Partial interview with GRRM with spoilers removed.
If George R.R. Martin thought he had a rabid fan base before, when each book in his best-selling fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire" was devoured by impatient readers, the success of the HBO adaptation Game of Thrones has raised the stakes considerably. We talked with Martin as he settled in after a long PR tour and got back to work on the next book in the series, The Winds of Winter.
What's your involvement with season two of Game of Thrones? I wrote episode nine, "Blackwater." The show is currently filming in Northern Ireland. I'd love to be there watching it, but I'm so far behind on other things.
Which actors have taken the characters and brought something new and surprising to the mix, adding layers that weren't necessarily there when you created them? I think we have in general a spectacular cast; our casting directors did an amazing job. Certainly Peter Dinklage did an amazing job with Tyrion, who is one of my favorite character in the books. We didn't even audition Peter. We always talked about him for the role. The same was true for Sean Bean — although we did audition a few people for the role — but we always wanted Sean and he was incredible in that role.
Another group that deserves special mention was the kids — it's very difficult to cast a kid. Our kids had to carry a very serious dramatic weight — we needed really good young actors. We got three terrific ones.
What's your biggest worry about the TV show as it gets deeper into the story? There are certainly challenges that lie ahead, and as the show goes on, the challenges will get greater. I wanted to write a book as big as my imagination. Now David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] are faced with the very real challenge of how do you translate this complex thing with a cast of thousands and giant castles and dragons and walls of ice — serious production challenges that get bigger with every book. I think one of biggest challenges is budgets and shooting time. We had ten hours for the first season, and the same for the second. Boardwalk Empire has twelve, Treme has twelve — if we'd had two more hours we could have told a lot more of the story. Storm of Swords [the third book] is enormous and it will have to be broken up into two seasons, I think. But David and Dan are great people and they've assembled a great team, so if anyone can do it, they will.
The other thing that concerns me is what I call the butterfly effect. If you're familiar with the Ray Bradbury short story, you'll know what I mean. On TV, we saw the death of Mago, but we will see him in the books — he's still alive. It will have to be different in the book than in the show, because they killed him on TV. These are the kind of ripple effects that can happen.
How do you keep all of these details straight? Is there a huge encyclopedia or computer file that you use when you write? It's mostly in my head. Elio Garcia [who runs Westeros.org] does seem to know Westeros better than I do. I'm beginning to wish I had never bothered with the color of people's eyes. [Editor's note: This is the subject of many convoluted fan conspiracy theories.] And that was one of the first things to go in the TV series — the purple contact lenses didn't look good on camera.
[If you've only watched the show but haven't read all the way through A Dance With Dragons, you might want to stop here. Spoilers ahead.]
I'll speak up for all of your impatient readers and ask: What are you working on these days, aside from the eagerly awaited The Winds of Winter? The book tour took up a lot of time. I know some writers can write on the road, but I'm not one of them. I have about 100 pages done for the next book, which was mostly pages I had finished [for A Dance With Dragons] and decided to push back. I'll return to that in January.
"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." Winter is Coming Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as true as the sky; And the wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the wolf that shall break it must die. As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk, the Law runneth forward and back; For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.
