lost’ ended i wanted to hunt down the writers, tie them to a chair and ask them ‘whyyyyyy???’
*slams fist on the table while sobbing*
It’s okay now, dear.
*offers tray of Godiva seashells*
Tried reading the books. Too much unnecessary rape and violence against women. Read that the series is worse. Not my cup of tea, folks.
This is true. My little sister had to stop reading the books for this reason. But she is enthralled with the plot so she gets me to relay the sanitized story line to her over the phone. We get to debate, laugh and pontificate without her losing her lunch or fighting the urge to cry at the violence towards women. My sis is sensitive.
There is violence against everyone. Several of the most horrible things in the books happened to men and boys.
Very true
It is very violent. I can’t watch the scenes with Theon – I always DVR the show and just fast forward through them. I read the books, and loved them, but I certainly can understand how they could be offensive to someone.
Assuming you don’t live in a 3rd world country these days, or any time in the past in the U.S. minus 100 yrs or so. The real world is full of too much unnecessary rape and violence (as if either, especially the former, is ever necessary).
Hodor’s Fever Dream will now be the name of my imaginary rock band.
That needs to be someone’s screen name.
Perfect.
GRRM looks good, he’s lost some weight too. I can’t hold any of his non-writing activities against him. I’d rather he take his time to see his vision through to the end, then slap the ending together just to please us, or to tie-in neatly with the series. In a way I hope the extremely subtle clues he’s talking about aren’t leading R+L=J – that would be a bit anticlimactic at this point.
Also I think he’s teasing with that “I don’t read the boards” stuff because apparently he’s chosen two of the bloggers on the fansite westeros.org to write or co-write with him a westeros project of some kind.
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/meet_the_game_of_thrones_superfan_who_knows_westeros_better_than_george_r_r_martin/
Dany and Jon are twins… a song of fire (Dany) and ice (Jon). That is all.
I just figured they’d end up together.
The dragon always has 3 heads.
I’m new to the show and haven’t read the books yet. I know Dany’s family always intermarries, but I don’t want Jon and Dany together romantically. There’s enough incest for heaven’s sake. Maybe he can be a male relative who actually cares about her.
Jon is actually both, isn’t he? If the theory is right, his mother is ice and his father is fire, so he’s fire and ice.
That’s what I thought, but I’m a novice to speculation at this point.
That’s absolutely correct. Jon and Dany are not ice and fire, Jon, alone, is ice and fire. Jon Snow’s destiny is what GoT is all about.
” When I was 12 or 13, I had teachers take science fiction books away from me, and told me you’re a smart kid, you get good grades, why are you reading this sh-t?”
Man, that makes me mad. I can’t imagine doing that to a student, even if I genuinely believed the book was crap.
Which viewpoint characters are gay? I can’t think of any.
The only viewpoint character that has had same sex love scenes has been Cersei, and those were pretty cursory. It wasn’t about sex for her, it was about power.
Daenerys had same-sex sex scenes too, with her handmaiden.
The only gay characters I can think of are Renly and Loras Tyrell, neither of whom are/were viewpoint characters. And Oberyn was bisexual I guess. Given that there are roughly 785 characters, I’m probably forgetting a lot of somebodies.
If this is the case then Martin does not understand what it means to be gay. Both queens mentioned di not seek same sex relationships – they both simply indulged a sexual inclination with other, subordinate women. Also, I found both of those scenes in the book to be a typical male fantasy of two hot chicks having a go at it. Ugh.
My husband and I think John Snow will take the Iron Thrown at the end and it will be revealed that he is Targaryen, while probably everyone else will die throughout the story.
I just hope that it’s not going to be Daeny on the throne. He seems so in lurve with that character and I’d really really hate if that’s what he has in mind.
I have a theory that John Snow will die, be resurrected by fire (his hair will turn Targaryen white blonde for dramatic effect) & he will win the Iron Throne with Dany!
I agree JLee!!! I think his Targeryn blood will make him a dragon rider, but I am unsure who will ride the third?
I don’t think he’s kissing his own ass exactly. He said he used to read the boards in the early 90s, but it stressed him that “1 or 2” of the board users had correctly guessed the theory (in the early 90s) so he stopped reading the boards. Yeah, it’s way more than 1 or 2 now twenty years later.
He did a signing at my company’s booth at San Diego Comic Con. I was not one of the lucky employees to be invited to go to California but my supervisor said he was a very lovely man who seemed very touched by all the love he got from fans. She ended up being the photographer, taking pictures of him and all the fans who lined up for the booth and he gave her some Valor Morghulis coin at the end to thank her for taking pictures of him and at least over 200 people.
Another coworker also told me how he had to play bodyguard and they had to go and get Martin for the signing before the event because apparently HBO security ditched him at the last minute and told my company we were responsible. lol we are the furthest thing from a security company as you can get… and my coworker who was assigned to go is a HUGE fan of Game of Thrones. So when he and another coworker showed up at the hotel to pick up Martin, he seemed a bit freaked out it was just two dudes with no security experience since he was going to have to walk 100 feet across the Con floor to the booth. Everyone started recognizing him and taking pictures and my coworker had to act as a human shield to get him across the floor.
Of course it would be nice if he actually focused on writing the books.
I haven’t read these books, though I’ve been meaning to, but I remember my mom being the same way about the Dark Tower series. Finish it! FINIISSSHHH IIIITTTT… Oh, the ending sucked!
As a sidenote, I read a quote of this man’s that I just loved. He was discussing writing explicit sex scenes, and he said “It’s interesting that more people write to me to complain about a scene involving a penis entering a vagina than they do about a scene involving an axe entering a skull. Trust me when I say that much more joy has come to the world from penises entering vaginas than from axes entering skulls” or something very close to that. So true!