Hello, fellow Westorians, we sure
do have a special episode today. Over an hour of conversation
with the man himself in his own office, George RR Martin. We were a little nervous. Not of him, really, we've met him
before and he's a super, super nice guy, a real fan of fantasy,
sci-fi, games, miniatures... as you can see, if you're watching
the video version, he lives and breathes and writes this stuff. He's way more famous and successful
than anyone we know, but he's still one of us when you get down to it. A lot of people ask us
what George is like. And every time I say that he's very chill
and very down to earth and friendly, and that remained true in this interview. Going into the interview, I wasn't worried
about him being a bad interview subject, I was just worried something would go
wrong, like a technical problem, that we'd lose the recording or something like that. That's always a fear
when you're recording. It's always... it peaks in moments like this. George is no stranger to interviews
and we assume most of you out there have seen, heard, read all
the above him interviewed before. So we wanted to try to do a few
things differently and we wanted to deliver on that expectation. We, we set ourselves a goal. We tried not to ask
questions he's heard before. We asked a few more lore and
world building questions. We of course didn't ask anything
about Winds of Winter because that would've been wasted time,
and we didn't have a lot of time. He's never gonna answer a question
like that anyway, so, hmm. Mostly we just listened. He does not need much to get going. He's obviously a natural at
holding court and at storytelling. He gives lengthy answers
to almost everything. That's great. That's what we wanted. And the only downside is that we couldn't
ask as many questions as we wanted. Uh, that included a lot of the
great questions y'all sent us. We crowdsourced a lot of good
ones, but most didn't get asked. We didn't even get to ask most of the
ones we wanted to ask, but hey, no biggie. Yeah, this wasn't a short session at
all, and I think we overall accomplished what we set out to do, which was record
a conversation with George RR Martin that contained some new questions and that
will be widely accessible afterwards. That's why it took a little
bit longer to get out. Ashaya here went through triple max
effort to make the subtitles perfect, looking up the spelling of every
person, place, or thing George named. So we highly recommend that you watch
the video version because it uses multiple cameras in addition to the
perfect subtitles, and because you'll get to see George's cool stuff all
over the room um, that we recorded in. But of course, as always, the audio
only version is perfectly solid as well. What you're about to hear and see was
recorded on Thursday, August 18th, a few hours before all of us, George
included, saw House of the Dragon episode one at his Jean Cocteau Theater. Enjoy! If someone's watching or listening to
this interview, they've probably read or listened to all of your interviews. So let's try to, um, go on
some untreaded on ground. Yeah.
You're... There are probably hundreds
of those interviews. Oh, there's a lot. They're out there, I mean... So many, yeah. It's a great, great resource. And our listeners are the
types who are very experienced. They're not new. They haven't... they've read the series, most people
have read series more than once. So they... they've heard interviews with you before. This is almost certainly any
listener to our show has probably heard an interview with you before. So... Like I said in advance,
this will be edited. So if at any point... So you won't ask me who
is my favorite character? We won't ask you that. We know it's Victarion,
you've said it many times. But no, it will be
edited, so feel free... If you, If you, if you're like put
that off the record or edit, say, just, don't worry about saying that. Um, so we wanted to bring up, we
wanted to talk about topics like House of the Dragon, writing and adaptation,
fandom itself, and conventions, and some listener submitted questions
as well, just to let you know what we're gonna talk about today. Okay. Um, one thing that we thought was really
interesting and we wrote a little bit of a chapter about your works called the
Game of Thrones Effect, and there's a lot of references to A Song of Ice and
Fire in things like scientific taxonomy. Like, there's a lot of
species named after you... Are you aware of all of them? Do they let you know
about every one of these? Not every one. I I've heard about a few over the years,
uh, where someone has said some new kind of cricket or sea worm or something like
that has been named either after, mostly after my characters, not after me myself. Yeah.
Most, yeah. There's Meraxes gigas, was a new one. It's a new dinosaur. And there's, I dunno how to
say this, but Ochyrocera varys, it's a spider, of course. And there's, um, There's a really funny one, speaking of
the deep sea worms that you mentioned. There's a Hodor anduril. Uh, they combined Lord of
the Rings with Hodor... A very weird decision by those
scientists, but good on them. Oh, very cool. You should send me a list of all these. We should, yeah, that's there's a lot. We'll say Tolkien has you beat. I'm not really aware. I would blog about that. That would... Yeah, there's probably like 20 or
something named after your characters and Tolkien's got like a hundred plus. So you got a while to go. Um, As far as I know, though, however, um,
no one has yet named a star or planet or any, uh, extraterrestrial kind of
thing after me or a crater on Pluto. I mean, there are other, uh, science
fiction fantasy writers who, who have had things like that named after them. I was a science fiction writer mostly when
I began, as you probably probably know. Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I always wrote fantasy
too, but, um, Um, when I started in the, in the seventies, when I first
started publishing professionally... Fantasy, yeah, Tolkien had been
big, but he was considered, um, a freakish, one of a kind thing. Oh, um, this is not a genre. This is a, you know, a bestselling
book that was very big, but no one will ever duplicate it. So fantasy was sort of, uh, minor
compared to, uh, the markets for science fiction and, and, uh, I wrote
a lot of science fiction in those days. That's interesting. Yeah. We've read, um, your
Thousand Worlds stuff. I've read all of it
and it's, it's amazing. Is there any, is there any thought
to, I know that Nightflyers was a thing, is there any thought of any of
the other ones getting adapted or...? Yeah, I mean, we, we occasionally
talk about things like that. Nightflyers was adapted twice, once as
a movie in 1987 and then as, uh, the TV show that came on, um, on the SyFy channel
just a year before last, I think it was. Uh, Sandkings mm-hmm was also
adapted as a two hour premiere of the revived Outer Limits. Mm. Um, and, uh, there... various people have tried to make
a Sandkings movie over the years. There have been a number of
screenplays written and, uh, um, some better than others. Uh, but, um, so far we, we haven't
actually got a green light on that. As a... That is something that I, that I
wish, uh, more of the fans understood. Where I really, sometimes I wonder,
um, from the comments I get, whether whether, uh, all of the, the fans
or readers out there understood how, how Hollywood works and all that. You know, I, I have a large, um, backlist
of stories and books that I wrote. I wrote like 70 or 80 short stories,
many of them, uh, the Thousand World stories you're referring to, but also
a few fantasies, a few science fiction stories that took place in other
universes, a number of contemporary horror stories, or historical horror stories. I wrote a number of novels before,
and I had 20 years from 1971 when I sold my first story to 1991, which
is when I began Game of Thrones. And all those stories are out there. And I have agents and managers
who are, you know, eagerly trying to, uh, sell the rights to them. And every time one of them sells
and we make an announcement, I get this wave of people angry. 'Oh, he's not working on Winds of Winter. He's he's not working on this thing.' I'm
not working on it, don't you understand? It's like...
You wrote that 20 years ago! I wrote this story in 1979. Someone bought it. They gave me a big pot of
money and good luck to them. Uh, and maybe I have a
meeting with them or lunch. Maybe they ask me my opinion. Maybe they don't ask me my opinion
and they just do it anyway. But thanks to my agents, I get a
nice credit on it in the front. That doesn't mean I've put aside Winds
of Winter to work on this project. I... my work on that project was largely
done in 1979 or 1984 or whatever. Yes. So, uh, that drives me a little crazy. I, I don't know if people
really don't understand the way Hollywood works or, or not. They don't understand. They don't. We actually had planned to ask some
questions that clarified some of that, maybe in line with that, so that's great. For example, I think that there's,
if we're talking about the current TV show and the past TV show, there was an
understanding that you were more of on a consultant level for the first TV show. If maybe that's not the right term or
co-producer, I dunno the exact terms, but your involvement with House of the
Dragon's, obviously much greater... My title on Game of Thrones
was co-executive producer. And now it's executive
producer on this one. I I lost a co. Um, I mean, that's another thing that,
that I think fans don't understand and, and sometimes people in Hollywood
don't understand them either, which is, you know, particularly
the, the, uh, producer title. Um, I remember during my first go
round in, in television, back in the, uh, eighties and nineties, I, I
was, uh, uh, hired on Twilight Zone. It was the first show I worked on,
not the original one with Rod Serling. I'm old, but I'm not that old. I was in grade school when the Rod
Serling show was, but the Twilight Zone was revived by Phil Deguere in
uh, in the mid eighties, 85, 85, 86. Um, and, uh, I wrote five
scripts for that show. And I was brought on and I was
brought on as a staff writer. Uh, that is, that is probably
the lowest title that you can get on a, on a television show. And you can tell it's the lowest
title, cause it's the only one that actually has the word writer in it. They like hide that, but, um, and after
that I was promoted to story editor. And, uh, then when I went to... uh, Twilight Zone ended, and I
went to Beauty and the Beast, I was hired as executive story editor. Executive story editor is,
is better than story editor. It's... executive is like, that's a plus sign. So So and then from executive story
editor, uh, I got the title on Beauty and the Beast, co-producer and
that was a promotion and there was more money and it's a better title. It has the P word in it. The P word is uh, uh, very important. Um, but I looked around and I said,
there are no other co producers. How can I be co producer? Doesn't co producer imply that there
would be like another co producer? No, co producer is just like a minus. Executive is a plus,
co producer's a minus. I'm not quite as high up the ladder
as a producer, I'm only a co producer. So, uh, so you, you go up the ladder. Eventually, of course, I did get promoted
to, uh, producer and then later I got to be co-supervising producer and then
supervising producer without the co. So, uh, you know, you, you
climb these things here. It's way more ranked than I thought. Could you elaborate? It...
it's complicated. And it, they change it all the time. Um, because, um, an executive
producer is, you know, back in the eighties and nineties, uh,
when I was active, there was... most shows had only one executive
producer and that was the showrunner. Showrunner was a term that
the public never heard. Very different now. You never see a screen title,
Showrunner: Bill Smith, right? Mm-hmm. You never see that title and the public
didn't know anything about that, but the showrunner was the executive producer. He was the boss. And if you watch a show like, uh, that was
on in those days, like Dallas or something like that, usually that credit was the
last credit at the end of the episode. So, you know, you would see on Dallas,
J.R.'s face, he would be shocked when something had happened and it would
be Executive Producer, uh, Philip Capice, I still remember, I never
met the man, but there was his title over J.R.'s face, week after week. And there was only one
executive producer... on Twilight Zone, our executive
producer was, uh, Phil Deguere. And on, on, uh, Beauty and
the Beast, it was Ron Koslow. Uh they were creators, they were executive
producers, they were the showrunners. But over the years, um, I guess people had
been, I don't know quite how it happened. So I'm speaking entirely from ignorance. Yeah. But I guess people had been an executive
producer on a show and that show had been canceled and now they were hiring
onto another show, but they didn't wanna take a lower title, even though they
weren't the showrunner on the later show, they go, I have to keep my title. So suddenly shows started having two
or three or four executive producers. And now we have a lot of executive
producers on a lot of shows. But only one of them or sometimes
two of them is the showrunner. Mm-hmm yeah. Sometimes two. So it, it is, it has
gotten very complicated. So showrunner's kinda a new... it wasn't, it's new term, but
it's a new title ish thing. And so, yeah... It's not an official title, but
it is, everybody knows who the showrunner is: he's the boss. Um, you know, I mean, ultimately a
network or the studio is the boss. But, of the people actually working on the
show, the showrunner's the highest one. And you know, obviously on, on
Game of Thrones, it was David Benioff and, and DB Weiss. Yeah.
And, uh, they were the showrunners. Uh, there were other executive
producers by the end. And then there were several of us
co-executive producers, but they were the, they were the showrunners clearly. And on this new show, it's
Miguel Sapochnik and Ryan Condal. Mm-hmm . I have the same title as them,
but I'm not the, I'm not the showrunner. And there are a number of other people
who are also executive producers. If you do this, if you move
forward with the Jon Snow show, you'll need a snowrunner for that. So could you elaborate a little
bit on how much creative control you feel like you have on these new
endeavors, these new projects, like House of the Dragon versus before? Do you feel like your
role has changed at all? Yeah. Um, I don't have any creative control. Mm-hmm as, as you say. Yeah. Um, that is the hardest
thing to get in Hollywood. Yeah, no matter what the project is,
whether it's a feature or a film. Mm-hmm , you know, you... it's given out very, very infrequently. I mean, you can... Like JK Rowling had a certain amount of
creative control on Harry Potter, cause every studio in Hollywood wanted Harry
Potter and they were all, uh, queuing up and she demanded, uh, you know,
script approval and other things... But you don't demand script approval. Hollywood... Hollywood will give you money a lot
easier than they'll give you creative control, you can go to negotiations and
say, well, yes, I will thank you for, you know, paying me 8 million dollars, but I
would like, uh, creative control as well. And, and they will say,
how about 10 million? Haha. They would rather give millions of
dollars than any creative control. At a certain point, I feel
like, you've got a lot of money. You have to be able to decide,
I don't want the money. Gimme the control. Which was obviously JK Rowling's attitude. I mean, I don't really know
privately for negotiations, but she had a number of suitors. What I do have is influence, I
have creative, uh, influence. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but that depends largely on
the relationship between myself and the showrunners mm-hmm and so forth. I mean, I can, can make points, I can
argue and, and they can listen, but if, if, if they decide not to listen,
then you know, I can persuade them. Yeah, I can't, mean, I don't have
the power to, uh, hire or to fire. Um, I don't have the power to dictate
things, but what I have, if they listen to me and I can be fairly persuasive
and I know this material pretty well, so, um, there's that something
and it's, it's always changing. I mean, it's... you know, I had a lot of input in the
beginning of Game of Thrones, partly cause I had these books out there. Um, but at a certain point, as the show
went on, I, I found I had less and less influence uh, until by the end, I really
didn't even know what, what was going on. I, I... Some of these things I watched like
everybody else, and 'oh, okay.' That's... you could have given me
a call and let me know. Now at, at the moment, uh, you
know, I have, uh, uh, I'm very happy with House of the Dragon. It's a very faithful adaptation. Yeah, there's some changes, but um,
but I have a great relationship with, uh, Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik. We've got a good feeling about him. We've really liked all
the interviews he's done. He said all the right things so far. Yeah. We're interviewing Ryan
in, in a little while too. Yeah. Later this month. So... But there are, as you say, a number of
other shows in development and everyone has a different showrunner and writer,
every relationship there is, is different. So we shall see how all of those evolve. Yeah. So for House of the Dragon specifically,
I've got a listener submitted question for you that I think all of us care a
lot about, so I'm just gonna read it. Cause I think they've framed
it in a really good way. From Curtis W. Franks, he asked, how should we treat
House of the Dragon in terms of canon? I would be treating it as yet
another narrative competing with Mushroom and other sources. It is one possible explanation and
take on the sequence of events, but not necessarily more correct than any of
the others when they are in conflict, it would add yet more historiographic
complexity to the story...how do you feel about that interpretation? Should we prioritize these
interpretations over others when there is an outright conflict between them? So speak to canon. Okay. Well, that's a very
eloquently put question. Yes. I think he did a good job with that. Thanks, Curtis. It opens, uh, um, you know, a
very large area for discussion. Mm-hmm. And, um, I've been asked about this,
um, by various other interviewers in various forms and interviews past. And I often respond with, uh, the
question for the questioner, uh, how many children did Scarlett O'Hara have? Yep. I mean, in Margaret Mitchell's novel,
she has three and the classic MGM movie from, uh, 1939 or so she has one. Which is real? How many children should you
have, which should you believe? Depends on what canon we're talking about. Movie or the book. Yeah. And of course it's a trick question
because the, uh, the real answer is she had none because she never existed. She's a fictional
character that was made up. So she had no children. It's a story, there were two different
ways that they chose to, to tell the story, the, the filmmakers
simplified it, they didn't want to deal with the children of her first
two husbands, and they took them out. And as far as I can tell, very
few people have missed them. Although I'm not a big part of the
Gone with the Wind fandom, who knows, they may be debating it over there. Even... They probably are. If there is a Gone with the Wind
fandom, there probably has to be, it's still a very popular book and movie. So this is somewhat the same question
that, uh, you know, that I deal with. I mean, I, I wrote the books,
I, I presented the story, at least for the first five books. And, um, as, as we got into it,
David and Dan, uh, did an amazingly faithful adaption in many ways,
but not 100% faithful adaption. Yeah. They, they started making changes
even as early as, as, uh, season one mm-hmm . And I remember I had
discussions with them back in season one. Um, when I was more involved in
the process when, when we discuss things and, and like, uh, the fact
that they, uh, removed, uh, Jeyne Poole was a very early thing. Yeah. They actually said, oh
no, Jeyne Poole is in it. You see the girl that's sitting
next to Sansa in the one scene in, in, uh, the feast at Winterfell. Yes, that's Jeyne Poole, but
you never hear a name and she's not in it, but I did tell them. 'Yes, but there's the butterfly effect',
as I called it going, deriving from the famous Ray Bradbury story, A Sound of
Thunder, you know, you crush a butterfly the Jurassic and suddenly you changed all
of human history from that point forward. Yes.
Unintentionally. A little change in a long narrative
can have big changes further on. And now, Gone with the Wind didn't
have to worry about that, cause uh, those two children that they removed
never had any impact on the story. Mm-hmm. And Margaret Mitchell, didn't go
on to write 6 more novels in which the children grew up and became
the leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Whatever the hell, you know, she might
have done with those two, two boys. And I think they were both boys,
and Rhett's daughter was a girl. So she didn't have to deal with
the butterfly effect there. But you know, when we remove Jeyne
Poole from season one, then you don't have Jeyne Poole to be the
fake Arya, as happens in the book. So what do you do then? I mean, the butterfly
effect has, has done that. Um, you're familiar with The Expanse. I think one of the best adaptations
would be an, an example would be The Expanse TV show where they had
the writers in the writers' room. And I remember I was reading the books
as the show aired, and there was some things that happened in season one where
I was like, that's not in the books. And then I got to book five and... Right. They were adapting things in... all the way there. And I think they really, it really showed
how much having the author there to be like, 'actually this is gonna be important
in a book I haven't even published yet. So like... maybe keep that in.'
can be really important. And Ty and Daniel... well, you know, Ty was my assistant
for years and, and you know, was part of, uh, you know, so many premieres
and events and things like I went to and he even went to Morocco with me. Oh, fun. To watch them, uh, shoot, uh, uh, Dany's
wedding and, uh, various other things. So he, he kind of knew the process
from the inside, um, and Daniel, uh, lives here in New Mexico. And I was his teacher at a session
of Clarion West, and was in a writers group with him and all
that, so I, I knew them pretty well. And, and, um, I think they were
very wise to, to go into the writers room and do that, cause I know from
stories they've told me that they encountered the butterfly effect too. Mm-hmm. They would be in the writer's room
and, and the showrunner, who was not them, initially, would say,
we're gonna remove this, uh, person. And, and you know, Ty or Daniel
would say, we could do that. But then when you get to season four,
there's gonna be a problem because you took that other other thing. Yeah. So, um, the butterfly effect
can have that, but getting back to whole issue of canon. Mm-hmm , um, the butterfly
effect affects the canon. Uh, but there's also sometimes deliberate
changes in, in a show where the, um, the showrunners or the writers or the
studio, the network, or wherever it comes from, goes in a different direction. Mm-hmm. So what we're doing at this point
in, in the history of A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones,
Westeros, whatever you wanna call it. Yeah. We have two canons. We have the show canon,
the Game of Thrones canon. Mm-hmm. And we have the Song
of Ice and Fire canon. Okay.
Yeah. And in the, in the book
canon, um, obviously, still writing The Winds of Winter. I'm sure you all know that. And then there's another book beyond that. Yeah. And as I write them, and I've said this
in a previous blog post, I always knew that things were gonna be different,
but as I'm writing, as the stories are coming alive, and the characters
are coming alive, taking me further and further away from the show. So there's gonna be some very considerable
differences, and the book canon is gonna be quite different from the, the show
canon as we get, uh, deeper into it. If they cut so many characters, how
could it not be different on that alone? Mm-hmm well, yes. I mean, I'm still writing about
Victarion Greyjoy and, Arianne Martell. That's my love. I love Arianne the best. So I was, I was devastated
when they cut her. I thought she was perfect
for HBO, it's shocking. Yeah, so, but I was less devastated... I like Arianne too. And there are a number of other
characters in there, you know, Damphair, mm-hmm and even some of the characters
who are in both are very different. I mean, their version of, uh, Euron
Greyjoy is day and night from my version of Euron Greyjoy and, you
know, similar, um, similar changes. Um, so there are, are
two different canons. Now, because most of these
shows that we're developing, almost all of them are prequels. Mm-hmm. I think it's a single canon. Mm-hmm. Because both, all of these
prequels can lead up to Game of Thrones at the beginning. Yeah. The one that's a little
trickier is the Jon Snow show. Cause that's the only sequel. That being said, um, it's a little tricky. I mean, it keeps me, it keeps me busy
and I don't know what's gonna come, but we do have, as I say, a number
of differentshows in development, every one has a different showrunner. Mm-hmm. But every one also has me and
uh, in, in, uh, some capacity and, uh, you know, some other, other,
uh, people that I work with... One of them, Ti Mikkel... Yes! We love Ti. She is... I think Ti knows more about
Westeros than I do sometimes. She knows her stuff. She has an amazing grasp of it. And she's been, uh, a consultant on, uh,
many of these, uh, shows in development. Mm-hmm. But what I wanna avoid, and I
don't know how many shows are gonna go, hopefully more than one. Yeah. But, as I said, we have the book
canon and we have the show canon. What I don't want to happen is
that we have 17 show canons. Yeah.
Yes. Every, every different show runner decides
to take it in a different direction. And nothing makes any sense
because there's no consistency. You have to have connective tissue. Absolutely. Lucasfilm has their Story Group, as
they call it, and it's a set group of people who are in charge of managing,
keeping things relatively consistent. Who has that? Lucasfilm for Star Wars,
it's called the Story Group. Um, and I think it's a really... it doesn't seem to have necessarily
worked out the best for them, I don't know, but in general, they're trying... Seem to have let some
inconsistencies sneak in there. They have, they have, so I'm like... The books have been better than the shows. Yeah, they have, they've got some good
Star Wars books out there that are... but they're, they're trying to have a
consistent cohesive universe as it were. They're also doing a lot
of prequels with that. And they abolished the
expanded universe, as I recall. Yeah, well, they did it, but only
so that they could add it back in. There's things from the original
expanded universe that they're adding back in, like they're... they added Thrawn back in, for example. So they... or they kind of just wiped
the slate clean as it were. It was a mess, so it
conflicted with itself. So, it kinda needed to be done, I suppose. You know, the whole question
here, um, about canon. What the fans have to keep in mind,
and I hate to say this, cause I don't want sound like I'm attacking the fans. I love the fans, I'm a fan myself
of many of these franchises. Mm-hmm. But we're making this shit up. There is no real, you know, if I go
back and I write a novel about the, uh, World War II or something like
that, I'll be expected to get it right. History is what it is. But here, whether it's Harry
Potter or Star Wars or Star Trek or Lord of the Rings or my stuff,
we're making this stuff up. And, uh, then someone comes along and
they want to change something or make it up differently, and, uh, usually if
you're somebody like me, you don't like that, you like the way you did it. You did it that way for a reason. Um, but, um, it is the
way the process works. And, uh, especially when you're being
adapted or when you're, you know, I think the word canon and I haven't looked this
up, I may be completely wrong, but I think the word canon actually derived
out of Sherlock Holmes fandoms, the, the Baker Street Irregulars, and all that. Who, who... because Sherlock Holmes became one of
the most popular characters in the world. Not only in Britain, but
all around the world. He was, he was one of, uh, boy, I remember
at, at least back in the sixties and seventies, it's probably different by now,
but I, I remember reading an article that said in every country of the world, there
are three characters that everybody knows: Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and Superman. Now, today that might be different. But Holmes was huge, and a lot of people
started writing, you know, later when... their own Sherlock Holmes
stories and pastiches. Uh, you know, when, when, um, Holmes
stories were still under the copyright and, uh, Arthur Conan Doyle was alive,
they had to disguise them, you know. You can like, uh, um, I think it
was August Derleth wrote a series of stories about a consulting detective
in England called Solar Ponds. And he was Sherlock Holmes
going by a different name. You can read the Solar Ponds stories. They're still out there. Mm-hmm. Um, but the point is the, the Baker Street
Irregulars, which I think was the big group for Holmes things, said, no, none of
that stuff actually happened to Sherlock. None of these stories by later people. Um, and canon... and that's where I think, I think
the first one is: only the stuff written by Arthur Conan Doyle himself. That is the canon. The rest is fanfiction. And everything else is
just, uh, you know... Fanon. Other stuff. There's what people call semi
canon, fanon, headcanons. There's a lot of varying terms. I think people get a
little hung up on canon... um, just, you know, enjoy the series. They do. And it it's one of these things that,
you know, how do you define the word? Define the word, I'll tell
you what's canon or not. You know, you can't say, yeah,
no, uh, Scarlett O'Hara had three children because, um, you know, she... So I guess if I'm gonna re-ask the
question, then the question would be, are some of the interpretations in
House of the Dragon the true telling...? Or I'm not... *some*, would you say? Well, I was deliberately playing that
in, in Blood and Fire, of course. Exactly. I was, I was playing with the
history, with actual history, and writing this as a fake history book. And, uh, I had a lot of fun with that
and I, I know some readers didn't like it, they wanted a traditional novel. We loved it. Our listeners loved it. I was... I really went outta my way when that
book was coming out to say, because I didn't want anyone to buy it and
be disappointed, cause it wasn't like the others, I kept saying this
is not a novel, this is not a novel. I even went on my website when like,
the Hugo nomination was made, do not nominate this for Best Novel. You know, if you like it, I wouldn't
mind nominated for Best Related Work, which I thought was a category it fit in. Maybe it actually didn't fit in
that category, I don't know, Hugo Awards, it can be a little obscure. But, um, it was not a traditional novel. It was a, I called it
fake history at first. And then some of my readers said
they hated that term, so I started calling it imaginary history. But it is a pseudo history of
sorts, by an in world character. A long time ago, before I dreamed of
Game of Thrones or any of the books, I was writing my, uh, what would've been
my fifth novel if it had been published, uh, which was set in 1890s New York, a
historical horror novel, uh, during the era, great era of yellow journalism. Uh, and I had a, you know, a killer was
on the loose and I had three reporters from rival newspapers chasing him. Uh, the New York Journal, which was
published by William Randolph Hearst. Um, the New York Herald, which was
published by James Gordon Bennett Jr, and, uh, the New York World, which
was published by Joseph Pulitzer, um, had a lot of fun with that. I wrote 200 pages of it, but, uh,
yeah, that's another whole long story. That never went anywhere, huh? Never could sell it. But, um... So you still have it, just
sitting in the archives? Yeah, it actually was published, the
200 page fragment was published in a book called Quartet that I did years ago
when I was guest of honor at Boskone. The point of the story is, uh, Pulitzer. Pulitzer's, uh, newspaper, the New York
World, um, was very successful and he built a building for it on Publishers
Row in New York City, where a lot of the newspapers were on like, the same block. And he built this building, it
had a golden dome on the top. And at the time it was built, it was
the tallest building in the world, the tallest building in New York City
and the tallest building in the world. Uh, it was kind of funny, it was
built right next to the, uh, the, the headquarters of the New York Sun,
which, uh, was a paper edited by a guy named Charles Dana, who was a kind of a
curmudgeon and didn't like Pulitzer much. And so they had a rivalry, but the
World was much bigger than the Sun. So it said, well, Pulitzer
can spit down on the Sun. Um, but anyway, I'm researching,
researching the book and this is the tallest building in the world. Now it doesn't exist anymore. Many years later, it was knocked down to
build an approach for the Brooklyn Bridge. And I'm reading, well, how
many stories did it have? And I'm reading these, the resources. Oh, it had, uh, I don't
remember the numbers. It had 15 stories. Now, wait a minute. This other book, 14 14, 15. And then I encountered one
book that had 20 stories. What??? What?? It's the most famous building
in the world at the time. And I can't even find a reputable
source as to how many floors it had and this is only like, 1880s, 1890s,
1900s, this is not 2000 years ago. That really impressed on me... that history, is it... I love history, but it's so unreliable
to know what actually happened. I mean, history, what I love about
history is it's full of stories. It's full of great stories
and, uh, you can take them and change 'em around and use them. They're all grist for the mill,
but there's a lot of doubt about some of the best stories. They may have been invented later by
singers or storytellers or some historian who wanted to make a point or, you
know, color it one way or the other. Propaganda. And the more you read about history,
the more inconsistencies you had. So I thought it would be fun
to do that in Fire and Blood. And so when I'm, I'm relating what
happened here, you know, and I'm, I'm thinking about what can happen. Well, yeah, I... oh, this would be great. This would be really
outrageous, it would be... and then, eh, it's probably
too outrageous, too outrageous. Here's probably what... the more realistic version of it. And wait a minute, this version makes
Fred the villain and Bill the hero. And this version makes Bill
a villain and Fred the hero. And then at some point it hit me. Why don't I give all versions? Cause history is uncertain. I'll give all versions
and it'll be fun for me. I can put in all the really outlandish
scurilous things, the way Mushroom sees it, but I can also put in the
things that are probably more... They're sources, yeah. So, and that worked fine for those who
liked that thing, although some don't. Um, but if I was writing it as a
novel, if I'd been writing this in a, in a form of a, the books in A Song
of Ice and Fire, mm-hmm, like Winds of Winter, which I'm writing now. I mean, when I get to a chapter
in The Winds of Winter, um, and I know something's gonna happen. Well, how does it happen? What, what are the things? I think I, I could do it this way. I could do it that way. I have to make up up my mind. In Fire and Blood, I didn't have to
have to make up my mind, but Ryan and Miguel, when they're adapting it, they
largely had to make up their mind. Mm-hmm. We did have some... way back in the beginning,
way, way back in the beginning. Actually there were previous
writers on it before Ryan, but there were some interesting discussions
about, uh, how we could present the material in Fire and Blood. And, you know, you could
do it the Rashomon way. Mm-hmm If you know that reference. Yeah, absolutely. Present multiple versions
of the same story. We could also have done a frame device
where we could have included Archmaester Gyldayn and, uh, just like in I,
Claudius, one of my favorite TV shows. Every episode is framed by Claudius
writing his history and then you flash back to what he wrote, but we could have
had Archmaester Gyldayn, with all of his primary sources, doddering around. 'Well! And no, but there's this other version!'
and, and you could've done that. It would've been real fun. It would've, but sadly, nobody
really wants to do the framing device anymore with, uh, Claudius. Um. Yeah, Last Duel did it, I suppose, um,
kind of recently, a little bit of that. They did, yes. That was an interesting uh, um,
take on that, I like that movie. I'm not sure the world did though. It didn't do that well. It was COVID, you know, the timing
of its release was not ideal. So, um, you talked... we were talking about how, you know,
working on Fire and Blood is history and it's very different to write. One thing that we like to highlight in our
show is something called Parallel Lives, which is the idea that there are parallels
in your histories to current characters. Do you, have you found... You stole that from Plutarch, didn't you? Yes. Yes, exactly. Absolutely. I read those all when I was a lot younger,
fell in love with them, so good catch. I love to apply it to
A Song of Ice and Fire. So we, we we've observed it
in A Song of Ice and Fire. Have you found that in like writing
Fire and Blood, that it allows you to maybe play with plotlines or arcs for
the characters in the main series? Do you do that consciously? No, I don't. You don't!
It's not consciously. Interesting. I mean, certain
similarities are inevitable. That's for sure. If anything, I try to veer away
from that, cuz I don't wanna feel like I'm, uh, repeating myself, But history just naturally
repeats itself, so... Well, yes, there are certain resonances
in history, there are certain, um, universals about humanity, you
know, people competing for power, people competing for love, lust. Yeah.
Um, all of these, all of these things... Some of these things, are a constant. Sometimes people are like, that's a
stereotype or that's cliche, and I'm like that's because it's true to the
human experience, it's just true. A person with a lot of
power being paranoid? That, that happens a lot. Yeah. That also applies a lot to, to
regular, to real world history, I suppose, or to, to homages. What about when you're
writing in an homage? For example, one of my favorites is
you've included in the Nightfort scene with Bran, there seems to be a lot of
homages to Tolkien and the Mines of Moria in that scene, which I love a lot. Do you aim to do that or is that also
kind of accidental or, or maybe you have some thoughts on your process there? Well, I, I love Tolkien, and actually
the Mines of Moria is one of my favorite, uh, favorite, uh, sections
of, uh, Fellowship of the Ring. And that's, that's my favorite of
the, of the trilogy, Fellowship. Um, not that I don't love them all. Yeah. I don't think I was consciously trying
to do that, but again, you don't know. I mean, you read these things and
they lodge, uh, sometimes in the front of your brain, but sometimes
in weird corners of your brain where they pop up at, at some point. I did wanna make the Nightfort a
sinister place, with its own legends. It was very old, it's a
very big castle crumbling. Um, and I wanted to give it that sense
that so many things have, have gone here. Mm-hmm. Um, now, which are true
and which are not true? I mean, I always tend to look at
not only other fantasy books and history, but like the real world here. Mm-hmm. I mean, we, we have these... Get me in trouble here for what
I'm about to say, but we have these legends that some people believe
are literally true in our religion. I mean, you know, we talk about
a, um, the Garden of Eden. Was there ever actually a Garden of Eden? Mm-hmm. Was there Adam and Eve or, or the flood? Uh, Noah and the flood. That's a good one. I mean, that's a great story. God was pissed off, he made it
rain for 40 days and 40 nights. The entire world was flooded and
everybody died, except for this guy Noah, who built a big boat and he
got two of every animal on earth. I don't know how the kangaroos
got from down in Australia to the Middle East, but they, but they did. Even the mosquitoes. Even the mosquitoes. He had two of everything
and it's a terrific story. Ricky Gervais has a very funny bit
where he makes fun of it in one of his things, but it's a story. It, it's a colorful story. And, uh, of course there have been
some archaeologists in recent years who have said, well, it could be that,
you know, at a certain place in 2000 BC, the Tigris and Euphrates flooded. Mm-hmm. And the land between them, not the entire
world, but the Tigris and the Euphrates. And then there was a flood
and maybe the archaeology... so these things sometimes have a source. Mm-hmm. But, um, that's not the
same as, as, as the story. The story is, is bigger and more
colorful, as stories tend to be. I mean, if I'm picking on something
for history, to adapt to it, as I, I've often said in interviews, I turn
it up to 11 or I turn it up to 111. Cause you don't ever wanna
make it smaller, you know. I'm gonna do a story that'll be, you
know, just like the Crusades, but I'll, I'll make it smaller and duller. No, you have to make it bigger and cooler. Otherwise... Just read the Crusades. Just read the historical fiction about
the actual Crusades, or the Wars of the Roses, or the Anarchy, any of the... any of these things. Do you have any authors or sources
that you've read that were like non-fiction accounts of those...? I think you recommended Sharon
Kay Penman many years ago in your blog and I, I've read everything
she wrote after you recommended it. And she wrote a great book about the
Anarchy, When Christ and His Saints Slept. That's beautiful. Uh, Stephen and Matilda. Yes. Terrific book. Um, another author that had a lot
of influence was Thomas B Costain. Now, uh, he was a very popular author. Did you name Elinor Costayne,
House Costayne, after him? Is that a reference on
purpose, or slipped in there? Did I? Could be, at this point, I've lost
track, but he was a very popular historical fiction writer of
the, the fifties, maybe even the forties, and mostly he wrote novels. Um, some of which were made into movies. The, uh, I think it was the Silver Chalice
was, uh, based on one of his books. Interesting. And, um, there were a couple others
too, but he also wrote a nonfiction history of the Plantagenets, a uh, four
volume history of the Plantagenets. From where the Plantagenets originated
and how they became the kings and, and, and it it's a generational thing. So it's quite like Fire and Blood, you
know, he's, there's this, you know, he's, he's writing about, uh, Henry
the Second, and then Henry the Second dies and you get Richard and Richard
dies and you get John, and, you know, generation after generation, all the way
to the Wars of the Roses, which was the ultimate end of the Plantagenet dynasty. Uh, he doesn't go on to the
Tudors, and it was really readable. It's full of great stories. Um, stories, and how good it
is as history, I don't know. Probably not great
history, but a great read. Mm-hmm. And I don't have to worry since I'm
not a professional historian, I'm writing fantasy, about getting the
history wrong or something like that. I just have to worry about
telling a, a great story. And history is full of, uh, great stories. That's not to say that some of 'em
can't be improved and made even greater by being turned up to 111. What about the series the Accursed
Kings, that's an influence on you, right? Yes, that definitely, uh, that was
Maurice Druon, a French writer. Um, very, very uh, serious French
writer in, in most regards. He was made a part of the French Academy. Mm-hmm. Which, uh, you know, guards the
French language against like incursions from English and other
things, they don't like that. Um, but the Accursed Kings was sort of
his, his popular, uh, series of books. And they were also great too. It's about the, uh, curse of the Templars
and the, uh, the fall of, uh, of Philip the Fair, and his three sons and how the,
the dynasty, uh, the Capetian dynasty ended, and, um, the, uh, yeah, the Valois
came in, uh, and the Hundred Years War. So it's, it's again, great
characters, great story. Yeah. Baby swaps, poisonings,
all that good stuff. Yeah. Big fan. Yes. What do you have? Let's ask about radio serials. Oh yeah. Did you listen to radio
serials when you were younger? Was that a, that a thing for you? You know, I've heard a few
of them, but not a lot. No, that was, I was a
little too young for that. Radio was largely over by, by the
time I was a kid and had a radio. I did listen to, uh, like, uh,
sometimes late at night, uh, I would listen to radio talk shows. There was one guy in, and I was in... born in New Jersey, Long John Nebel. He had this show on and it came
on at like midnight or something, so I would listen to it in bed. And he frequently had science
fiction writers on there. Frederick Cole, Lester del Rey. They would... some of the other writers, Theodore
Sturgeon, I think, were guests on his shows and they'd discuss outlandish
things in the middle of the night. But I liked that show. But over the years, a few people have made
an effort, uh, to bring back radio drama. Yeah. But I don't think any of those
efforts have ever really succeeded. Mm-hmm not on radio. I think that that's coming back
in podcast and audiobook form. There's a lot more versions that
have sound effects and voice actors. And that's part of why we asked, because
we thought that maybe one day that would be something that could be done
with A Song of Ice and Fire, because it would be an audio version that's
unabridged, but it would add some battle sounds and acting and things like that. Well, we do have audio books. Yeah.
Right. But with, unfortunately with Roy
Dotrice's passing, it wouldn't be a, wouldn't be a complete cohesive thing. Yeah.
But Roy was amazing. I worked with him on Beauty and
the Beast and the thing about Roy was he, he, he was an actor. Mm-hmm. And um, you know, there, there are
a lot of audio books out there and there are, um, people who make their
entire career as reading audio books. Mm-hmm. And some of 'em are really
good, but they're readers. Yeah. They're readers. Roy came into it, not reading
the book, but acting the book. Mm-hmm. Giving every character his own voice. And, uh, um, you know, it's a little
strange at times, cuz of course I can easily write, uh, so and
so said this in a Dornish accent. Well there's no Dornish accent. So Roy would have to make it up
and say, well, I will make that a Spanish accent, something like that. I'll make this guy speak
Welsh and all that. And Roy was a master of accents and all
that, but he was, um, I don't know when he started that, but he was, uh, as old
as I am now when he started doing that. And uh, so he he's, he's doing women,
he's doing eight year old boys. It's it's a, it's a challenge,
but he did an amazing job for it. He really did. I'm, I've listened to those
audio books, if they were taped, I would've worn them out. Right. Uh, yeah, he is phenomenal. I've listened to a lot of other
audio books and there's just... the voice acting is... the acting aspect is, I've never run
into anyone who has done it like that. There's nobody quite like Roy, but
we have some very good audio book readers, Harry Lloyd, mm-hmm, read
some and Iain Glen, you know, some of the Dunk and Egg stories, and
then Fire and Blood and stuff. So yeah, we've had some good readers. Definitely. Yes. I would, I would love it if
you could get two readers. I just, I really think the series like
there's so many characters I think having a woman and a man's voice would do so much
for my enjoyment, because it's hard to hear a man do a child's voice, you know. Have you listened to the
Wild Cards audio books? No, I haven't. Do you do that for that? I'll...
maybe I'll have to check that out. We, we have, yes. That makes sense. There, there are, you know,
there are many Wild Cards books. Mm-hmm. I think only eight of them, maybe
nine of 'em exist on audio books. Now the first two, the first
two were done, uh, for one company, Brilliance, I think. And they were done with a reader. Mm-hmm. So one guy reads, but if you
know the Wild Cards books, if you read them, they're mosaic novels. Yeah. Where there are many different viewpoint
characters intercutting, either in separate stories or sometimes fully
intercut in the same narrative. So, uh, when we got to the third book,
I believe it was, we, uh, Uh, for complicated reasons I won't get into,
we switched to a different company and we wound up with Random House Audio. Mm-hmm. And I was able to persuade them to have
a different reader for each, um, story. Very cool. Very cool. Now there there's still issues there
because even though, uh, let us say, um, uh, the story, the protagonist
of the story may be Water Lily. Mm-hmm. Um, say, and so we got, um, for
Water Lily, uh, we got a, a woman. We got my friend Lina Esco, who's
been in SWAT and you know, some other things, and she, she read Water Lily's
story, but in Water Lily's story, there are other characters who appear. So she was still reading and there were
scenes where, you know, Hiram Worchester appears or, or Yeoman or so many other
people, and that's true in everything, but we did have, uh, a separate reader for,
for each character, I think from volume three up to like volume eight or so. And then, uh, for complex reasons
we stopped, but we're about to resume again, I think, so. Oh, exciting. Uh, we will, we will have more of those. Yeah. But if you get too many readers, then
you get into the issue, well, is this a, you know, there there's legal issues. I mean, is this a, is this an audio
book or is this a radio dramatization? And I have the right to do an audio book. I don't have the right to
do a radio dramatization. Interesting. You know, that those complex... Absolutely. Things come up here. That makes a lot of sense. I wouldn't have thought about
the difference in how it's defined and how that affects your
rights, but of course it would. And if you start adding sound effects
or things like that, then, then you're right over the edge into radio. And so then HBO's like, hello, this is a
little bit too close to Game of Thrones. Interesting. Um, it's interesting too. I mean, I'm just speculating here. I don't wanna seem like an expert,
but I know, um, The Rings of Power is coming out, the Tolkien thing. Yeah. But there's also something called the
Ride of the Rohirrim that's coming out. Yeah. That is done by entirely different people. Yeah.
They didn't get all the rights. And it's, it's uh, what is it, animated? It's a little odd. Yeah.
I'm not clear on that. I think I think so. Yeah. I believe so. But yeah, that's a, that's
a strange situation. The way those rights got portioned out. It's yeah, not typical, but... Tolkien was probably the greatest
fantasist of all time, but he was an innocent babe in the woods at,
at, uh, dealing with Hollywood and, and, uh, these things. I mean, if you look at the original
animated things long before Peter Jackson, he sold the first two books
to, was it, it was Ralph Bakshi, I think who did Fellowship of the Ring
and the Two Towers, but it was... who was it? Hanna Barbera or somebody like that? Was it them that did the third? The third one... or, or they also did the Hobbit. Um, so the Hobbit and, and the,
uh, Return of the King are done by one animator and the first
two were done by a different one. How did he manage to separate those? Who the hell was representing him? Yeah.
Right. Wow. So... It was a different world back then. Yeah. Yeah. We should maybe ask about games now. Okay. There are a lot of games based on A
Song of Ice and Fire, many, many games. There's both official
ones and unofficial ones. I I don't wanna know
about the unofficial ones. Oh, we were curious if you had heard
about these unofficial ones or not. And we were curious as well, if any of
them were particularly interesting for you to see realized, um, cause there's,
you know, there's the board game, the card game, the tabletop game, the video games. Well, so many of those are official. They're things where I I, sold the rights. Uh, you know, Dark Sword, mm-hmm, uh,
which works with, uh, CMON um, doing the, the, yeah, the, the miniatures. Mm-hmm. I mean, you see, I have
some of the miniatures. I used to work for the owner of CMON. And, uh, they're doing the, the tabletop
miniatures game and all that, but then I had Fantasy Flight was doing a card
game and still are, and uh, various people have done the board games. Mm-hmm mm-hmm. That actually became, um, you know,
somewhat of an issue way back when. Mm-hmm. Uh, you know, I, I mean, the books,
the, the first book came out in 1996 and the second book came out in 1999. And the third book came out in 2000. And, uh, you know, by that time,
the books were very popular. Each one was more popular than the others. I was hitting the bestseller list. So I had various people approaching
me with offers for subsidiary rights as they were called. Mm-hmm. Um, and, uh, you know, I like games. I loved miniatures. That idea was thrilling. You could see my
collection here all around. Yeah, we sure can. My toy knights and, uh, miniatures, um. And, you know, my agent got
involved and we negotiated deals and we, we signed some of these. Uh, replica swords. Mm-hmm. With, uh, Jalic Incorporated... Valyrian Steel, as they call
themselves, uh, Dark Sword with the, the miniatures, mm-hmm, um, the coins,
which are done by the Shire Post Mint. We love those. We have a big collection. I made all these, these deals
and a couple of others, besides. I won't go into any of it. Well, you go forward to like, uh, now
2007, 2008, uh, I've turned down like half a dozen people who wanted to
make movies of these, mm-hmm, right. And David, I meet David and Dan
on a legendary lunch at The Palm in, in Los Angeles that turns into
dinner, cause we're talking for hours and I, I say, okay, uh, you
seem good guys to work with here. Go ahead and see if you can sell to HBO. I was out of TV by then for so long. I mean, I, yes, I'd been very
active in TV for 10 years, roughly up to the mid nineties. But you know, this was like 2007. It was like 12 years I'd
been largely out of TV. They weren't going to let me run the show
or be the showrunner, or even do that. It was like, oh, your guy worked
in TV back in the Stone Age. But Dave and Dan were hot
writers and they, and I thought HBO was the place for it. We all agreed on that. So they sold it HBO, but then we started
to try to negotiate the deal with HBO. Um, and my agents took charge, you know,
money, rights, title, all that stuff. Those negotiations are always fine
and all that went fine, but suddenly we hit a bump on the subsidiary
rights, and HBO was saying, well, we get all the subsidiary rights. Okay. And I said, well, I, I can't give
you all the subsidiary rights cuz I have these like eight contracts here. This guy has miniature rights and
this guy has replica sword rights. And then this company has card games. I can't give you those, cause I already... And they were actually kind
of puzzled by that thread. Their legal department's saying, no, wait,
wait, we always get all subsidiaries. We have all the subsidiary rights to
the Sopranos, we have all the subsidiary rights to all of our shows, you know? And I said, I understand that,
but I can't give you rights that I no longer own because I've
sold it to these other people. So, um, we finally got that through
to them and, and we got the, uh, deal that cut out those rights. Mm-hmm. Um, although it does have, you
know, clauses in that, that only so long as those things are active,
oh, do they keep the rights. If, if Valyrian Steel, for example,
ever stops making swords, after a certain point, those rights go to HBO. They... and the Valyrian Steel guy
is actually very, very smart. Cuz the first thing he did
was make a deal with HBO. That's why there are two versions,
and you can see them around my house, you know, there's... it's canon, you know, he makes
the show sword and the book sword. I think you're sitting in front
of the book version of Needle. Oh, right there. Oh I I, am! Oh, I better watch out. It's sharp. And the show version of
Needle is somewhat different. So let's see, we have some
listener submitted questions. We would like to get into
some personal questions. I've got a quick one here. Maybe this is... this might be very quick. We...
or maybe, maybe it won't be. A world building question. Would you say that, uh, folks in your
world of, of A Song of Ice and Fire, do individuals have, or believe in the soul? The concept of it? Or would you say that it
actually exists there? Or is that too, uh, maybe too meta. Well, yes. I, I, I mean, I don't think
I've ever used that word, but... No, you haven't, you... like shade or ghost... shade, shadows, ghost... But I, I think it depends on
what religion you, you follow. A number of 'em certainly believe
in some sort of afterlife. Um, you know, the worshippers of the
Old Gods believe that your spirit goes into, you know, the, the weirwood
trees or if you're a warg, you get the second life where you get to live as a
hawk or a wolf or a bear or something. Um, but eventually all the souls, if you
will, or the spirits go to the same place. But the Ironborn, you know, will
think you're having a big party with the Drowned God under the sea, you
know, in his sort of wet Valhalla. Wet Valhalla! And, you know, the, the Faith of the
Seven believes in, um, seven hells and seven heavens and all of that stuff. So there is some belief
in the, the afterlife. Yeah. But as more and more religions,
uh, come into the world, as I expand it, you know, probably see
more and more different systems. Let's ask about, um, a couple questions
about Valyrians that I have here... did Valyrians from non dragon riding
families practice incest as well? And did Valyrians other than
Targaryens have dragon dreams, if you can answer either of those? Um, no, I don't think
they particularly would. I mean, I haven't really
thought about that. Okay. Fair enough. I reserve my right to change
my mind, but no, I don't think. There was a specific reason for
the, uh, for the incest, mm-hmm, which was to, uh, you know, I
mean, obviously they don't have... these are medieval people
and ancient people. They don't know about DNA or genes
or any of that stuff, but they have some rough concept of it in which
they attribute to the, the blood. Mm-hmm. Um, well, this guy has blue eyes and his
children have blue eyes, but, um, if he marries someone with brown eyes, hmm. Now all the kids have
brown eyes, why is that? They have some things, so yeah... We can control dragons, we don't
wanna lose that ability, mm-hmm, not everybody can do that. So we better, we better keep it in the,
in the family, so to speak, or at least with the other dragon riding families. Now there was, I haven't gone much
into it, but there was another very powerful group in Valyria who were
not necessarily the dragon riders. And those were the people
who practiced blood magic. Um, and, um, which, you know, there's
some overlap in the Venn diagram with the, with the dragon riders,
but not necessarily complete overlap. Mm-hmm. And then there were
just the regular people. There were a lot of slaves
cuz it was a slave society. There were a lot of poor people. I think of ancient Rome
or something like that. Yeah. I don't know that they would have any
reason to, uh, to practice incest. Okay.
Okay. But you said with the... but the people who work blood magic,
they wouldn't necessarily have to... They might, too, it depends on
how they define their magic. Okay. What about the dragon dreams? Um, and I know here I'm an outlier,
cuz I think most of fantasy writers, contemporary fantasy writers
would would disagree with me, but um, I, I never wanted to devise
a magic system, as it's called. A lot of fantasy writers, you
know, are very proud of their magic systems they devised. To my mind, magic and sorcery,
it's not part of the natural world. It's, it's supernatural, it's
unnatural, it's dangerous. Um, and, and if you, if you make it so
systematic that, okay, if you take the eyes of a newt and the balls of a bat
and the blood of a virgin and mixed them together, you'll, you'll get... Sick. A love potion. Then you've just, you've taken the
magic out of magic and you've made it science, but you've made it fake science,
science that doesn't really work. Um, and I'm not interested in that. I mean, I, I think you look at the
history of, uh, magic in the real world. Magic. And for most human history,
people believed that there, there was magic, there was sorcery. They believed there were dragons,
they believed there were witches. Um, but did their magic actually work? I mean, if their magic actually worked,
then they would've ruled the world, right? Yeah. But their magic works sometimes, you know. If suddenly you got a bad case of
boils, you would blame the old woman down the, down the road that, uh, gave
you the boils, for you didn't like her. So, uh, and, and then if you
could convince people, they might hang her or set her on fire. Um, but she couldn't give boils
to everyone or she would do that. It was... magic was unreliable, it was dangerous. And, and, and I think that's also
true of dragons and blood magic and... everything, uh, kind of magical
and sorcerous that goes on in my world, it's not, it's not easy. You're evoking things that
maybe you shouldn't mess with. So there would've been
some accidents, presumably. And yes. And there have been. For example, Doom of Valyria. That went wrong, you could say... very wrong. Something went wrong. Although there are theories about it
being a little less accidental and a little more, um, deliberate on the
Faceless Men's part, but we won't make you say anything on the record,
but there are theories about it. Not necessarily... There are indeed theories. There are theories about
everything you've written. Theories upon theories. That's good. I like people arguing about
it and having theories about it, yeah, all of that stuff. Yes. Yeah. We wanted to tell you some of the like
fandom adjacent terms, like, you know, you've dubbed some of them in world, like
for example, you created the Red Wedding and called it such in the world, but then
fans came up with the term, the Purple Wedding for Joffrey's wedding or the Pink
Letter for the Pink Letter, which you probably know what we're referring to. Yes, I do. Although those terms do
not appear in the book. Yeah, they don't. Um, so I would think it's... I have a golden wedding that... That was a good one. And there's, uh, there's
some other fun ones. Like people, I hate when people use
the term Faegon, because it's very spoilery and not necessarily accurate. I just call 'em Young Griff, but
that is a term that people use. Yeah. Shortened version of fake Aegon
- had you heard that term before? Yes, I have. Yeah.
I was like... And it does indicate that they
have already made their decision. They've taken Tyrion's hint,
like yeah, I dunno about this. I'm like, I'll just call him Young
Griff because lots of people have not gotten to that point in the series
yet, so let's let them, yeah... And that's a huge, you know, getting
back to your question of canon, that's a huge canon difference. He does not exist in the tv show,
he exists in a big way in the books. But not the tv show. So I wanted to talk about a
couple personal things as well. Um, you have told us in the past,
and we were, it was very random. We were at a lunch with you and
you mentioned a cat that you had named Asha and how she was a killer. And I've just been dying to
know ever since, what're the other names of your pets? It's a silly question, but I would like
to know, everyone would like to know. Well, sadly, Asha is gone. Aw. Um, but, uh, she, she was a great cat. Um, um, yeah, I don't, we don't have
many cats named from, um, my books. Names period, I'd like
to know all of them. We had at a certain period, uh, my
wife, Parris and I, Parris is, uh, of Irish descent, among other things. She likes Irish history and uh,
I'm also partly Irish, but, uh, not, uh, not quite as much as she
was, but at, at a certain point... you know, I, I mentioned
I, Claudius that I loved. Um, so we had, we had
a cat named Augustus. Oh. And we had a cat named Caligula, uh,
which of course is Roman for Little Boots. Parris, Parris is not as big a fan of
Rome as I am and refused to call him Caligula, she always called him Boots. Oh. But Augustus and Caligula,
sadly, are, are both gone. Um, although, Sid, my assistant
who's been coming and going... without any inspiration from
me, completely independently, she has a cat named Caligula. Oh. And a cat named Claudius. And that was where I was going. I wanted to name our next cat
Claudius, I wanted to name a cat Messalina, for his wife. Parris, uh, you know, threw down the
gauntlet, said, no, no, you've had your Romans, now it's my turn to name the cats. So, uh, we had some Irish cats there
and we still have one, Gráinne. Oh. Named after the famous oh
female pirate of the Irish Sea. Cool. And, uh, we had a couple
Irish named cats too. Very cool. I've got a question about Parris. Um, specifically at a convention years
ago, you told a story about your first real meeting with Parris in the sauna. Yes I did. At the 1975 Kublakhan. And the thing that got me is that
Paris had a very funny quip that I have not been able to remember. I have not been able to find online. What did Parris say when she
saw you in that women's sauna? Do you remember? I, I, I do. She, she did a, I'm not sure you,
you were young creatures, but do you know who WC Fields is? He had a particular way of speaking. She came in and she did a WC Fields
voice where she said, you know... 'pros' in science fiction fandom, 'pros'
is the name for professional writers. You go to conventions,
there are fans and pros. And there were not just me in that
sauna, but there were a number of other people, including, uh, Joe
Haldeman, I think, and a few others. And she came in and saw us, and
she said, 'ahhhhh, naked pros' in her best WC Fields voice. Thank you. It's been driving me crazy for years. I've been like... Parris had this really clever thing
she said, and I couldn't remember it. I found the story, but not that. I don't know, now this was 1975, and
Parris and I have told that story... we heard it in Dublin. Many times over the years, but I'm
getting, you know, I mean, science fiction fandom is changing and all this... I think if that happened today,
they would call the police. We'd be arrested, banned
from conventions and... You just gotta go to small conventions. In those days, there were a lot of
people fooling around at conventions. They were... half of the conventions I went
to, the fans would go skinny dipping in the hotel pool. Yeah, Sid wants to go back to those days. Right? We're happy to tell you that there's
definitely still wild convention times. We go to some small conventions
that are like 300 people where that is alive and well. We go to one called Ice and Fire Con
that is dedicated to your series. It's only 300 people, there's
been a lot of love matches there. There's like a few marriages
that have been made there... a few hookups. Yeah, it lives on... Just this last year, they did... There's probably no skinny
dipping in the hotel pool. I won't say that on the record. There is a hotel pool, but what happens
in it, that stays at Ice and Fire Con. Yeah. What happens at Ice and Fire
Con, stays at Ice & Fire Con. Quick anecdote about something that
happened there last year, there was... they host a tournament and a melee
every year where people use foam noodles to fight with and joust
with, the swords are plastic. It's, it's highly entertaining, but at
the end of it, a fan dueled another fan, like a quick melee duel, called him out. When he won, he declared he was
naming a queen of love and beauty and proceeded to propose to this woman. And her parents were
hiding behind and she... and they all appeared and it
was a really wonderful moment. She, of course she said yes. And it was great. And that's, uh, she's an artist that's,
uh, that has gone fully professional, mostly just creating art in your world. So that's a very good story. I have to tell a story there too. Oh, I don't know. I hope these people aren't still
in, in the fandom, I don't mean to hurt anyone's feelings, but in the
early days, probably like 2002, 2003. It was 2001, I think, the
Brotherhood Without Banners first started having parties. 2001. This was a couple years later,
but still early in the history. And, uh, one of the fans, uh, came
up me with a copy of the latest book, and said he wanted to propose
to this, uh, girl in, in the group. So he wanted me to write in a book
instead of just, you know, best wishes or keep your sword sharp or something. He wanted to write. Um, You know, I don't
remember what her name was. Uh, you know, dear Nymeria... Yeah. Will you marry Aegon? I'm using names, but it wasn't
that, it was the real names, it was Susie and Fred or something. Yeah. He wanted me to write, will you marry me? And I said, I can't write, will
you marry me and give her the book. She'll think that I'm proposing to her. I'm not proposing to her, but if
you want, I will write, uh, you know, Dear Nymeria, will you marry
Aegon, or something like that. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I wrote that in the book
and then there's a big party. There's a, you know, we're crowded
in the suite and, and he, he gave her the book and she opened it and... sad to say... He did not get the response he wanted. She looked at it and said, "are
you out of your fucking mind?" That's hilarious though, I'm
gonna have to ask around in the BWB and find out who that was. When someone proposes in
front of 70,000 fans... will you marry Joe? You know, what happens when she says no? It would be so traumatic. I dunno if that guy ever went
out again, or, uh, what happened to that particular book? Is it still sitting on her shelf? I want the book back. It was a hardcover. That's... Sid is looking at us sternly. I think we have to end this. Yeah, gotta end it. I wanna say one more thing before we... one, I wanna say, thank you. Two, I promised some other friends
that I would mention that, also at Ice and Fire Con, they've done
two musicals based on your series. One, Westeros: An American Musical,
which is based on Hamilton. And one is called Queens, which is
based on, I don't know if you've heard of Six: the Musical, it's about
the six wives of Henry the Eighth. Oh.
And so, it... you would enjoy that musical for one. Um, but I just wanted to mention that
you have inspired people to song. A whole, whole musical? A full musical? A full musical with dancing. It's on, they're on YouTube as well. Yeah.
Um, but yeah, it's a full... and it's, they're adapting A
Song of Ice and Fire, not Game of Thrones, very deliberately. Um, and so yeah, that exists, um,
as a loving tribute to your works. And thank you so much for... No, sounds fun. I didn't know about this convention. Uh, HBO is gonna do an
official convention. Yes, they are doing one in December. We're probably going to be going. But yeah, there are... there's two fan conventions, um, based
on your works, there's Ice and Fire Con, which is small, 300 person... and Titancon. And Titancon, um, and I guess
there's three, because there's also Con of Thrones, which is
obviously dedicated to HBO's Game of Thrones, um, more specifically. So yeah, you've, uh, you've birthed
a lot of stuff, a lot of fandom. There's a whole cottage industry
around your works, and a you know, full size industry. Thanks Sid, as well. Well, this was fun, thank you guys. Thank you. Thank YOU, really.
