George R.R. Martin on 'The World of Ice & Fire'

so welcome to the WSJ cafe I'm going to do this sort of 7 Kingdom style so let's have a warm welcome for the father of dragons the the true king of Westeros george RR martin continue thank you guys glad to be here now you once wrote something that i think instead of a stirring sort of defense explanation of what banish is all about i want to read a little bit from that i think you know the past isn't probably going to read there is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us to the child who dreamt that one day who would hunt the force the night and feast beneath the hollow hills and idle loves to last forever somewhere south of oz in north of shangri-la they can keep their heaven when I die I'd sooner go to Middle Earth now tell me about why your real star not Westeros though that's too dangerous in Westeros what I love about that is now this new book you have out about the world of Ice and Fire kind of gives some the history of this world you built but critics readers sometimes haven't taken fantasy as seriously as really it deserves I mean junior Tolkien wrote about the fact that fantasy he thought was actually harder to write than regular mainstream writing because you have to build a whole world around it do you think that critics and readers take fantasy as serious as that should they give it the respect it should get or things changing things are definitely changing but I don't think we're there yet but I've seen you know an amazing change in in my lifetime you know when I was when I was young and reading science fiction books in school or comic books um you know I've had teachers take it take it away from me and say you're you're a smart kid why are you reading why are you reading this garbage you should be reading real book and that was the 1950s and early 1960s that was kind of the attitude and there are still ghosts of that around I mean fantasy and science fiction are now taught in many colleges they're reviewed in distinguished publications you know places like The Wall Street Journal or Time magazine or New York Times you know 4050 years ago that wasn't wasn't true we didn't you know if they had covered science fiction or fantasy at all it would be in a special column that appeared once a month science fiction and fantasy and they would be expected to review like 12 books all at once well the latest big mainstream novel got 5 pages all to itself but we are seeing that that breaking down but still not there entirely I mean yes it's taught in colleges but it's taught in special courses in science fiction fantasy or it's taught in popular culture courses as part of a popular culture curriculum you don't see even a book like JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings being taught in English literature as part of the Canon of the great books of English literature which it should be I mean we often say that one of the great tests of a great work of literature is does it survive over time and you know dokyun wrote that book in the 40s that came out in the 50s and here it is 2014 and millions of people are still reading it so I think it has survived the test of time far more than the books that were lauded and that may have won the Nobel Prize or the Pulitzer Prize or whatever prizes they were giving in 1956 but it still hasn't been admitted to the Canon but I think eventually that will come I don't know if it'll come in my lifetime or not but I can't complain I have I have a lot of readers and I have been reviewed in some amazing publications and we have this terrific TV show so I'm not going to do a lot a Rodney Dangerfield number on you here but that and of course you write fantasy and you're known for that but if you've had a long career I'm reading your work in Omni and analog and did you you had a science fiction story called with morning called miss fell an award-winning short story science fiction award losing story it was nominated for all the major awards but it lost all of them I have a long history of losing award well what in my mind and it's part of that and part of story right answers always they have to have answers but the questions are so much finer now in the world of Ice and Fire it's interesting you write it like a real history book in that some questions are left unanswered sources contradict each other why do you decide to leave so many answers on so many questions unanswered in the book and have some it's contradiction is there a joy in that for you do you have the real answers in your head somewhere I you know as you say I was trying to replicate a real history book you know when when I when I read about the some of the sources I've drawn on the Wars of the Roses or the Hundred Years War or you know the histories of Scotland or England or France you know you come across these wonderful stories and then later you come across well the historian said no no that story was a later fabrication none of it is true and and inevitably the story is so much better than the the boring version that the more distinguished modern historian is putting on you so you know I wanted to have the wonderful stories in but also had that little touch of realism by having people argue about well is it true or isn't true exactly how does it happen you know there's that famous quote from the man who shot Liberty valance you know when when truth and legend disagree print the legend so I print a legend but I you know hedge my bets a little so but that's that's been fun now going back aways I read that your first published work was actually a letter to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby are the comic book creators Fantastic Four number 20 yes praising the contents of Fantastic Four number eeen um I think it I said something along the lines of Shakespeare move over Stanley has arrived I also unfortunately used a phrase in a letter by gumbo which was fine until some other kids in my high school discovered a letter and I was tormented with by gumbo for the entire remainder of that sophomore year in high school or whatever it was so if you're gonna write a letter to a comic book don't use the phrase by gumbo it's it'll just get you a lot of humiliation well I said how many novelists are influenced by comics I mean Jonathan Lethem Marlon James now the list goes on but what about comics in my crochet bomb makeups right the The Adventures of Kavalier and clay um but what about comics influences you as a writer today and can we see the influence of comics that the early early comes on your work and what are some of your favorite comics today you know I was obsessive I was one of the guys who was right there at the beginning of comics fandom being formed in the early 60s and in addition to letters in the comic magazine I also wrote a mature comic book stories about my own heroes and in little amateur fanzines so I I was certainly part of it and I collected all the comics I don't follow comics as closely today partly because I'm really tired of reboots and and retcons and all these things where they go back and mess with the continuity it's always seem to me to be sort of a violation of the unspoken contract between reader and writer when they when they start doing that you know you read a comic for ten years and then they say oh we're starting it all over again and none of those stories that you read happened actually happened I knew they didn't actually happen but still they were you know that was part of that I was really well spider-man though this stuff that happened to spider-man now this stuff didn't happen to spider-man that is a cheat I hated that so I don't follow a lot of a lot of comics today but well as an old-school comic computers what do you think of all these comic book movies it seems you a lot of reboots and rehashing the retellings on the big screen you know I enjoy some of them but again you know I thought the first you know the Sam Raimi's to spider-man movies with Tobey Maguire were great the first two the third was kind of a mess but then they rebooted the whole thing that wasn't necessary let's just go ahead with spider-man 4 and way what the hell do we have to go back and tell the origin again and all that so and so even err I don't like these reboots and restarts I mean you asked about influences this was pointed out to me I had a number of letters in the Marvel Comics of the early 60s not only the one you referenced the first one that Fantastic Four but I had one in Avengers issue where I was praising a previous Avengers issue the one that introduced a character of Wonder Man now Wonder Man for those of you who are not up on the Avengers comics of the 1960s Wonder Man was this new character who had appeared and he joined the Avengers he was very powerful but he wasn't really a hero he was really a villain who had been created by one of the avengers foes to destroy the Avengers from within so you know he could become a member and any could portray them but he joined them and he got to know them and he liked them and when the moment came that he should have betrayed them to their deaths he wasn't able to do it and instead he went over to the heroic side and died and I love this story it was it was a great sigh Thor is a such a terrific story and I look back at it now and I see it's all over my work and say you know here's a hero here's a great hero who appears and then immediately dies here's a great character he's a hero but really he's a villain because he's got a secret but then when it comes time for him to do something villainous he's he redeems himself by doing something heroic instead I love great characters I love unexpected twists I love characters who die they did later mess it up by bringing Wonder Man back as they do in comic books but you know I don't make that mistake with most of my characters they usually stay pretty dead but I look at that and say oh my god I read that thing when I was like 13 years old and 14 years old and I really corrupted me for a life now also going back to your life as a young man new influences and throughout this new work the world of Ice and Fire there are a lot of wars a lot of conflict in and you've written about the fact that when you were a young man in the Vietnam War was going on you applied for conscientious objector status during the Vietnam War right what happened with that and tell me that you're thinking about war as a young man influenced your thinking about war in your books today what a certainly continuity I actually got conscientious objector status which was you know kind of a surprise to me because I wasn't a total pacifist I wasn't a Quaker or Mennonite you know in those days you had to draft and every city had a had a local draft board and when you applied to be a CEO you had to apply to your local draft board it wasn't anybody in Washington DC it was these five guys on a local draft board who decided whether you got it or not and conscientious objector status was very hard to get reputedly you only got it if you were religious it could approve a religious region usually and say that you were a Mennonite or a mesh or you know completely opposed to taking up arms whatsoever and I couldn't say that you know they're always ask you questions sometimes you'd be called in for an interview and it would be well what would you do if Hitler was raping your grandmother and it all right yeah I'd killed Hitler if he was raping my grandmother but uh and I was fought as well you should yeah you should do that yeah my grandmother and Hitler were actually both dead at the time so I didn't think it was real relevant but I thought I would apply for it anyway you know and to my surprise they they gave it to me maybe because I had I'd actually published a couple stories by that point it was very early in my career but and the stories were anti-war stories and they could read them and see you know that I wasn't just making this up that I'd already had a record of published fiction involved I'm not a total pacifist then or now what I am I do think the vast majority of wars in human history were completely unnecessary you know but every once in a while you get something like World War two I mean World War two has shaped the thinking of every generation since it was fought you know here in America and also in Europe but if you actually look at the broad span of history World War two is a fairly untypical war and you know the Nazis were like if the Nazis hadn't existed and someone put them in a fantasy book people would say it's way over the top what do you these guys are like cartoons they what they're gonna dress themselves in black uniforms they're gonna put like skulls on their hats meet come on that's too much nobody's gonna do that right they're like orcs in human form and I've always tried to react against through with my writing you know I don't want to do that bad guys all dress in black and they're really ugly and they eat human flesh and things like that and the good guys are all wear white uniforms and they're beautiful and because I don't I don't really see that in life you know the Nazis being accepted so so there was that but I did two years alternative service instead and in Vista which was like the domestic Peace Corps at the time I would have gone into the real Peace Corps but I was lousy at foreign languages I couldn't even make up Dothrak I we had to bring in another guy to do that so so um when you were a young man you know if you wanted to sort of experience world building you'd play Dungeons and Dragons or read a comic book today it seems when kids kids want a young your readers want to experience world building they go to video games do you see video games as a threat to fantasy writers like yourself we're presenting whole worlds and like books like the world of Ice and Fire for people to investigate our video game something you think I eating away at writing or challenging what you do video games video games are are addictive that's I don't play many video games but and it's not because I don't like them it's because when I did play a few I liked them too much I would lose months to video if somebody would give me a video game and I'd start playing it and then I'd I'd be killed and I'd have to play it again and then I have to play it again next day I know it's like you know 7:00 in the morning I've been up all night um bleary-eyed I'm still playing this damn one one more time one more reboot here you know to play the video game so I finally said no I better I better stop doing that but uh I do see kids who have the same same reaction you know who really get into video games that being said I think ultimately video games are going to become a new art form I don't think they're there yet they're fun they're not art but they could be art you know we had last year we had the premiere of season 4 Game of Thrones right here in New York and we had the premiere party afterwards and oculus rift was at that premiere party with these uh does virtual reality thing that they built where you send it in the cage up the side of the wall you know you put on this headset and then you get in this cage and you send up the side of the wall and the wind buff at you and the cage sways and you know you walk on the wall and the wildlife shoot arrows at you and then you fall to your death it was it's only like another 30 seconds long or whatever however long it was but it was so realistic and so immersive that it was incredible and you know ultimately you you you Wed that technology with video games and you can have an adventure and experience that you will live because I mean here you could you could see it you could feel it because the cage was rocking they had wind machines that would you know just like the wind howling along the wall you could feel the cold winds so they really had a lot of sensory stuff going on now it's still a very primitive technology is a technology in its infancy but when you take the the plots and the world-building of video games and you couple it with that ultimately you will get a an entertainment medium you know not unlike many science fiction writers predicted a long time ago where you'll put yourself in a sensory deprivation tank or something like that and it'll be you're actually living some adventure where you have you're not just reading an author's event but you're choosing you're making your own decisions you're going wherever it is you're in a different world I imagine the first ones to really pioneers technology will be the porn guys because porn always seems to lead every technological innovation here from from videos to you know to CDs to to whatever to the internet now but ultimately will be used for all sorts of things and hopefully at some point we'll get a shakespeare who who make a true art form out of it and will make a game that will be totally immersive I wouldn't even call it a game anymore it'll be I don't know what you call it but will that affect what I do will that affect books or television or films hard to say I don't know books are still around their death has been predicted numerous times you know films we're going to kill books they didn't so television was going to kill books it hasn't the internet what's going to kill books no had that hasn't worked out either books are hanging in there what art forms do die you know this does not I have a lot of vaudeville to see here in New York at the moment radio drama is is pretty well wiped out so what will happen when this new art form comes along well we'll find out I don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime but some of you in the audience may may live to see it now one thing I found fascinating about your new book is the fact that it shows us the world beyond we've seen and shows us countries and places that are influenced maybe by Asia or North Africa or the Middle East but for the most part fantasy is very monocultural you know you watch the film with a hobbit and no black hobbits walking up and down and and or even Game of Thrones a lot of them may not many of the main characters are people of color and I'm wondering what why in your opinion is fantasy so monocultural and what could be done to change that well I think there's a relatively simple answer it's it's it's so monocultural because it's mostly been written by white men and you know I'm a 66 year old white man Tolkien was a I don't know what Age II was but you know he was born in the 19th century in England and he was knocks for dawn they lived in small English towns his entire life and we look back on our own history and the cultures and things we were taught raised up on legends of Robin Hood and and King Arthur and you know tope ian was a expert on Beowulf and all that and that's true of many of the Tolkien imitators even even the people writing it today are all drawn from the same cultural pool so that's largely why it is what has been up there present however I do see evidence that's changing if you if you look at the world science fiction where do you go which is given every year and the john w campbell award which has award for the best new writer that's given every year at the world SF convention more and more of them have been writers a very different ethnic backgrounds more and more women women of color when women from other countries of Indian descent of you know black writers like NK jemisin and Nandi oaken for Asian writers I can Lou these guys have won that Campbell Award and they're coming out with books of their own and drawing from different cultural traditions from from their own traditions be they you know Japanese or African or Chinese whatever at not historical novels mind you but fantasy novels but but drawn from that tradition and some of them are doing very fine work now the question the impact that they have on the field is largely going to be determined by you guys I mean if these books sell publishers will publish more of them they'll be made into movies they'll be made in two television shows and if those are successful there will be more movies and more television shows Hollywood in particular is very imitative if they don't succeed though and the books by you know the old white guys continue to succeed then you'll get more books by old white guys so I actually like to think of myself as an old white guy who's really 16 inside but you know this there's that in your books people a lot of tragedies in a setback say they lose dragons they lose their lives in the new book didn't one guy who lose the battle and they and they dip his skull and gold and uses a drinking cup so people people go through a lot and I'm wondering what's the greatest setback you have faced in your career I'm sure nothing as bad as that it's looking good but I'm just wondering what's a greatest setback you're facing your professional or personal career yes they they're you know I've never been murdered or killed or tortured or going to locked away for 50 years so I'm better than a that a you know medieval trader you know for a writer in the twentieth century two worlds of science fiction and fantasy I suppose the greatest setback I ever faced was the failure of my fourth novel the Armageddon rag I mean I started publishing in 1971 my first novel came out in 1977 I was a hot young writer for quite a long time being nominated for us and never lose each novel that I wrote got a bigger advance and more publicity and more Awards nominations than the one before and until I wrote the Armageddon rag and that seemed perfect of course it got me the biggest advance I've gotten to date it got great reviews it was not only a World Fantasy Award my publishers were certain it would be my first bestseller and nobody bought it and I discovered that you know as you keep rolling the dice sooner or later they come up boxcars I still love the Armageddon rag I'm proud of it it's I think it's a good novel it certainly was well reviewed and well respected in its time but for whatever reason it was a commercial failure and suddenly I found I could not sell my fifth novel suddenly I found no one wanted my books anymore because you're only as hot as your last the success you have a few flops in either books or or television and and you can find yourself your careers over so I add Lea enough the very book that ended my career as a novelist opened my career in Hollywood because who was optioned for film and the guy who option it for film he never got it made as a film but he was the same guy who CBS picked to revive to Twilight Zone and when he did that he called me up and say you want to write a Twilight Zone script for us so suddenly I found myself in television writer and that basically saved me because you know there was a period there when I was unable to sell that fifth novel where I was looking at having to sell my house and I was I took one of those courses in you know buying real estate for no money down you know in my desperation of oh my god how am I going to make any any money here you know there may be some aspiring writers in the audience here some people who dreamed of writing let me tell you it's not a job for anyone who wants security if you want security there's lots of nice careers that one could have where one starts at the bottom and climbs the rung and ultimately there's a pension and a gold watch at the end of it writer is not one of those jobs it's a constant rolling of the dice and you can have great success and suddenly it can all blow away and that's what happened to me with a with the Armageddon ring now I was at a Book Festival recently and the author of the remains the day made the point that he thought that writers do their best work and they peak in their 30s and 40s he's close to 60 years old now I'm wondering what do you think of that theory and how do you think aging affects novels does it improve their crap because they know more about the world and do they are the people really better when they're younger what do you think I think it's really an individual thing you know there is something to what he says you you know I know the fields of science fiction and fantasy best and you can look at some writers in that field and and see that yes indeed they did do their their best work when they were in their 30s and 40s or sometimes even their 20s some of them then at a certain point get writer's block or something where they suddenly seize up you mean you have a writer I theater Sturgeon immensely prolific for the early part of his career he hits like the 60s and he spends the last 20 years of his life working on allegedly one novel and then he dies and the novel finally comes out say this he took 20 years with this it's like and then you see other writers who continue to be prolific but it's like they're rewriting the same novel or and you know this one is just like the last one which was just like the one before that which was just like the one before that so it's like they're the old dog but they don't know any new tricks however there are also some amazing exceptions Jack Vance one of my favorite writers continue to write terrific books well into his 90s Nigel Tranter the Scottish historical novelist again continued to work right up until his mid-90s writing the same kind of books he'd written when he was in his 20s so it all really depends on on the writer and there are writers who don't even start - they're late I mean our a Lafferty a wonderful writer of science fiction short stories spent his entire life as an electrician and it's only when he retired at the age of 65 and started collecting Social Security that he started to write and he had a whole second career as a as a very weird unique but fascinating science fiction writer you know from the ages about 65 to 80 so it all depends on the radio now I'm preparing for this interview I want back these are my all copies of your books and all the short stories I noticed that the ones one choice one starter collection you mentioned the the Song of Ice and Fire is gonna be four volumes and now it's seven volumes it was virtually three volumes yes it keeps growing I think it will grow even more over the one's going to be the end of it I hope not um you know I'm not gonna make any promises and blood because I have been wrong before but my intent is to finish it in seven now that's not to say I won't ever write about Westeros again you know I'm also writing the dunk and egg stories right we have a collection of those coming out next year called the the night of Seven Kingdoms those take place in Westeros but ninety years earlier and having created this entire world which you know is chronicled in the world of Ice and Fire the world book that just come out I want to return and and writin it again and write about some of the other countries and other times in other places so there are a lot of stories that I can tell but first I got to finish this present story and there also other non westeros things I want to write I want to write more short stories again that's how I begin my career I love short stories I want to write a sequel to fever dream I want to finish the fifth novel that infamous fifth novel that I was unable to sell I wrote 200 pages of it but then I couldn't find anyone to buy it but I still think about it from time to time and I'm always coming up with new ideas you know ideas are ideas are everywhere ideas all around me and I'm always having ideas the question is translating the idea into into a story that's the hard part so after you finish the winds of winter and you finish a dream of spring you may actually continue to investigate new stories around this whole world you're created it will be the end of it yes yes I certainly I'm going to write more Dunkin egg stories the first three are only the beginning I I have to carry them all all the way through their career so I will I will do that and then who knows that'll be a few years from now so I hope I'm have as much energy as Jack Vance or Jack Williamson or some of the other great SF writers who have continued to write into their 80s and 90s and so forth either that or that someone comes up with a you know youth system I would like to like to recapture my youth my lost youth it's probably in Bayonne New Jersey where I was born somewhere I I'll go over and find it there and some pizza baller now we want to ask one or two questions from our Twitter followers and wj+ if people sent in their questions and one question someone had is where do you first come up with the ideas for these books this Shane at what the heck man so so he asked what I loved when I had to read the actual Twitter handles now what did it first come up with the idea for these books um does he keep tweaking as it goes on or every characters fate already determined the the main characters I know where I'm going with them but there are there are a million secondary characters and for those you know I do have different ideas at different points that's an impossible question is the question of where do you get your ideas what ideas like I Sarah all around you know you just have an idea you don't know where it comes from and that there are a few cases where I specifically know where an idea came from I read something where I saw something but I had an experience a triggered an idea but those are very few it said mostly it's just oh that would be interesting but where did they come from I didn't have it a moment ago when now I had it it popped up in my brain welcome folks at the things I mean CS Lewis wrote that when he came up with the crowns of Narnia he came up with the images first the image of a faun holding an umbrella an image of a queen and a sledge and I want and I know you came up with the first chapter of the book first of a boy heading for a beheading right now it was an image or event or something that sparked that first chapter they set you on the path to trade in his old world not that I know of but certainly came from somewhere but it just came vividly and and there it was and I had the whole chapter in my head not just you know bran and the beheading but also the finding of the direwolf pups in the summer snows I knew that I knew it had to be the summer snows that phrase in the summer snows with a contradiction in it that it implies that tells you so much about the world was just there and I sat down and wrote it put aside the other book I was doing and did that well we're gonna end it there at the beginning thanks a lot george RR martin the name of the book is the world ice and fire world on fire yes indeed thank you you

Channel: The Wall Street Journal

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Length: 33min 51sec (2031 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 30 2014