SLF Portolan Project Interview with George R.R. Martin Dublin, Ireland, August 2019
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SLF Portolan Project Interview with George R.R. Martin Dublin, Ireland, August 2019 Mary Anne Mohanraj: Okay, I'm Mary Anne Mohanraj, I’m Director of the Speculative Literature Foundation. And I'm here today talking with George R.R. Martin, for what we hope will be a new series of pieces on the craft of fiction. Now, I'm also a Wild Cards writer and George is my editor there, and absolutely rigorous in his editorial requests [laughter] that my characters’ choices have consequences. He has had me kill my darlings on more than one occasion, and always for the better. But our plan today is to focus on epic fantasy, as seen in his Game of Thrones series. So, I first read your work in shorter form with pieces like the chilling novelette Sandkings. As a writer, I'm finding the transition from writing shorter works to novels, and longer series, to be challenging at times. So maybe if you can start by just talking a little about epic fantasy and how you approach it differently than other types of fiction writing, which I know you've written in a wide range of forms. George R.R. Martin: Yeah, yes. [pause] Well, epic fantasy in its modern form is very much influenced by Tolkien. I think you have to read Tolkien and look at what he did so successfully. A lot of the writers who follow Tolkien imitated him basically, but I think they took the wrong lessons from him. Hopefully, I took the right ones, but I didn't want to just duplicate Tolkien. I was also reading a lot of historical fiction, which is, you know, grittier, harder-edged, more realistic. And I wanted to meld epic fantasy tradition with the tradition of historical fiction. And that being said, you know, I also wrote some fantasies when I was first breaking in, back in the 70s, a few short stories, but mostly I wrote science fiction in those days; the market for science fiction was a lot bigger. You can look at my science fictions though and say, well, this is not the hard science fiction of the way somebody like Greg Benford would write it. This is really fantasy disguised as science fiction. So there's a lot of fantasy in my science fiction, and! There's a lot of science fiction in my fantasy. Always trying to think of how things really would be in practicality. So, you know, one example of that is my dragons. I've always been insistent that my dragons have only two legs, two legs and the forelegs are wings, because there's no creature on earth that has four legs and wings, the front legs become the wings. And these four-legged dragons really [pause] offended my science fictional sense, [laughter] my sense of biology and realism. And I know that seems ludicrous when you think of it; because my dragons also breathe fire, and there's nothing on earth that breathes fire. But still, that was so much part of the myth, I couldn't part with that. And I approached vampires the same way. When I wrote my vampire novel Fever Dream, you know, I looked at the things about vampires that I could justify in a fairly rationalist way. And I kept that. But other things, about ‘vampires can't cross running water’, well, obviously, that didn't work for books set entirely on the Mississippi. I threw that out. And vampires are not reflected in mirrors. How the hell would that work? When, you know, that violates all the laws of light, to physics and things like that. So I had to throw that out too. But I played with that and I made use of it. Mary Anne Mohanraj: So I think what what I'm hearing here, just check me on this, is that you look to history, to science for a certain level of rigor, so that even when you're constructing something that might have fantastical elements, you wanted to be sure that that additional rigor made the story stronger, but that you were also willing to throw out things if they didn't serve the story that you wanted to tell. George R.R. Martin: Yes. Yes, and you have to think about how every element affects every other element. Now, Game of Thrones, and its sequels, like Tolkien, is a relatively Low Fantasy fantasy. And again, I looked at Tolkien for this, you know, Gandalf is a wizard. But if you look through the books, he does very little wizard-like things. Mary Anne Mohanraj: That’s right. George R.R. Martin: When orcs attacked him, he draws his sword. He stands right next to Boromir and Aragorn fighting with a sword. He doesn't just wave his fingers and flames go out and destroy everything. Even when he's meeting the Balrog on the bridge, he's reciting spells and all that, but he's got his staff. He's got his sword and he's fighting the Balrog. Mary Anne Mohanraj: I feel like that is something you have us be careful of in Wild Cards too, right, is that you don't want the magic to be so powerful, so overwhelming, or the supernatural - the superhero powers - that it makes the story no longer interesting, right? George R.R. Martin: Yes, yes and you have to look at how everything connects with everything else. I mean, I get sent these days like every fantasy just being published as they arrive in hopes of me blurbing them. You know I can't possibly even read all of them. But some of them I do look into for a chapter or two, and the ones that have very High Fantasy where the wizards are really all powerful... It really irritates me when the wizards [are like] that, when they still have kings and princes and they have giant armies of 10,000 people crossing lands to fight and the wizard makes the giant army disappear by waving his hands. No one would have an army in such a world and there would not be kings in such a world. The wizards would be the kings. Mary Anne Mohanraj: That’s right. George R.R. Martin: You know, everything I've known about human nature, you know, we have this innate quest for power and dominance. And if we had the power with just a few spells to undo armies, we would be the rulers. Whoever had that power would rule, they wouldn't be the adviser to the ruler or someone who lives all alone in a tower. So you have to look, you know, if you're gonna make pigs fly, you know, it's gonna change the pork industry. [laughter] Hugely! Capturing pigs is going to be much harder. So think through everything where you depart from real life, and where you don't depart from real life. Make sure you learn everything you can about what you're writing about, whether it's, you know, medieval armies, or armor and weaponry, or care and feeding of horses, or whatever it is, try to get it right. Because if you get it wrong, somebody will notice and write you letters about it. [laughter] Mary Anne Mohanraj: Well, so that relates to another question I had. I think you've said that Game of Thrones was based in part on the War of the Roses. And if you could talk a little about how you used history- was it a jumping off point? Did you do extensive research? Are there files full of historical notes, timelines, character sheets? Are there spreadsheets? Or is it more that you read it and absorbed it and then went from there? George R.R. Martin: Well, I do have notes and timelines and spreadsheets and all of that stuff. But of my own material, not on the Wars of the Roses. (Thank you. Looks like I’m gonna suck down some breakfast here while we talk. Mary Anne Mohanraj: Of course.) George R.R. Martin: But for the actual historical material, it wasn’t a matter of reading it and absorbing it. Like, you know, for years before I started to write Fever Dream, I collected every book I could on life on the Mississippi in the steamboat era which roughly speaking was the 1850s through the 1870s. And you never know when you would need something and you keep the material on hand. Now the Internet has changed things, I have to admit. In the old days, you really had to absorb the material. It was in books. And it was good if the book was on your shelf. So you don’t have to go running to the library to look up something, but you'll find yourself, you know, writing and wondering what kind of underwear they wore in 1850. And you better know that because - Mary Anne Mohanraj: Someone will call you on it. George R.R. Martin: Yeah. Now of course, you can just probably type on Google what kind of underwear would they wear in 1850 and you'll get an answer which may or may not be right. But - Mary Anne Mohanraj: Although I kind of find that you know, when you read the texts, you get like little incidents, little moments. I'm working on an epic series, a space opera epic series, having to do with indenture and social movements and fighting for freedom and the right to vote, and I was reading John Lewis's graphic novel March and just like bits of dialogue, moments in conversation between people, will then spark ideas.