1 00:00:00,442 --> 00:00:07,294 [applause] 2 00:00:07,294 --> 00:00:09,294 EVE EWING: For those of you who don't know 3 00:00:09,294 --> 00:00:11,012 my name is Eve Louise Ewing. 4 00:00:11,012 --> 00:00:13,845 I'm the person on the stage who is not George R. R. Martin. 5 00:00:13,845 --> 00:00:15,415 [applause] 6 00:00:15,415 --> 00:00:19,015 George R. R. Martin: The winner of the 21st century award. 7 00:00:19,015 --> 00:00:20,465 EVE: Yes, very recent winner of the 21st 8 00:00:20,465 --> 00:00:22,150 century award. Thank you. 9 00:00:22,150 --> 00:00:26,569 [applause] 10 00:00:26,569 --> 00:00:28,870 GEORGE: I think I could be a contender for 11 00:00:28,870 --> 00:00:30,286 the 13th century award. 12 00:00:30,286 --> 00:00:31,353 [laughs] 13 00:00:31,353 --> 00:00:33,762 EVE: Well this stage, this is a very beautiful 14 00:00:33,762 --> 00:00:37,273 setup, that also gives me a strangely ominous feeling that something terrible 15 00:00:37,273 --> 00:00:39,274 is about to happen. 16 00:00:39,274 --> 00:00:40,478 [laughs] 17 00:00:40,478 --> 00:00:42,375 Hopefully that's not the case. 18 00:00:42,375 --> 00:00:45,358 It is such a tremendous honor to sit down with you, I"m really grateful 19 00:00:45,358 --> 00:00:46,810 that you're here. 20 00:00:46,810 --> 00:00:50,852 I'm gonna ask you a bunch of questions, for about an hour. 21 00:00:50,852 --> 00:00:53,077 They'll mostly be about writing, generally. 22 00:00:53,077 --> 00:00:54,459 GEORGE: Very good. 23 00:00:54,459 --> 00:00:56,464 EVE: Then I'll ask you some fan 24 00:00:56,464 --> 00:00:57,763 submitted questions. 25 00:00:57,763 --> 00:01:01,098 We won't have an open audience Q&A this evening but many people were 26 00:01:01,098 --> 00:01:04,417 gracious enough to submit their questions through the Chicago Humanities Festival. 27 00:01:04,417 --> 00:01:08,135 GEROGE: Sounds good to me. 28 00:01:08,135 --> 00:01:10,819 EVE: Okay great let's get into it. 29 00:01:10,819 --> 00:01:14,387 'A Song of Ice and Fire' has emerged as the work for which you are 30 00:01:14,387 --> 00:01:18,560 most widely known, and you've made an indelible mark on popular culture 31 00:01:18,560 --> 00:01:20,759 but you have had a capacious career. 32 00:01:20,759 --> 00:01:23,635 Beginning as a professional writer in 1970, 33 00:01:23,635 --> 00:01:26,096 and since then you've produced a wildly diverse body of work, 34 00:01:26,096 --> 00:01:28,775 I could take all night listing your 35 00:01:28,775 --> 00:01:30,175 projects, 36 00:01:30,175 --> 00:01:33,814 but I'm going to throw a few out there for folks that are not familiar. 37 00:01:33,814 --> 00:01:37,210 You're early novels 'Dying of the Light', 'Fever Dream', you wrote for a 38 00:01:37,210 --> 00:01:39,496 1980's reboot of 'The Twilight Zone', 39 00:01:39,496 --> 00:01:41,697 wrote for the TV adaptation of 'Beauty and the Beast' . 40 00:01:41,697 --> 00:01:45,069 The landmark, somewhat bizarre, surrealist show 'Max Headroom', 41 00:01:45,069 --> 00:01:50,917 short story collections like 'Sand Kings', 'Portraits of His Children', I could go 42 00:01:50,917 --> 00:01:52,386 on and on. 43 00:01:52,386 --> 00:01:56,188 Does it ever bother you that so many people want to talk to you primarily 44 00:01:56,188 --> 00:01:59,125 about 'A Song of Ice and Fire'? 45 00:01:59,125 --> 00:02:03,272 GEORGE: It's a little surreal sometimes, 46 00:02:03,272 --> 00:02:08,340 I understand of course that 'A Song of Ice and Fire' 47 00:02:08,340 --> 00:02:11,779 and 'Game of Thrones' are vastly more popular than anything else 48 00:02:11,779 --> 00:02:13,793 I've ever done. 49 00:02:13,793 --> 00:02:19,294 But it does startle me sometimes that some people think it's the only thing 50 00:02:19,294 --> 00:02:20,648 I've ever done. 51 00:02:20,648 --> 00:02:28,415 I sometimes even read in articles online, how I began in 1996 with 'Game of Thrones'. 52 00:02:28,415 --> 00:02:32,368 As I said, my first story appeared in 1971. 53 00:02:32,368 --> 00:02:38,355 So I had 25 years of publishing 50 short stories, and novels, 54 00:02:38,355 --> 00:02:41,570 and short story collections, editing anthologies, 55 00:02:41,570 --> 00:02:45,487 winning various Hugo and Nebula awards, 56 00:02:45,487 --> 00:02:48,356 and losing a lot more Hugo and Nebula awards. 57 00:02:48,356 --> 00:02:49,821 [laughter] 58 00:02:49,821 --> 00:02:53,709 There was a lot there, and it's not like it's secret or anything or it was written 59 00:02:53,709 --> 00:02:58,077 under a pseudonym, it's all perfectly accessible if you google my name. 60 00:02:58,077 --> 00:02:59,876 [laughter] 61 00:02:59,876 --> 00:03:03,143 None the less, an amazing number of people seem ignorant to it. 62 00:03:03,143 --> 00:03:07,330 I should mention, on the things you listed there, that I did do two projects for 63 00:03:07,330 --> 00:03:12,781 'Max Headroom' but neither one was ever filmed, sadly. 64 00:03:12,781 --> 00:03:17,667 I wrote the 'Max Headroom' Christmas show, which was actually in pre-production 65 00:03:17,667 --> 00:03:19,385 when the show was cancelled. 66 00:03:19,385 --> 00:03:23,155 We were not able to film that, which broke my heart, 67 00:03:23,155 --> 00:03:25,804 because it was a really fun episode. 68 00:03:25,804 --> 00:03:29,320 We recently did a 'Max Headroom' reunion at my little theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 69 00:03:29,320 --> 00:03:33,105 We did a staged reading of it, Matt Frewer actually came in for it. 70 00:03:33,105 --> 00:03:34,941 He performed with some local actors. 71 00:03:34,941 --> 00:03:40,410 It was great to finally see that after like 30 years, it being acted out. 72 00:03:40,410 --> 00:03:42,676 Even if only, by voices. 73 00:03:42,676 --> 00:03:44,296 EVE: Did you film it? 74 00:03:44,296 --> 00:03:47,009 GEORGE: Did we? I don't know. 75 00:03:47,009 --> 00:03:48,944 We might have taped it. 76 00:03:48,944 --> 00:03:50,829 EVE: No one here seems to know either. 77 00:03:50,829 --> 00:03:51,779 [laughter] 78 00:03:51,779 --> 00:03:53,580 GEORGE: We might have taped it, ya. 79 00:03:53,580 --> 00:03:58,949 Max was an amazing show, advanced for its time. 80 00:03:58,949 --> 00:04:00,234 EVE: Oh, absolutely. 81 00:04:00,234 --> 00:04:01,934 GEORGE: The young people here probably 82 00:04:01,934 --> 00:04:04,352 don't even know what 'Max Headroom' was. 83 00:04:04,352 --> 00:04:06,685 EVE: Only old people like me know. 84 00:04:06,685 --> 00:04:09,237 GEORGE: It was based on a TV movie that had 85 00:04:09,237 --> 00:04:11,320 been done in England. 86 00:04:11,320 --> 00:04:15,545 It takes place 23 minutes into the future, something like that. 87 00:04:15,545 --> 00:04:23,224 It was a show about television, and artificial computer host Max Headroom 88 00:04:23,224 --> 00:04:25,410 who was the host of his own show. 89 00:04:25,410 --> 00:04:28,596 He was actually a personality that lived in a computer. 90 00:04:28,596 --> 00:04:32,310 Of course we didn't actually have any computers capable of doing that, 91 00:04:32,310 --> 00:04:38,414 in the early 90's when the show was on so Max Headroom was acted by 92 00:04:38,414 --> 00:04:41,649 Matt Frewer in extensive make up. 93 00:04:41,649 --> 00:04:45,052 A lot of people thought that he was a real computer host. 94 00:04:45,052 --> 00:04:49,251 It would be great to revive it, but the shows are still a lot of fun. 95 00:04:49,251 --> 00:04:52,389 EVE: It's a classic, I think it's a little bit 96 00:04:52,389 --> 00:04:56,053 in the uncanny valley of creepiness, the kind of make up look that is 97 00:04:56,053 --> 00:04:59,638 supposed to look like a computer. 98 00:04:59,638 --> 00:05:01,307 GEORGE: Yes, yes definitely. 99 00:05:01,307 --> 00:05:04,591 EVE: I'm sure that the success of 100 00:05:04,591 --> 00:05:07,626 'A Song of Ice and Fire' has probably contributed, for some people who know 101 00:05:07,626 --> 00:05:10,600 how to use the google machine, to access your back list. 102 00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:14,631 Are there particular earlier works of yours that you really want to 103 00:05:14,631 --> 00:05:17,128 shout out, that you wish people would read more? 104 00:05:17,128 --> 00:05:22,664 GEORGE: Like anybody else I have favorite stories 105 00:05:22,664 --> 00:05:25,048 and less favorite stories. 106 00:05:25,048 --> 00:05:29,267 When I broke in I wrote mostly short stories. 107 00:05:29,267 --> 00:05:34,035 I published my first story in 1971, in Galaxy magazine, "The Hero". 108 00:05:34,035 --> 00:05:40,289 Over the next few years I published thirty, forty, fifty short stories, 109 00:05:40,289 --> 00:05:42,889 in the science fiction magazines of the day. 110 00:05:42,889 --> 00:05:50,662 I didn't attempt my first novel until 1976, I wrote it and it 111 00:05:50,662 --> 00:05:52,659 came out in 1977. 112 00:05:52,659 --> 00:05:55,225 So I had six years of just publishing short stories. 113 00:05:55,225 --> 00:05:58,777 Probably my best known work before 'A Song of Ice and Fire' was 114 00:05:58,777 --> 00:06:01,061 a short story called 'Sand Kings'. 115 00:06:01,061 --> 00:06:04,513 It appeared in Omni, it won both the Hugo and the Nebula awards. 116 00:06:04,513 --> 00:06:09,216 That one is soon to be a major motion picture I hope, 117 00:06:09,216 --> 00:06:11,317 or possibly a minor motion picture. 118 00:06:11,317 --> 00:06:15,101 I don't know, but it will be a motion picture we think, anyways, 119 00:06:15,101 --> 00:06:16,768 so that's cool. 120 00:06:16,768 --> 00:06:21,121 We have 'Fever Dream', my historical horror novels 121 00:06:21,121 --> 00:06:24,372 set on the Mississippi river in 1857. 122 00:06:24,372 --> 00:06:26,406 EVE: And there are vampires. 123 00:06:26,406 --> 00:06:28,723 GEORGE: Ya, vampires and steam boats. 124 00:06:28,723 --> 00:06:33,612 That was a novel that I was particularly fond of. 125 00:06:33,612 --> 00:06:37,593 And my 'Wild Card' series, which is actually the series I've been working on 126 00:06:37,593 --> 00:06:39,876 longer than anything else. 127 00:06:39,876 --> 00:06:42,448 I'm mostly the editor on that, though I write for it too. 128 00:06:42,448 --> 00:06:46,765 It's a super hero world, not really super heroes. 129 00:06:46,765 --> 00:06:50,965 People with super powers, they don't necessarily become heroes. 130 00:06:50,965 --> 00:06:54,883 It's unconventional in that it's a realistic look at an alternate 131 00:06:54,883 --> 00:06:59,302 world in which an alien virus gives some people super powers. 132 00:06:59,302 --> 00:07:04,991 When pitching 'Wild Cards' I have to say why it is not a conventional 133 00:07:04,991 --> 00:07:07,639 super hero template. 134 00:07:07,639 --> 00:07:14,791 I say what would happen in a real world if all of you who are here tonight, 135 00:07:14,791 --> 00:07:17,559 suddenly had a super power? 136 00:07:17,559 --> 00:07:21,011 Some of you could run really fast, some of you could throw lighting bolts, 137 00:07:21,011 --> 00:07:25,630 some of you were really strong, some of you could walk through walls. 138 00:07:25,630 --> 00:07:28,879 Entirely arbitrarily, 'Wild Cards'. 139 00:07:28,879 --> 00:07:32,230 How would it change your life, how would it change the world, 140 00:07:32,230 --> 00:07:33,865 what would you do? 141 00:07:33,865 --> 00:07:35,399 I ask people that. 142 00:07:35,399 --> 00:07:39,867 You know, all the years I've been asking people that no one has ever answered, 143 00:07:39,867 --> 00:07:43,219 I would buy a spandex costume and fight crime. 144 00:07:43,219 --> 00:07:46,354 [laughter] 145 00:07:46,354 --> 00:07:50,310 Which means that there is something wrong with the conventional comic book 146 00:07:50,310 --> 00:07:54,275 trouple. 147 00:07:54,275 --> 00:07:57,756 'Wild Cards' is an examination of that, but it's also a lot of fun. 148 00:07:57,756 --> 00:07:59,375 EVE: Speaking of comics, 149 00:07:59,375 --> 00:08:02,025 you've said that as you became a reader in your early life, 150 00:08:02,025 --> 00:08:04,877 comics were a really important escape for you, from the stiffling 151 00:08:04,877 --> 00:08:08,448 1950's literary world of Dick and Jane, who are very boring people. 152 00:08:08,448 --> 00:08:13,066 You've said that Stan Lee was one of your greatest literary influences. 153 00:08:13,066 --> 00:08:15,047 As a Marvel Comics writer I'm contractually obligated to ask 154 00:08:15,047 --> 00:08:18,464 you about that. 155 00:08:18,464 --> 00:08:21,283 Are there lessons from comics as a medium that you take into 156 00:08:21,283 --> 00:08:23,183 your other writing? 157 00:08:23,183 --> 00:08:27,669 GEORGE: Yes, I think. 158 00:08:27,669 --> 00:08:32,454 It would be very nice to say that my great literary influences were 159 00:08:32,454 --> 00:08:39,273 F. Scott Fitzgerald and Charles Dickens and other respected literary figures, 160 00:08:39,273 --> 00:08:41,207 and Tolkien of course. 161 00:08:41,207 --> 00:08:44,597 I admire those three writers all enormously, but, 162 00:08:44,597 --> 00:08:48,877 Stan Lee was probably more influential than any of them. 163 00:08:48,877 --> 00:08:51,929 The first published words of mine ever to appear were my letter 164 00:08:51,929 --> 00:08:54,479 in Fantastic Four #20. 165 00:08:54,479 --> 00:08:58,613 Which was critiquing, if you could call it a critique, Fantastic Four #17. 166 00:08:58,613 --> 00:09:02,668 My critique consisted of saying, move over Shakespeare, 167 00:09:02,668 --> 00:09:05,000 Stan Lee has arrived. 168 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:06,935 [laughter[ 169 00:09:06,935 --> 00:09:10,001 You've gotta wonder why Stan chose to publish that letter. 170 00:09:10,001 --> 00:09:16,955 I'd read comic books since I was a little kid, 171 00:09:16,955 --> 00:09:20,472 the funny animal comics, Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, 172 00:09:20,472 --> 00:09:23,441 Archie, all of that stuff. 173 00:09:23,441 --> 00:09:27,259 Super heroes, especially the DC super heroes, 174 00:09:27,259 --> 00:09:31,712 Super Man, Bat Man, The Flash, all of that. 175 00:09:31,712 --> 00:09:35,943 I had read all of those. 176 00:09:35,943 --> 00:09:40,147 The minute Marvel came on the scene, I think my interest in comics had 177 00:09:40,147 --> 00:09:45,248 actually been waning, the DC comics of the time were stiffling, 178 00:09:45,248 --> 00:09:52,485 they were perfectly circular. 179 00:09:52,485 --> 00:09:55,736 Super Man, he was Clark Kent he worked for the Daily Planet. 180 00:09:55,736 --> 00:09:59,370 Perry White was the editor, Jimmy Olson was his best friend. 181 00:09:59,370 --> 00:10:03,055 Lois Lane was his girlfriend. 182 00:10:03,055 --> 00:10:05,763 Something would happen, aliens would invade or there would be 183 00:10:05,763 --> 00:10:08,825 a villain or something, and Super Man would have an adventure. 184 00:10:08,825 --> 00:10:11,775 It would go circular, it would end right where it began. 185 00:10:11,775 --> 00:10:15,160 Everything would be back in place, nothing really ever happened in 186 00:10:15,160 --> 00:10:16,776 a Super Man comic. 187 00:10:16,776 --> 00:10:19,375 Which I realized after reading about 100 or so of them. 188 00:10:19,375 --> 00:10:23,462 You could read them in any order, they had their template and 189 00:10:23,462 --> 00:10:25,613 nothing was ever gonna happen. 190 00:10:25,613 --> 00:10:30,033 Jimmy Olson might become a giant turtle man in the course of the adventure 191 00:10:30,033 --> 00:10:33,924 but by the end of the adventure he would be back to being Jimmy Olson. 192 00:10:33,924 --> 00:10:36,468 There was no permanent changes. 193 00:10:36,468 --> 00:10:41,190 Then Stan Lee came along with Marvel, and the characters were fighting in the 194 00:10:41,190 --> 00:10:44,825 Fantastic Four, the Thing didn't like being the Thing. 195 00:10:44,825 --> 00:10:47,890 He was constantly fighting with Johnny Storm. 196 00:10:47,890 --> 00:10:51,724 They didn't have secret identities, their identities were out there. 197 00:10:51,724 --> 00:10:53,790 Then Spider-Man came along. 198 00:10:53,790 --> 00:10:59,841 Spider-Man, he didn't have his Lois Lane, he had a series of girlfriends. 199 00:10:59,841 --> 00:11:03,977 Liz Allen at first, who he had the hots for but she preferred to 200 00:11:03,977 --> 00:11:05,531 bully Flash Thompson. 201 00:11:05,531 --> 00:11:07,530 He couldn't get anywhere with her. 202 00:11:07,530 --> 00:11:10,047 Then he took up with an older woman, Betty Brandt, who was 203 00:11:10,047 --> 00:11:11,999 J. Jonah's secretary. 204 00:11:11,999 --> 00:11:14,082 He had that relationship for a while. 205 00:11:14,082 --> 00:11:15,732 Then he took up with Gwen Stacy. 206 00:11:15,732 --> 00:11:17,371 EVE: That didn't work out. 207 00:11:17,371 --> 00:11:18,873 [laughter] 208 00:11:18,873 --> 00:11:20,286 GEORGE: She died, ya. 209 00:11:20,286 --> 00:11:22,753 That was traumatic, be she actually died! 210 00:11:22,753 --> 00:11:28,088 DC never killed Lois Lane, or even Jimmy Olson. 211 00:11:28,088 --> 00:11:30,623 Although you might have wanted to. 212 00:11:30,623 --> 00:11:33,140 Nothing ever happened in the DC comics. 213 00:11:33,140 --> 00:11:35,024 A lot was happening in Marvel. 214 00:11:35,024 --> 00:11:39,040 You didn't know who was safe, you didn't know what would actually happen. 215 00:11:39,040 --> 00:11:41,226 Time actually passed. 216 00:11:41,226 --> 00:11:44,927 Believe it or not, looking at the old dotard you see in hat 217 00:11:44,927 --> 00:11:47,778 before you, I went to high school with Peter Parker. 218 00:11:47,778 --> 00:11:51,494 We were both in high school when I started reading Spider-Man comics. 219 00:11:51,494 --> 00:11:54,982 Just about the same time we both graduated high school and 220 00:11:54,982 --> 00:11:56,582 went to college. 221 00:11:56,582 --> 00:12:00,667 I went to North Western, I'm in a different city, I'm making new friends, 222 00:12:00,667 --> 00:12:04,702 I've got a room mate that I didn't know before, taking new classes. 223 00:12:04,702 --> 00:12:06,920 It's adjusting to a new whole new world. 224 00:12:06,920 --> 00:12:09,238 Peter Parker went through the same stuff. 225 00:12:09,238 --> 00:12:11,838 He went to college, he didn't go as far away from home, 226 00:12:11,838 --> 00:12:14,306 but he did have to move out of the house with Aunt May. 227 00:12:14,306 --> 00:12:17,441 Things happened and that was amazing. 228 00:12:17,441 --> 00:12:22,259 Another one of my comic books letters, I published a number of letters 229 00:12:22,259 --> 00:12:24,810 was a letter to the Avengers. 230 00:12:24,810 --> 00:12:31,396 Which again, was published, it was about Avengers #9, 231 00:12:31,396 --> 00:12:33,980 which is when they introduced Wonder Man. 232 00:12:33,980 --> 00:12:36,781 I'm not sure any of you remember that issue, you were probably 233 00:12:36,781 --> 00:12:38,413 a little too young. 234 00:12:38,413 --> 00:12:40,833 You probably don't even remember Wonder Man. 235 00:12:40,833 --> 00:12:44,504 Wonder Man came in and he joined the Avengers, he was a brand new hero, 236 00:12:44,504 --> 00:12:50,920 he really wasn't a hero, he was a spy who was set to join the Avengers 237 00:12:50,920 --> 00:12:53,454 to destroy them from within. 238 00:12:53,454 --> 00:12:57,371 He was only playing a hero, he was actually gonna destroy 239 00:12:57,371 --> 00:12:58,905 them from within. 240 00:12:58,905 --> 00:13:02,716 Then he became friendly with them and he couldn't bring himself 241 00:13:02,716 --> 00:13:04,527 to destroy them from within. 242 00:13:04,527 --> 00:13:08,142 He betrayed his masters and they killed him, 243 00:13:08,142 --> 00:13:11,444 So he died in the same issue he was introduced in. 244 00:13:11,444 --> 00:13:18,997 I loved this of course, so I wrote a long letter about how great this was. 245 00:13:18,997 --> 00:13:23,382 I look back now and my whole career was based on Avengers #9. 246 00:13:23,382 --> 00:13:26,134 [laughter] 247 00:13:26,134 --> 00:13:29,650 Introducing these grey characters who have divided loyalties who are 248 00:13:29,650 --> 00:13:31,786 not what they seem. 249 00:13:31,786 --> 00:13:34,705 EVE: And were a little traumatized. 250 00:13:34,705 --> 00:13:37,554 GEORGE: and then killing them unexpectedly. 251 00:13:37,554 --> 00:13:40,642 Now of course it was comics so they brought Wonder Man back eventually. 252 00:13:40,642 --> 00:13:45,978 That's the big flaw with comics, and I try never to bring anyone back. 253 00:13:45,978 --> 00:13:48,009 Or if I do, they're really screwed up. 254 00:13:48,009 --> 00:13:52,144 EVE: What I'm really hearing you 255 00:13:52,144 --> 00:13:54,947 talk about here is the idea of stakes. 256 00:13:54,947 --> 00:13:58,862 Your readers have to believe that the stakes are really high, 257 00:13:58,862 --> 00:14:01,396 that somebody really might get murdered. 258 00:14:01,396 --> 00:14:05,259 I read this interview with you where you talk about reading Lord of the Rings, 259 00:14:05,259 --> 00:14:08,257 and of course people frequently compare you to Tolkien, 260 00:14:08,257 --> 00:14:09,928 and feeling betrayed, 261 00:14:09,941 --> 00:14:11,962 OK if you haven't read Lord of the Rings you've had many decades so this is your 262 00:14:11,962 --> 00:14:14,031 spoiler alert, OK. 263 00:14:14,031 --> 00:14:17,949 That after they throw the ring in to the fires of Mordor and it's destroyed 264 00:14:17,949 --> 00:14:21,431 that they come back to the shire and the shire is getting sacked, 265 00:14:21,431 --> 00:14:23,632 the scouring of the shire, 266 00:14:23,632 --> 00:14:27,051 and you talk about feeling betrayed, that the story didn't have a happy ending. 267 00:14:27,051 --> 00:14:32,219 Now you've gone on where basically all your writing, you've become famous for 268 00:14:32,219 --> 00:14:35,205 writing iterations of the scouring of the shire. 269 00:14:35,205 --> 00:14:38,956 It seems like part of what you're taking on is keeping the stakes high. 270 00:14:38,956 --> 00:14:42,974 GEORGE: Yes, I do believe that. 271 00:14:42,974 --> 00:14:48,226 I read Lord of the Rings when it was first published in the United States. 272 00:14:48,226 --> 00:14:51,177 Actually, the illegal pirated edition. 273 00:14:51,177 --> 00:14:59,445 They were amazing books, I couldn't get enough of them. 274 00:14:59,445 --> 00:15:03,548 I was only like 13 years old, or something like that. 275 00:15:03,548 --> 00:15:10,652 When the ring went into the volcano, I said, well this is the end of the story, 276 00:15:10,652 --> 00:15:13,251 why is there so much more? 277 00:15:13,251 --> 00:15:16,918 Then I hit the scouring of the shire and I realized it wasn't the unequivocal 278 00:15:16,918 --> 00:15:21,303 happy ending, yay, the heroes have won, that I thought it would be. 279 00:15:21,303 --> 00:15:24,605 I really didn't understand it as a 13 year old. 280 00:15:24,605 --> 00:15:27,771 Of course, I reread Lord of the Rings every few years. 281 00:15:27,771 --> 00:15:31,759 I've come to not only understand it but I have a deep appreciation of it. 282 00:15:31,759 --> 00:15:34,544 Peter Jackson's movies are brilliant I think. 283 00:15:34,544 --> 00:15:40,645 They're as good an adaptation of Lord of the Rings that you could possibly get. 284 00:15:40,645 --> 00:15:45,796 But I do miss the scouring of the shire, which he doesn't include. 285 00:15:45,796 --> 00:15:52,383 It's an important part of the book, it says something important. 286 00:15:52,383 --> 00:15:55,349 I took that to heart. 287 00:15:55,349 --> 00:15:58,934 The other thing about reading Tolkien, of course is, like Wonder Man, 288 00:15:58,934 --> 00:16:00,888 it had a similar effect, 289 00:16:00,888 --> 00:16:04,838 In Fellowship when Gandalf dies, what the hell? 290 00:16:04,838 --> 00:16:09,108 Gandalf died? you can't kill Gandalf. 291 00:16:09,108 --> 00:16:13,607 He's the head guy, he knows everything that's going on. 292 00:16:13,607 --> 00:16:18,343 The other characters seemed like kids compared to Gandalf. 293 00:16:18,343 --> 00:16:23,413 The four hobbits and the squire guys, and I don't trust Boromir. 294 00:16:23,413 --> 00:16:29,048 Now Tolkien later brought him back. 295 00:16:29,048 --> 00:16:32,298 EVE: He brought him back as like Gandalf 2.0. 296 00:16:32,298 --> 00:16:35,096 GEORGE: I know, I didn't like Gandalf the White, 297 00:16:35,096 --> 00:16:38,216 I prefer Gandalf the Grey, I've always preferred grey characters to 298 00:16:38,216 --> 00:16:40,501 white characters. 299 00:16:40,501 --> 00:16:43,953 If Professor Tolkien was here we could argue about whether Gandalf 300 00:16:43,953 --> 00:16:45,804 should have come back or not. 301 00:16:45,804 --> 00:16:50,524 It had an enormous effect on me, killing Gandalf. 302 00:16:50,524 --> 00:16:54,938 Killing Gandalf also sets up, in the second book when he kills Frodo. 303 00:16:54,938 --> 00:16:58,109 Oh my god, he killed Frodo, Frodo was supposed to be the hero 304 00:16:58,109 --> 00:17:00,810 he was the ring bearer, now Sam is the ring bearer? 305 00:17:00,810 --> 00:17:02,577 How is this gonna work out? 306 00:17:02,577 --> 00:17:07,412 All of these things had an enormous effect on a young me and, 307 00:17:07,412 --> 00:17:09,280 they did raise the stakes. 308 00:17:09,280 --> 00:17:11,745 The minute you kill Gandalf, anybody can die. 309 00:17:11,745 --> 00:17:14,629 Then you're looking at the members of the fellowship and saying, 310 00:17:14,629 --> 00:17:17,164 who are you going to kill next? 311 00:17:17,164 --> 00:17:19,867 We got several extra hobbits, they could go. 312 00:17:19,867 --> 00:17:21,524 [laughter] 313 00:17:21,524 --> 00:17:23,468 EVE: Mary and Pippen, they get a little 314 00:17:23,468 --> 00:17:25,702 indistinguishable after a while. 315 00:17:25,702 --> 00:17:27,822 GEORGE: He didn't kill them, 316 00:17:27,822 --> 00:17:29,952 but I was afraid he would, so, that's the whole point 317 00:17:29,952 --> 00:17:33,406 To have the reader on the each of their seat. 318 00:17:33,406 --> 00:17:37,189 To not know what's going to happen. 319 00:17:37,189 --> 00:17:43,776 That's something I try to do in my books. 320 00:17:43,776 --> 00:17:47,978 Especially in the scary parts, or the battles, 321 00:17:47,978 --> 00:17:53,795 If you're really going into a battle, you would be afraid before hand. 322 00:17:53,795 --> 00:17:59,263 You would have this deep visceral fear, are you going to survive the battle? 323 00:17:59,263 --> 00:18:03,682 Nobody knows. 324 00:18:03,682 --> 00:18:06,968 I want that experience for the reader, I want the reader to not just 325 00:18:06,968 --> 00:18:09,437 read the book but to live the book. 326 00:18:09,437 --> 00:18:14,172 To almost be afraid to turn the next page, 327 00:18:14,172 --> 00:18:17,490 when suddenly the hero is surrounded by six big guys with axes. 328 00:18:17,490 --> 00:18:20,974 You shouldn't fee, oh, it's Conan, he's gonna get out of it. 329 00:18:20,974 --> 00:18:22,958 Six guys with axes, nothing. 330 00:18:22,958 --> 00:18:26,459 You should be terrified that these six guys with axes are going to 331 00:18:26,459 --> 00:18:28,043 hack you apart. 332 00:18:28,043 --> 00:18:31,244 I guarantee you if you leave this wonderful place tonight and are 333 00:18:31,244 --> 00:18:34,829 confronted with six guys with axes you'll be scared. 334 00:18:34,829 --> 00:18:39,840 We'll read about you in the Tribune tomorrow. 335 00:18:39,840 --> 00:18:42,299 How your hacked up body was found. 336 00:18:42,299 --> 00:18:44,349 [laughter] 337 00:18:44,349 --> 00:18:45,732 EVE: Alright, OK. 338 00:18:45,732 --> 00:18:50,452 So, you mention the Wild Card series which you have been editing for basically 339 00:18:50,452 --> 00:18:53,852 as long as I have been alive. 340 00:18:53,852 --> 00:18:57,870 It's a really cool concept, not only for the reasons you mentioned 341 00:18:57,870 --> 00:19:01,642 about really engaging with whatever the real stakes of super powers are, 342 00:19:01,642 --> 00:19:04,690 but also because it's a shared universe, and you've collaborated on these 343 00:19:04,690 --> 00:19:08,525 edited stories written by over 50 authors, working collaboratively. 344 00:19:08,525 --> 00:19:11,693 You've also edited multiple anthologies. 345 00:19:11,693 --> 00:19:14,694 My personal opinion which you may agree or disagree with, 346 00:19:14,694 --> 00:19:19,712 is that a good editor is actually a much rarer thing than a good writer. 347 00:19:19,712 --> 00:19:23,660 I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about your identity as an editor, 348 00:19:23,660 --> 00:19:26,762 and how it may differ from your identity as a writer. 349 00:19:26,762 --> 00:19:29,631 GEORGE: I don't know if ts a rarer thing, 350 00:19:29,631 --> 00:19:35,686 but in the anthologies that I have done, anthologies like Dangerous Women, 351 00:19:35,686 --> 00:19:40,353 Warriors, Rouges, I had the great pleasure of working with Gardener, 352 00:19:40,353 --> 00:19:46,522 who unfortunately passed away last year. 353 00:19:46,522 --> 00:19:51,623 Gardener was one of the greatest editors in the entire history of science fiction. 354 00:19:51,623 --> 00:19:56,560 He won the Hugo award for best editor sixteen times. 355 00:19:56,560 --> 00:19:59,059 Which is pretty amazing. 356 00:19:59,059 --> 00:20:02,595 Working with him was on those books was increidble. 357 00:20:02,595 --> 00:20:06,579 I have edited other things, Wild Cards is a unique challenge because it is 358 00:20:06,579 --> 00:20:09,097 a shared world. 359 00:20:09,097 --> 00:20:13,733 When you're editing an ordinary anthology, not that any anthology is ordinary, 360 00:20:13,733 --> 00:20:18,401 when you're editing a more conventional anthology you're just buying good stories 361 00:20:18,401 --> 00:20:22,903 and they may have a theme, the theme is unicorns, 362 00:20:22,903 --> 00:20:28,106 so you invite people to send you unicorn stories. 363 00:20:28,106 --> 00:20:30,824 But all you're looking at is if its a good story, is it a bad story, 364 00:20:30,824 --> 00:20:34,908 can it be improved, if it has flaws, how do you fix it? 365 00:20:34,908 --> 00:20:41,027 With a shared world you still have that, but also your stories have to fit together. 366 00:20:41,027 --> 00:20:43,577 They are all essentially parts of a whole. 367 00:20:43,577 --> 00:20:46,880 They can't have contradictions, they can't have duplications. 368 00:20:46,880 --> 00:20:51,547 So a lot more rewriting is required, a lot more working together and 369 00:20:51,547 --> 00:20:53,397 a lot more editing. 370 00:20:53,397 --> 00:20:59,409 The Wild Cards are a very challenging series to edit, but I enjoyed doing that. 371 00:20:59,409 --> 00:21:02,718 I actually sort of got into editing almost by accident. 372 00:21:02,718 --> 00:21:08,653 My first published book was actually a book I edited not a book I wrote. 373 00:21:08,653 --> 00:21:15,556 At beginning of my career in 1973, I was nominated for the John W. Campbell 374 00:21:15,556 --> 00:21:20,009 award for the best new writer in Science Fiction. 375 00:21:20,009 --> 00:21:24,343 That was a brand new award given for the first time in 1973. 376 00:21:24,343 --> 00:21:26,510 Campbell had just died in 1971. 377 00:21:26,510 --> 00:21:29,210 I lost that award, it was the first of many awards that I've lost over the years 378 00:21:29,210 --> 00:21:31,778 in the field. 379 00:21:31,778 --> 00:21:35,097 I was nominated, and it is a great honor to be nominated, the nominators 380 00:21:35,097 --> 00:21:40,148 picked me as one of the six best new writers that entered Science Fiction 381 00:21:40,148 --> 00:21:42,230 in the last two years. 382 00:21:42,230 --> 00:21:46,701 At the time there was an anthology called the Hugo Winners, 383 00:21:46,701 --> 00:21:51,185 and there was an anthology called the Nebula Award's Book, 384 00:21:51,185 --> 00:21:53,487 but I wasn't nominated for them yet. 385 00:21:53,487 --> 00:21:57,923 There was no anthology for the Campbell award nominees. 386 00:21:57,923 --> 00:22:01,375 I thought there should be because it would a guaranteed sale for me. 387 00:22:01,375 --> 00:22:06,609 After I lost that very same convention, I went to some of the editors and said, 388 00:22:06,609 --> 00:22:10,995 why don't you have a Campbell award anthology just like you have the 389 00:22:10,995 --> 00:22:13,078 Hugo and Nebula anthologies? 390 00:22:13,078 --> 00:22:17,978 I thought somebody famous would do it and I could sell them a story, 391 00:22:17,978 --> 00:22:20,229 it would be a guaranteed sale for me. 392 00:22:20,229 --> 00:22:22,848 Instead they said, oh good idea you do it. 393 00:22:22,848 --> 00:22:26,582 So suddenly I found myself editing a book, I didn't know anything about editing books 394 00:22:26,582 --> 00:22:33,102 I learned on the fly, and I did six volumes of the series that would be 395 00:22:33,102 --> 00:22:36,653 called the New Voices, ultimately. 396 00:22:36,653 --> 00:22:42,874 That was my introduction to editing, entirely by circumstance. 397 00:22:42,874 --> 00:22:46,373 Watch out if you suggest anything to someone they might say, hey you do it. 398 00:22:46,373 --> 00:22:54,976 Suddenly you'll find yourself working with some people. 399 00:22:54,976 --> 00:22:57,895 EVE: Speaking of editing, we live in a world 400 00:22:57,895 --> 00:23:00,347 that sort of fetishizes brevity, and short things, 401 00:23:00,347 --> 00:23:03,763 what do you see as the virtue of continuing to write very long works 402 00:23:03,763 --> 00:23:09,199 in that world, and how do you negotiate that editorially? 403 00:23:09,199 --> 00:23:16,902 GEORGE: I do not share fetishation of brevity. 404 00:23:16,902 --> 00:23:20,104 I am in the anti brevity camp. 405 00:23:20,104 --> 00:23:22,356 [laughter] 406 00:23:22,356 --> 00:23:27,456 My stories throughout my career have been getting longer and longer, 407 00:23:27,456 --> 00:23:30,259 like I said when I began in the 70's I wrote mostly short stories. 408 00:23:30,259 --> 00:23:33,658 At a certain point my short stories were getting longer, they were 409 00:23:33,658 --> 00:23:35,459 now novelettes. 410 00:23:35,459 --> 00:23:38,594 When I won my first Hugo it was for a novella. 411 00:23:38,594 --> 00:23:41,413 So each of these is a longer category, than the other, 412 00:23:41,413 --> 00:23:46,231 then eventually six seven years into my career I started writing novels. 413 00:23:46,231 --> 00:23:52,065 They were relatively short novels, at some point for sanity I found myself 414 00:23:52,065 --> 00:23:56,784 writing Game of Thrones and it just kept getting longer and longer and longer 415 00:23:56,784 --> 00:24:06,171 I like it I think the length gives it a richness, gives it a texture. 416 00:24:06,171 --> 00:24:13,457 You can create world building, you can create an immersive world, 417 00:24:13,457 --> 00:24:16,977 and immersive universe, the readers will lose themselves in. 418 00:24:16,977 --> 00:24:23,395 For the length of the novel and perhaps for many novels beyond that, many works. 419 00:24:23,395 --> 00:24:26,579 I like that. 420 00:24:26,579 --> 00:24:33,566 Yesterday when we attended the award ceremony, they were flashing 421 00:24:33,566 --> 00:24:40,018 quotations about writing on the walls of the site where the awards were being 422 00:24:40,018 --> 00:24:43,069 presented. 423 00:24:43,069 --> 00:24:46,787 One of them was a quote that I wrote for a book called On Fantasy, 424 00:24:46,787 --> 00:24:51,539 it was about when I die they can keep their heaven I'd rather go to Middle Earth. 425 00:24:51,539 --> 00:24:55,290 Tolkien was the first really great world builder. 426 00:24:55,290 --> 00:25:02,060 He created Middle Earth in such detail, that it seems like a real place to me. 427 00:25:02,060 --> 00:25:06,978 I know Middle Earth much more than I know many real places. 428 00:25:06,978 --> 00:25:09,363 What do I know about Uruguay? 429 00:25:09,363 --> 00:25:12,613 I know a lot more about middle earth than I do about Uruguay. 430 00:25:12,613 --> 00:25:18,566 I can describe it's scenic wonders and the customs of its people. 431 00:25:18,566 --> 00:25:21,484 The roads that go from there to there. 432 00:25:21,484 --> 00:25:25,534 The Kings who ruled in past ages. 433 00:25:25,534 --> 00:25:28,253 EVE: And the languages and the geography 434 00:25:28,253 --> 00:25:30,589 GEORGE: It's an amazing place, I've tried to do 435 00:25:30,589 --> 00:25:33,754 the same with Westeros. 436 00:25:33,754 --> 00:25:37,573 That's one of the things that I think is important about writing Fantasy, 437 00:25:37,573 --> 00:25:39,325 Epic Fantasy. 438 00:25:39,325 --> 00:25:42,293 There are many different types of fantasy of course. 439 00:25:42,293 --> 00:25:48,144 If any of you are aspiring writers, or ever took fiction courses 440 00:25:48,144 --> 00:25:51,762 or studied fiction in high school or college or something like that 441 00:25:51,762 --> 00:25:55,280 they used to at least in my day, talk about the elements of fiction. 442 00:25:55,280 --> 00:25:59,513 Plot, theme, character, etc. etc. 443 00:25:59,513 --> 00:26:03,733 One of the elements of fiction was setting. 444 00:26:03,733 --> 00:26:07,901 In most mainstream fiction, contemporary fiction, 445 00:26:07,901 --> 00:26:10,119 setting gets short shrift. 446 00:26:10,119 --> 00:26:14,871 OK, it's in Chicago, OK it's in New York City, 447 00:26:14,871 --> 00:26:19,256 or even, it's in Victorian England, we know all about that, 448 00:26:19,256 --> 00:26:24,659 but the greatest fantasy to my mind is distinguished by its settings. 449 00:26:24,659 --> 00:26:28,612 The setting almost becomes a character, Middle Earth becomes a real place, 450 00:26:28,612 --> 00:26:33,893 it becomes a character, the Shire, Rivendale, Ministereth, 451 00:26:33,893 --> 00:26:37,611 Mordor, each of these is very vivid and real, and I've tried 452 00:26:37,611 --> 00:26:41,582 to do the same with my own Westeros. 453 00:26:41,582 --> 00:26:45,998 Create a setting that was almost a character in it's own right. 454 00:26:45,998 --> 00:26:48,451 EVE: Did you notice that one of those 455 00:26:48,451 --> 00:26:52,001 quotations on the wall was said by you, but was attributed to me? 456 00:26:52,001 --> 00:26:53,836 GEORGE: I did notice that. 457 00:26:53,836 --> 00:26:55,170 [laughter] 458 00:26:55,170 --> 00:26:56,687 Hey! 459 00:26:56,687 --> 00:26:58,971 EVE: I thought that was very strange. 460 00:26:58,971 --> 00:27:01,171 GEORGE: What a coincidence, Eve said exactly 461 00:27:01,171 --> 00:27:02,339 the same thing. 462 00:27:02,339 --> 00:27:04,257 EVE: I did not say that. 463 00:27:04,257 --> 00:27:06,823 I complained to someone but no change was made, 464 00:27:06,823 --> 00:27:08,725 so I want you to know that I'm glad you noticed that, I thought 465 00:27:08,725 --> 00:27:16,744 it was very bizarre. 466 00:27:16,744 --> 00:27:20,477 GEORGE: There was also a typo in one of 467 00:27:20,477 --> 00:27:22,029 my other ones. 468 00:27:22,029 --> 00:27:25,912 There was one where I said that because I'm a reader I have lived a thousand lives, 469 00:27:25,912 --> 00:27:27,581 loved a thousand loves. 470 00:27:27,581 --> 00:27:29,731 They changes the loves to lives. 471 00:27:29,731 --> 00:27:32,449 So it was I've lived a thousand lives and loved a thousand lives. 472 00:27:32,449 --> 00:27:35,117 Which is sort of repetitious. 473 00:27:35,117 --> 00:27:36,917 EVE: We had a lovely time 474 00:27:36,917 --> 00:27:40,285 we're very grateful, it was a wonderful event. 475 00:27:40,285 --> 00:27:42,643 GEORGE: The awards were handsome, and we got to 476 00:27:42,643 --> 00:27:47,637 meet the mayor and there were 82 authors on stage. 477 00:27:47,637 --> 00:27:52,140 Amazing authors I wish all their books had been on sale. 478 00:27:52,140 --> 00:27:55,591 I would have gone home with a big stack of them. 479 00:27:55,591 --> 00:27:58,443 EVE: So yesterday you were interviewed 480 00:27:58,443 --> 00:28:00,226 by Scott Simon from NPR. 481 00:28:00,226 --> 00:28:04,710 I thought you were very game in talking about what its like to have so many people 482 00:28:04,710 --> 00:28:06,613 waiting for your books. 483 00:28:06,613 --> 00:28:10,581 I have an ongoing fascination with the rhetoric people use, 484 00:28:10,581 --> 00:28:13,366 because sometimes it seems to veer out of the realm of fandom 485 00:28:13,366 --> 00:28:15,950 and into the realm of entitlement. 486 00:28:15,950 --> 00:28:20,834 In a way that seems to forget that you are a human person who is trying to 487 00:28:20,834 --> 00:28:23,636 make art which is a very difficult and unpleasant thing. 488 00:28:23,636 --> 00:28:26,887 What are your thoughts on that, do you think that people fundamentally 489 00:28:26,887 --> 00:28:30,254 misunderstand something about what writing is or about what this whole 490 00:28:30,254 --> 00:28:32,971 business is? 491 00:28:32,971 --> 00:28:36,056 GEORGE: Well, yes, I think that some of them do. 492 00:28:36,056 --> 00:28:37,556 Certainly. 493 00:28:37,556 --> 00:28:46,511 Some of them don't seem to understand that writers are different from eachother. 494 00:28:46,511 --> 00:28:50,661 They will point out to me some other writer and say, in the time you've been 495 00:28:50,661 --> 00:28:54,110 working on Winds of Winter he's published seven novels. 496 00:28:54,110 --> 00:28:56,230 Indeed there are writers who do that. 497 00:28:56,230 --> 00:28:59,214 There are writers you can practically set your watch by. 498 00:28:59,214 --> 00:29:01,714 They publish a novel a year, boom, boom, boom. 499 00:29:01,714 --> 00:29:05,084 That's great, I wish I could do that, but I can't, I never could. 500 00:29:05,084 --> 00:29:09,133 There are a couple of novels I wrote throughout my career that took me 501 00:29:09,133 --> 00:29:14,102 a year to write but they were like a fifth the size of the novels 502 00:29:14,102 --> 00:29:15,934 I'm writing now. 503 00:29:15,934 --> 00:29:20,756 So that's not going to happen. 504 00:29:20,756 --> 00:29:25,858 I can't help but think, I don't want all the wonderful young 505 00:29:25,858 --> 00:29:31,109 people I see in the audience to start taking aim at me and throw things here 506 00:29:31,109 --> 00:29:34,244 EVE: Well we have all these apples. 507 00:29:34,244 --> 00:29:35,978 [laughter[ 508 00:29:35,978 --> 00:29:38,162 GEORGE: I do think there is an aspect of 509 00:29:38,162 --> 00:29:42,130 generational change about this, I think the older readers 510 00:29:42,130 --> 00:29:46,499 baby boomers like me, or maybe even generation X'ers are used to 511 00:29:46,499 --> 00:29:48,299 waiting for things. 512 00:29:48,299 --> 00:29:52,746 The internet has created a generation that is used to instant gratification. 513 00:29:52,746 --> 00:29:58,002 Instead of answers, they want what they want and they want it now. 514 00:29:58,002 --> 00:30:00,885 I think the internet kind of creates that mindset. 515 00:30:00,885 --> 00:30:05,056 The old days when I needed to learn something I would have to go to the 516 00:30:05,056 --> 00:30:10,141 library and find a book on it, find another book on it just to 517 00:30:10,141 --> 00:30:12,525 double check that it was right. 518 00:30:12,525 --> 00:30:18,778 Now if I want to know anything I wip up google and boom, 519 00:30:18,778 --> 00:30:22,112 there's the answer in two minutes, 20 seconds actually. 520 00:30:22,112 --> 00:30:25,531 Depending how fast your internet speed is. 521 00:30:25,531 --> 00:30:30,716 It creates a different set of expectations 522 00:30:30,716 --> 00:30:40,468 There are many things the internet does, but it hasn't helped me write faster. 523 00:30:40,468 --> 00:30:45,889 So there it is. 524 00:30:45,889 --> 00:30:53,823 I try to keep it into proportion, it is sometimes annoying to me that 525 00:30:53,823 --> 00:30:57,409 there is so many voices that just want Winds of Winter, and choose to remind 526 00:30:57,409 --> 00:31:00,627 me every opportunity. 527 00:31:00,627 --> 00:31:04,529 I know perfectly well that if any of you go home tonight and go on Twitter 528 00:31:04,529 --> 00:31:07,961 "I was just at the Chicago Symphony Listening to George R. R. Martin" 529 00:31:07,961 --> 00:31:11,114 within the first three responses to your tweet someone will say well, 530 00:31:11,114 --> 00:31:13,548 "where's Winds of Winter?". 531 00:31:13,548 --> 00:31:15,465 Why isn't he writing it? 532 00:31:15,465 --> 00:31:19,502 I mean go home try it, see if it doesn't work that way. 533 00:31:19,502 --> 00:31:28,437 On the other hand, I think for the vast majority of writers 534 00:31:28,437 --> 00:31:33,357 including some really good writers, like I said we had 80 writers on the 535 00:31:33,357 --> 00:31:37,490 stage yesterday at the Carl Sandberg awards 536 00:31:37,490 --> 00:31:40,192 Many distinguished writers who have written novels and 537 00:31:40,192 --> 00:31:43,626 works of non-fiction, terrific stuff. 538 00:31:43,626 --> 00:31:48,246 You probably would never have heard of many of them, 539 00:31:48,246 --> 00:31:52,279 their books probably sell relatively few copies. 540 00:31:52,279 --> 00:31:56,331 For the vast majority of writers including me, for much of my career, 541 00:31:56,331 --> 00:32:02,135 the big question is obscurity, how do you get yourself noticed amongst 542 00:32:02,135 --> 00:32:05,969 all the books out there. 543 00:32:05,969 --> 00:32:09,353 I try not to be ungrateful about the fact that I have millions of people 544 00:32:09,353 --> 00:32:12,054 eagerly awaiting my next book. 545 00:32:12,054 --> 00:32:15,906 It certainly beats having no one give a damn about when my next book 546 00:32:15,906 --> 00:32:18,141 is coming out. 547 00:32:18,141 --> 00:32:23,159 Which is the fate of most writers, that's what they struggle with. 548 00:32:23,159 --> 00:32:26,326 You have to keep all of these things into proportion. 549 00:32:26,326 --> 00:32:35,164 With Game of Thrones achieving best seller status, the books actually not 550 00:32:35,164 --> 00:32:38,965 Games of Thrones, Game of Thrones was not a best seller when it first came out. 551 00:32:38,965 --> 00:32:40,882 EVE: Was it 'Song of Swords'? 552 00:32:40,882 --> 00:32:43,251 GEORGE: It was the second book 'Clash of Kings' 553 00:32:43,251 --> 00:32:46,351 hit the New York Times list for one week at 13 then it vanished. 554 00:32:46,351 --> 00:32:49,936 The third book 'Storm of Swords' debuted a little higher and lasted 555 00:32:49,936 --> 00:32:53,853 a little longer, it wasn't until the fourth book 'Feast for Crows' that 556 00:32:53,853 --> 00:32:56,688 I hit number one on the Times list. 557 00:32:56,688 --> 00:33:03,623 Then the show hit, and the books were already number one New York Times 558 00:33:03,623 --> 00:33:08,042 best sellers but the show made everyone crazy about them. 559 00:33:08,042 --> 00:33:12,795 It also made me famous to a degree that I had never anticipated in my life 560 00:33:12,795 --> 00:33:14,212 being famous. 561 00:33:14,212 --> 00:33:17,046 This happened to me when I was in my 60's. 562 00:33:17,046 --> 00:33:22,931 It's changed my life in ways that I don't necessarily love, but there 563 00:33:22,931 --> 00:33:25,681 are things about it that are great. 564 00:33:25,681 --> 00:33:28,251 Probably more good things than bad things. 565 00:33:28,251 --> 00:33:30,133 It certainly was a change. 566 00:33:30,133 --> 00:33:32,817 I'm glad it happened to me, strange as it seems, 567 00:33:32,817 --> 00:33:35,001 when I was in my 60's. 568 00:33:35,001 --> 00:33:38,570 It's given me an understanding of why people like Lindsay Lohan and 569 00:33:38,570 --> 00:33:40,772 Justin Bieber go crazy. 570 00:33:40,772 --> 00:33:42,823 [laughter] 571 00:33:42,823 --> 00:33:49,241 To be a sixteen year old kid and suddenly have that level of fame and attention 572 00:33:49,241 --> 00:33:54,692 and loss of privacy and thousands of people commenting on every shirt that 573 00:33:54,692 --> 00:34:00,262 you wear or every word that you say, I don't know how any sixteen year old 574 00:34:00,262 --> 00:34:04,747 could possibly handle that. 575 00:34:04,747 --> 00:34:11,798 I at least have had many long years of life on earth before I 576 00:34:11,798 --> 00:34:15,850 descended into the strange world of celebrity. 577 00:34:15,850 --> 00:34:17,651 EVE: And a lot of opportunity to make your 578 00:34:17,651 --> 00:34:22,187 make your work on your own terms and not kind of be accessing your success. 579 00:34:22,187 --> 00:34:27,105 So there is a cultural critique Doreen St. Felix 580 00:34:27,105 --> 00:34:30,739 who referred to Gwendolyn Brooks work, you may remember from your time in Chicago 581 00:34:30,739 --> 00:34:33,708 as being a citizen poet. 582 00:34:33,708 --> 00:34:37,126 I think that in Santa Fe where you have lived for many many years, you could 583 00:34:37,126 --> 00:34:42,429 be seen as a really active citizen author, you own the Jean Cocteau Cinema, 584 00:34:42,429 --> 00:34:46,296 which you bought and had restored as an eclectic movie house after it had 585 00:34:46,296 --> 00:34:48,163 been shut down. 586 00:34:48,163 --> 00:34:51,199 You've been a huge supporter of the Wild Spirits wolf sanctuary. 587 00:34:51,199 --> 00:34:55,967 Of course you are a co-conspirator in MeowWolf and their many installations 588 00:34:55,967 --> 00:34:57,817 and incredible works. 589 00:34:57,817 --> 00:35:02,220 Do you see this kind of community work as part of who you are as a writer 590 00:35:02,220 --> 00:35:05,136 or is it that you're a writer and you do this other stuff? 591 00:35:05,136 --> 00:35:07,705 Do you see part of your job as building community in this way? 592 00:35:07,705 --> 00:35:10,705 GEORGE: I think i'll go with I'm a writer 593 00:35:10,705 --> 00:35:13,040 and I do all this other stuff. 594 00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:21,993 I do believe in the concept of giving back, I've been very fortunate. 595 00:35:21,993 --> 00:35:27,095 There are a lot of things that go into being successful in any chosen career. 596 00:35:27,095 --> 00:35:30,130 But that's certainly true of a writer, you have to have talent, 597 00:35:30,130 --> 00:35:33,181 you have to persist, and you have to have luck. 598 00:35:33,181 --> 00:35:36,683 There are some great great books out there and great writers who 599 00:35:36,683 --> 00:35:40,684 have never achieved a large audience who have never made that much money, 600 00:35:40,684 --> 00:35:43,869 who have faced a lot of struggles. 601 00:35:43,869 --> 00:35:49,053 I've been very lucky and I'm cognizant of that. 602 00:35:49,053 --> 00:35:52,455 Not to say I haven't worked hard, I have. 603 00:35:52,455 --> 00:35:54,455 Luck is part of it. 604 00:35:54,455 --> 00:35:58,174 Robert A. Heinlen, the first Science Fiction book that I ever read was 605 00:35:58,174 --> 00:36:00,625 'Have Space Suit--Will Travel' by Robert A. Heinlen, 606 00:36:00,625 --> 00:36:03,093 and he was my favorite author for many years. 607 00:36:03,093 --> 00:36:06,695 He was probably the greatest Science Fiction author of his day. 608 00:36:06,695 --> 00:36:09,679 They called him the dean of Science Fiction at one point. 609 00:36:09,679 --> 00:36:15,714 Heinlen famously said "you can never pay back the people who helped you 610 00:36:15,714 --> 00:36:20,199 when you were starting out, so you have to pay forward." 611 00:36:20,199 --> 00:36:26,684 I've always taken that principal to mind, I've tried to pay forward both inside 612 00:36:26,684 --> 00:36:28,552 and outside of the genre. 613 00:36:28,552 --> 00:36:34,772 Doing things like supporting Wild Spirit, reviving the Jean Cocteau, and within 614 00:36:34,772 --> 00:36:41,292 the field trying to blurp good books by young writers who are just starting out 615 00:36:41,292 --> 00:36:44,759 to get their books a little attention. 616 00:36:44,759 --> 00:36:49,545 Helping writers workshops like Clarien and Clarien West and Odyssey. 617 00:36:49,545 --> 00:36:56,564 Sponsoring scholarships and all that, that's a method of giving back and I think 618 00:36:56,564 --> 00:37:01,063 there is an obligation on people to do that, to engage in their communities. 619 00:37:01,063 --> 00:37:05,400 I have two communities that I live in, Santa Fe, New Mexico community, 620 00:37:05,400 --> 00:37:10,829 where I make my home and also the world Science Fiction and Fantasy 621 00:37:10,829 --> 00:37:15,901 which I have been apart of since 1971 when I attended my fist convention. 622 00:37:15,901 --> 00:37:21,505 I still go to world World Con every year and attend the Hugo Awards, those are 623 00:37:21,505 --> 00:37:26,792 my people and it almost feels like family to me so I try to give in both of those 624 00:37:26,792 --> 00:37:28,584 communities. 625 00:37:28,584 --> 00:37:31,808 EVE: You travel exstensively, 626 00:37:31,808 --> 00:37:34,228 you just came back from Ireland, you're not going home for 627 00:37:34,228 --> 00:37:38,912 a couple more weeks after being here, but you also have said you really struggle 628 00:37:38,912 --> 00:37:42,398 to write on planes, hotels, basically anywhere that is not your home office. 629 00:37:42,398 --> 00:37:47,533 That you need several uninterrupted days to get into your groove. 630 00:37:47,533 --> 00:37:51,467 How do you balance the part of being a writer that is the writing, 631 00:37:51,467 --> 00:37:55,785 with the part that is the profession, coming to events like this, 632 00:37:55,785 --> 00:37:59,035 knowing that it's gonna drain some of the actual production. 633 00:37:59,035 --> 00:38:01,854 GEORGE: Well, that's a good question. 634 00:38:01,854 --> 00:38:04,339 How do I balance them? Badly I think. 635 00:38:04,339 --> 00:38:15,927 My relationship with travel is an interesting one, that I should probably 636 00:38:15,927 --> 00:38:19,344 talk about with a therapist rather than you people. 637 00:38:19,344 --> 00:38:21,731 EVE: No on'es listening we are just here 638 00:38:21,731 --> 00:38:23,430 with our freinds. 639 00:38:23,430 --> 00:38:26,449 GEORGE: I was born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey. 640 00:38:26,449 --> 00:38:30,616 Which is a blue collar industrial city right across the bay from New York City. 641 00:38:30,616 --> 00:38:36,619 My father was a long shore man, although he went through long periods 642 00:38:36,619 --> 00:38:39,236 where he was unemployed. 643 00:38:39,236 --> 00:38:42,988 My mother was a house wife when I was young and later got a factory job 644 00:38:42,988 --> 00:38:45,572 when factories were in Bayonne. 645 00:38:45,572 --> 00:38:48,458 We never had much money, we lived in a federal housing project. 646 00:38:48,458 --> 00:38:53,409 We did not own a car, we never went anywhere. 647 00:38:53,409 --> 00:38:57,644 I lived on 1st street, my school was on 5th street, five blocks that was my world. 648 00:38:57,644 --> 00:39:04,479 Bayonne was a peninsula and living on 1st street was the Kilvon Cull 649 00:39:04,479 --> 00:39:09,615 which is a deep water channel that connected Newark bay and New York bay. 650 00:39:09,615 --> 00:39:14,116 I would see these great ships, oil tankers and freighters, things like that going by 651 00:39:14,116 --> 00:39:17,268 day and night with all the flags of the world on them. 652 00:39:17,268 --> 00:39:21,252 Sweden, Liberia, China, so forth. 653 00:39:21,252 --> 00:39:25,071 I had an encyclopedia where I could look up every flag I saw. 654 00:39:25,071 --> 00:39:31,822 There was this urge in me to get away from the five blocks where my life was lived. 655 00:39:31,822 --> 00:39:35,806 Occasionally we would go to New York City to eat. 656 00:39:35,806 --> 00:39:43,894 We never really traveled even like some of the other people in the neighborhood did. 657 00:39:43,894 --> 00:39:46,728 They would go to the Jersey Shore during summer. 658 00:39:46,728 --> 00:39:49,779 They would rent a cabin in the mountains, we never did any of that we just stayed 659 00:39:49,779 --> 00:39:51,564 home and worked. 660 00:39:51,564 --> 00:39:54,114 So Travel has always been enticing to me. 661 00:39:54,114 --> 00:39:59,200 As I became more and more successful. 662 00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:01,334 First of all I went to North Western, that was the first time 663 00:40:01,334 --> 00:40:04,868 I ever left New Jersey. 664 00:40:04,868 --> 00:40:09,452 The Midwest and Chicago and Evanston that was a whole new world to me. 665 00:40:09,452 --> 00:40:13,922 Later when I became successful I started going to Science Fiction magazines, 666 00:40:13,922 --> 00:40:18,891 in far flung places like Boston and Washington DC and all that. 667 00:40:18,891 --> 00:40:23,676 Every city was an adventure for me, eventually in 1981 I traveled to England. 668 00:40:23,676 --> 00:40:27,294 I left the country for the first time. 669 00:40:27,294 --> 00:40:37,348 As I became more successful, first within Science Fiction and later 670 00:40:37,348 --> 00:40:41,500 in the larger world when the books became best sellers and a hit 671 00:40:41,500 --> 00:40:45,368 I started getting more and more invitations to travel to places, 672 00:40:45,368 --> 00:40:47,536 all expenses paid invitations. 673 00:40:47,536 --> 00:40:52,119 Oh, they want to fly me to Vancouver, that's cool, I'll say yes. 674 00:40:52,119 --> 00:40:57,720 Oh look here's one where I can go to Scotland, I can go to France, 675 00:40:57,720 --> 00:40:59,954 I can go to Italy. 676 00:40:59,954 --> 00:41:02,206 Honestly, I said yes too much. 677 00:41:02,206 --> 00:41:07,877 I had a great time it was wonderful, it enriched my life I learned a lot, 678 00:41:07,877 --> 00:41:11,694 I made friends from all over the world, but I said yes too much. 679 00:41:11,694 --> 00:41:16,315 Now I have a staff that I've instructed to try to say no as much as possible, 680 00:41:16,315 --> 00:41:20,115 I have one of my assistants I call the Vice President in charge of saying no. 681 00:41:20,115 --> 00:41:22,151 [laughter] 682 00:41:22,151 --> 00:41:29,917 Sometimes I over rule her, I have my publicist here sitting in the second row 683 00:41:29,917 --> 00:41:34,803 trying hide who tells me to say no to everything because I should be staying 684 00:41:34,803 --> 00:41:36,636 home and writing. 685 00:41:36,636 --> 00:41:40,088 If I listened to him I wouldn't be here. 686 00:41:40,088 --> 00:41:42,589 [luaghter] 687 00:41:42,589 --> 00:41:49,310 I can't help it, I wanted to be here, I wanted to come back to Chicago, 688 00:41:49,310 --> 00:41:52,811 I wanted to, you know the Carl Sandberg award was an amazing honor. 689 00:41:52,811 --> 00:41:54,895 I wanted to be with you guys tonight. 690 00:41:54,895 --> 00:42:00,763 It's true I've got to, and I'm really trying, I'm saying no more and more, 691 00:42:00,763 --> 00:42:04,265 I've said no to three things this week. 692 00:42:04,265 --> 00:42:06,616 The invitations just keep pouring in. 693 00:42:06,616 --> 00:42:12,902 Travel doesn't have quite the allure it previously did when I never went anywhere 694 00:42:12,902 --> 00:42:16,086 so now they offer me money instead. 695 00:42:16,086 --> 00:42:19,719 I'm saying no to that too, I'm being good people. 696 00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:20,835 [applause] 697 00:42:20,835 --> 00:42:27,257 [laughter] 698 00:42:27,257 --> 00:42:31,775 The one thing I never say no to is the World Science Fiction convention, World Con. 699 00:42:31,775 --> 00:42:36,643 Which I went to for the first time in 1971, I go to that every year. 700 00:42:36,643 --> 00:42:39,444 So that's why I was in Ireland last month, for the World Con. 701 00:42:39,444 --> 00:42:44,079 There is a lot of conventions on the Science Fiction calendar, some of them 702 00:42:44,079 --> 00:42:48,031 are better than others, all of them are fun to some degree. 703 00:42:48,031 --> 00:42:53,083 But World Con is the oldest of them, it's where the Hugo awards are given. 704 00:42:53,083 --> 00:42:57,551 It's where I see friends that I only see once a year. 705 00:42:57,551 --> 00:43:03,887 The Science Fiction fandom is like forever, you go in there an meet people 706 00:43:03,887 --> 00:43:07,038 who will be part of your life for the next fifty years. 707 00:43:07,038 --> 00:43:10,040 You may only see them once a year at World Con but it's still great and 708 00:43:10,040 --> 00:43:12,224 important to see them. 709 00:43:12,224 --> 00:43:15,108 So that one I'll probably never say no to, but I try to say no to a lot of the others. 710 00:43:15,108 --> 00:43:18,176 At lest until 'Winds of Winter' is finished, then you'll see me popping 711 00:43:18,176 --> 00:43:20,777 around and popping up places. 712 00:43:20,777 --> 00:43:23,095 EVE: We're really grateful you said yes to us. 713 00:43:23,095 --> 00:43:26,230 I know it's also cause you wanted to go to Greek town and have some gyros, 714 00:43:26,230 --> 00:43:28,247 which we talked about earlier. 715 00:43:28,247 --> 00:43:31,448 GEORGE: OPA! 716 00:43:31,448 --> 00:43:34,165 EVE: A lot of writers who have their work 717 00:43:34,165 --> 00:43:38,068 adapted to film or television are not really involved, they kind of hand it over, 718 00:43:38,068 --> 00:43:43,168 sometimes that can create a distant or adversarial relationship with the adaptation. 719 00:43:43,168 --> 00:43:47,255 You are not like that, you've been a producer on Game of Thrones and you've 720 00:43:47,255 --> 00:43:49,837 also written scripts for some of the most iconic episodes, and I want to shout out 721 00:43:49,837 --> 00:43:51,890 a few of them 722 00:43:51,890 --> 00:43:56,509 You wrote "The Pointy End" which has this amazing scene where Syrio Forel protects 723 00:43:56,509 --> 00:43:59,885 Arya as she escapes and her life is never the same. 724 00:43:59,885 --> 00:44:05,153 Again this is a spoiler heavy zone, so exits behind you if you need to leave. 725 00:44:05,153 --> 00:44:12,237 You wrote that episode, that I love. 726 00:44:12,237 --> 00:44:16,156 "Black Water" and incredibly epic battle, that I think rivals Ministereth for 727 00:44:16,156 --> 00:44:17,756 great on screen battles. 728 00:44:17,756 --> 00:44:20,457 Where Tyrion proves himself to be a capable military strategist. 729 00:44:20,457 --> 00:44:22,958 We get lots of sweet dragon fire exploding. 730 00:44:22,958 --> 00:44:25,926 "The Lion and the Rose" where we bid, for some of us, a very gleeful farewell 731 00:44:25,926 --> 00:44:28,009 to Jofrey. 732 00:44:28,009 --> 00:44:32,479 We realize that we can see a minor die on TV and we're somehow still happy about it. 733 00:44:32,479 --> 00:44:34,831 [laughter] 734 00:44:34,831 --> 00:44:47,867 At the same time, you're heavily involved in the show, but you're still writing 735 00:44:47,867 --> 00:44:52,319 this series and you reserve the right to do what you want there autonomously 736 00:44:52,319 --> 00:44:55,404 not based on peoples responses to the TV series. 737 00:44:55,404 --> 00:44:58,504 This is a long way of asking, how do you see the relationship between 738 00:44:58,504 --> 00:45:03,073 TV Westeros and fiction Westeros, and how are you operating in both of 739 00:45:03,073 --> 00:45:06,508 these worlds? 740 00:45:06,508 --> 00:45:09,260 GEORGE: Well, how many children did 741 00:45:09,260 --> 00:45:11,227 Scarlet O'hara have? 742 00:45:11,227 --> 00:45:13,476 EVE: I'm the wrong one to ask that. 743 00:45:13,476 --> 00:45:17,979 GEORGE: She had three in Margaret Mitchell's novel. 744 00:45:17,979 --> 00:45:20,179 She had one in the movie. 745 00:45:20,179 --> 00:45:23,713 So how many children did she have? 746 00:45:23,713 --> 00:45:26,066 I mean which is "right"? 747 00:45:26,066 --> 00:45:30,316 The actual answer to that is a trick question of course. 748 00:45:30,316 --> 00:45:33,152 It is that Scarlet O'hara had no children because she is a fictional character 749 00:45:33,152 --> 00:45:34,867 and never existed. 750 00:45:34,867 --> 00:45:36,604 [laughter] 751 00:45:36,604 --> 00:45:40,739 It's two different mediums and two different ways of telling the same story, 752 00:45:40,739 --> 00:45:42,855 or at least a similar story. 753 00:45:42,855 --> 00:45:50,924 That's true whenever you adapt any work from books to television or movies, 754 00:45:50,924 --> 00:45:53,809 or even a radio play for that matter. 755 00:45:53,809 --> 00:45:58,313 You have to make choices as to what you leave in what you take out, 756 00:45:58,313 --> 00:46:02,180 there are issues that a television producer or screen writer has that 757 00:46:02,180 --> 00:46:04,731 a novelist does not have. 758 00:46:04,731 --> 00:46:09,432 You have to worry about the budget, you have to worry about the running time, 759 00:46:09,432 --> 00:46:15,151 you have actors who have contracts that have to be serviced. 760 00:46:15,151 --> 00:46:20,836 I could have a character like Theon Greyjoy or Varis, disappear for entire books 761 00:46:20,836 --> 00:46:28,257 and not be mentioned at all, or perhaps be presumed dead, 762 00:46:28,257 --> 00:46:32,391 they're off and you don't know what they're doing. 763 00:46:32,391 --> 00:46:36,926 You can't do that with a TV show, the actors are under contract, 764 00:46:36,926 --> 00:46:40,144 you're not gonna pay an actor for an entire season and not have them 765 00:46:40,144 --> 00:46:42,913 appear on screen. 766 00:46:42,913 --> 00:46:48,432 Television and film have things at their disposal that the novelist does not have. 767 00:46:48,432 --> 00:46:52,948 They can have a score like the wonderful music we were hearing by Ramin Djawadi. 768 00:46:52,948 --> 00:46:57,901 Our Emmy winning composer, that reinforces the show. 769 00:46:57,901 --> 00:47:00,819 We've got marvelous special effects and all that. 770 00:47:00,819 --> 00:47:05,539 The novelist also has tools that the screen writer and the director don't have. 771 00:47:05,539 --> 00:47:12,540 You can use an unreliable narrator, he has the wonderful strength which I use very 772 00:47:12,540 --> 00:47:16,592 heavily in 'A Song of Ice and Fire' of point of view. 773 00:47:16,592 --> 00:47:20,309 The camera is completely objective, it has no point of view. 774 00:47:20,309 --> 00:47:22,795 The camera is showing you what happened. 775 00:47:22,795 --> 00:47:27,481 When I write a scene from the view point of Sansa I'm filtering everything through 776 00:47:27,481 --> 00:47:29,196 Sansa's perceptions. 777 00:47:29,196 --> 00:47:32,199 Sansa is only seeing what she is looking at, if there is something behind her 778 00:47:32,199 --> 00:47:34,365 she doesn't see it. 779 00:47:34,365 --> 00:47:38,351 It's more difficult to write when you're doing it with a camera. 780 00:47:38,351 --> 00:47:44,754 So all of these things necessitate making changes, making a different approach 781 00:47:44,754 --> 00:47:50,672 That's what the process of adaptation is about. 782 00:47:50,672 --> 00:47:56,991 Then its up to the readers and the viewers to decide which they like better. 783 00:47:56,991 --> 00:47:59,007 They're both works of art. 784 00:47:59,007 --> 00:48:03,509 Margaret Mitchell's novel is there, it can be read, you can go see the 1939 movie, 785 00:48:03,509 --> 00:48:12,613 if you take into account inflation and all that it's still the highest grossing movie 786 00:48:12,613 --> 00:48:15,146 of all time. 787 00:48:15,146 --> 00:48:18,964 You can determine which you like better and argue about how many children 788 00:48:18,964 --> 00:48:22,031 she should have had. 789 00:48:22,031 --> 00:48:26,950 There it is, its two different works of art, related but not identical. 790 00:48:26,950 --> 00:48:29,418 EVE: Almost like alternate universe versions 791 00:48:29,418 --> 00:48:31,870 of eachother. 792 00:48:31,870 --> 00:48:35,305 Initially when people started showing interest in the series for television 793 00:48:35,305 --> 00:48:40,640 you felt that the scale of it might be beyond what could be represented on film. 794 00:48:40,640 --> 00:48:44,124 Especially because of part of what you just mentioned, the scope of your many 795 00:48:44,124 --> 00:48:46,890 characters, the world, the complexity of the plot. 796 00:48:46,890 --> 00:48:49,127 What do you think was the X factor? 797 00:48:49,127 --> 00:48:52,027 Is there something that changed or something that made it work 798 00:48:52,027 --> 00:48:55,361 despite those challenges of the medium? 799 00:48:55,361 --> 00:49:02,664 GEORGE: I think HBO was of the X factor, 800 00:49:02,664 --> 00:49:07,917 HBO was willing to let us make an adult fantasy. 801 00:49:07,917 --> 00:49:15,969 Fantasy books had been dominating the best seller list for decades but, 802 00:49:15,969 --> 00:49:19,921 whenever fantasy was done for TV for Game of Thrones, they put it on at 8 o'clock 803 00:49:19,921 --> 00:49:22,257 7 central. 804 00:49:22,257 --> 00:49:26,590 It was in the family hour because the people running television thought Fantasy 805 00:49:26,590 --> 00:49:32,261 dragons and swords and stuff was something silly, that it was for children. 806 00:49:32,261 --> 00:49:37,546 HBO had enough faith to redefine at least in terms of television, redefine the 807 00:49:37,546 --> 00:49:40,113 fantasy genre. 808 00:49:40,113 --> 00:49:42,947 That doesn't surprise me because you look at what they did previously, 809 00:49:42,947 --> 00:49:47,414 Deadwood, whole new take on westerns, Sopranos, completely different take on 810 00:49:47,414 --> 00:49:49,667 the gangster story. 811 00:49:49,667 --> 00:49:55,468 HBO was in the business of redefining genres and inverting troupes and 812 00:49:55,468 --> 00:49:58,752 turning them on their heads, and they did it with Fantasy. 813 00:49:58,752 --> 00:50:04,122 David Benioff and Dan Weiss the show runners did an amazing job 814 00:50:04,122 --> 00:50:06,842 and they assembled a great team. 815 00:50:06,842 --> 00:50:12,392 Game of Thrones has won, at this point, more Emmy's than any other show in the 816 00:50:12,392 --> 00:50:16,977 history of television, prime time show anway. 817 00:50:16,977 --> 00:50:25,247 What's interesting about it is many many many of those Emmy's are what they call 818 00:50:25,247 --> 00:50:29,664 in Hollywood below the line, they're for things like music, costuming, 819 00:50:29,664 --> 00:50:37,134 casting, stunt work, all of these things, special effects. 820 00:50:37,134 --> 00:50:40,152 All of these things are necessary to do a good thing. 821 00:50:40,152 --> 00:50:43,920 A novelist doesn't have to worry about that, I can just write what the 822 00:50:43,920 --> 00:50:47,204 costumes are, I don't have to worry about that. 823 00:50:47,204 --> 00:50:51,557 The show runner has to put together a team of people who can do it. 824 00:50:51,557 --> 00:50:55,925 In the case of Game of Thrones with extraordinary passion and skill to 825 00:50:55,925 --> 00:51:01,194 produce something that is really memorable and oustanding. 826 00:51:01,194 --> 00:51:05,329 David Benioff and Dan Weiss did that, they put together one of the greatest 827 00:51:05,329 --> 00:51:10,314 production teams and casts and crews in the entire history of television, I think. 828 00:51:10,314 --> 00:51:12,949 EVE: There are so many of those things that you 829 00:51:12,949 --> 00:51:15,482 just mentioned that I could shout out but the costuming in particular, 830 00:51:15,482 --> 00:51:18,834 I'm thinking of Daenerys obviously in the kind of progression of costuming 831 00:51:18,834 --> 00:51:24,254 of the course of their personal development as a character. 832 00:51:24,254 --> 00:51:32,840 GEORGE: Everything plays a role, all it takes is 833 00:51:32,840 --> 00:51:40,011 one person to screw up and you know you're watching the first episode of some 834 00:51:40,011 --> 00:51:45,028 new fantasy show and it seems to be promising and the dialogue is good, 835 00:51:45,028 --> 00:51:50,997 and maybe the special effects are good, and then you spot a zipper, 836 00:51:50,997 --> 00:51:54,331 and suddenly your suspension of disbelief is out the window. 837 00:51:54,331 --> 00:51:57,699 And you say "What the hell?" ya know? 838 00:51:57,699 --> 00:52:00,049 They've lost you. 839 00:52:00,049 --> 00:52:02,284 You have to get everything right. 840 00:52:02,284 --> 00:52:07,753 Being a show runner of a major television show is really a difficult achievement. 841 00:52:07,753 --> 00:52:11,471 EVE: You've mentioned in other interviews that 842 00:52:11,471 --> 00:52:15,471 and early TV influence for your was of course Star Trek and in that time 843 00:52:15,471 --> 00:52:21,307 Gene Roddenberry's universe was more diverse than some of the universes we see 844 00:52:21,307 --> 00:52:23,275 on contemporary television. 845 00:52:23,275 --> 00:52:28,077 I know you're also producing an adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor's "Who Fears Death?" 846 00:52:28,077 --> 00:52:31,578 which is exciting for many many reasons but one of them I think is that people 847 00:52:31,578 --> 00:52:35,780 seem to have an increasing hunger for sci-fi and fantasy and speculative fiction 848 00:52:35,780 --> 00:52:38,380 that reflects the diversity of our world. 849 00:52:38,380 --> 00:52:42,883 Is that something that's important to you or something you're thinking about? 850 00:52:42,883 --> 00:52:50,270 GEORGE: I think we have to move in that direction. 851 00:52:50,270 --> 00:52:59,654 I also think science fiction has always done better the society in general, 852 00:52:59,654 --> 00:53:02,941 not that its perfect by any means. 853 00:53:02,941 --> 00:53:08,693 The science fiction I like best is, there's a lot of kinds of science fiction, 854 00:53:08,693 --> 00:53:10,811 and fantasy. 855 00:53:10,811 --> 00:53:17,679 Besides epic fantasy there is urban fantasy, there's dark fantasy, there's 856 00:53:17,679 --> 00:53:22,581 fairy tales, there's cyber punk in science fiction, there's space opera. 857 00:53:22,581 --> 00:53:26,415 There are many many kinds of things. 858 00:53:26,415 --> 00:53:29,800 The sort of science fiction that I grew up on, that I love most of all, 859 00:53:29,800 --> 00:53:34,187 was the stuff that was set out among the stars. 860 00:53:34,187 --> 00:53:39,938 Where we go to alien planets 100 years in the future, 500 years in the future, 861 00:53:39,938 --> 00:53:46,823 and meet aliens, strange life forms, distant suns, it just appealed to me. 862 00:53:46,823 --> 00:53:51,410 Maybe it was cause of that travel thing, I liked the exotic flavors and to see 863 00:53:51,410 --> 00:53:55,144 sights never seen before, to go places no one had ever gone before. 864 00:53:55,144 --> 00:53:59,045 What I didn't realize though when I was reading, and I realized it as an adult 865 00:53:59,045 --> 00:54:07,614 many decades later, is that the we that was going out in those star ships in the 866 00:54:07,614 --> 00:54:11,966 science fiction that I read in the 50's and 60's, they weren't Americans. 867 00:54:11,966 --> 00:54:15,985 They weren't Chinese or Brazilian or French. 868 00:54:15,985 --> 00:54:19,989 They were earth men, or earthlings, or Terrans. 869 00:54:19,989 --> 00:54:21,754 Those were the terms that were made. 870 00:54:21,754 --> 00:54:26,989 If we were gonna meet the Octopus people of the third planet of Vega it would be 871 00:54:26,989 --> 00:54:31,758 Terrans meeting them and we would be part of the solar alliance or the united 872 00:54:31,758 --> 00:54:35,267 planets or something like that. 873 00:54:35,267 --> 00:54:41,628 Some of the authors of the time made a deliberate effort at diversity, maybe they 874 00:54:41,628 --> 00:54:47,720 didn't entirely succeed but you look at someone like Paul Anderson and he would 875 00:54:47,720 --> 00:54:52,715 have Scotsman and Irishmen but also Polynesians and Brazilians. 876 00:54:52,715 --> 00:54:58,661 Elspreg D'camp wrote a whole series in which Brazil was the dominate power of 877 00:54:58,661 --> 00:55:05,738 23rd century Earth. 878 00:55:05,738 --> 00:55:08,389 So that message was always there, it was there in the pulp magazines and the early 879 00:55:08,389 --> 00:55:10,188 science fiction. 880 00:55:10,188 --> 00:55:13,407 Gene Roddenberry brought it to television. 881 00:55:13,407 --> 00:55:22,561 The original Star Trek had some good episodes, and it had some really bad 882 00:55:22,561 --> 00:55:26,995 episodes but it was very exciting to see it at the time. 883 00:55:26,995 --> 00:55:36,551 Roddenberry was immensely courageous if nothing else, maybe he wasn't the greatest 884 00:55:36,551 --> 00:55:40,500 writer to come down the pike or the greatest show runner but you look back 885 00:55:40,500 --> 00:55:47,583 at the show that came out in 1767, he put a black woman on the bridge 886 00:55:47,583 --> 00:55:55,317 as communications engineer, he put an Asian as helms man. 887 00:55:55,317 --> 00:56:01,438 He put a Russian, at the height of the cold war, on the bridge. 888 00:56:01,438 --> 00:56:06,672 He was selling the idea that his federation, Earth has put aside all of its 889 00:56:06,672 --> 00:56:11,575 differences and we'd all come together as a single people. 890 00:56:11,575 --> 00:56:17,211 Maybe, most shocking of all was Spock. 891 00:56:17,211 --> 00:56:23,228 You think of Spock as a Vulcan, he wasn't a Vulcan, he was a half-breed, 892 00:56:23,228 --> 00:56:26,478 he was half Vulcan and he was half human. 893 00:56:26,478 --> 00:56:33,816 He had green blood and two hearts, a Vulcan father and a human mother, 894 00:56:33,816 --> 00:56:38,400 if you're a hard science fiction writer this makes no fucking sense, we're not 895 00:56:38,400 --> 00:56:42,368 going to actually be able to interbreed with the Octopus people of Vega, 896 00:56:42,368 --> 00:56:50,273 it doesn't work that way, any more than we can impregnate wombats here on earth. 897 00:56:50,273 --> 00:56:52,457 [laughter] 898 00:56:52,457 --> 00:57:00,892 None the less, whats striking about Spock when this came out in 1967 is the fact 899 00:57:00,892 --> 00:57:06,095 that at the time he was doing this miscegenation was still against the law 900 00:57:06,095 --> 00:57:09,563 in half the states of the United States. 901 00:57:09,563 --> 00:57:14,964 This was before Loving vs. Virginia which was the famous case recently dramatized 902 00:57:14,964 --> 00:57:20,567 in a movie, that established that a white man could actually marry a black woman. 903 00:57:20,567 --> 00:57:26,752 That was against the law, interracial marriage, having children with people of 904 00:57:26,752 --> 00:57:31,855 another race, and he's having half breed Vulcans. 905 00:57:31,855 --> 00:57:36,922 It was enormously progressive at the time. 906 00:57:36,922 --> 00:57:41,042 I didn't really noticed it because I had been reading about that stuff for 907 00:57:41,042 --> 00:57:46,411 a long time but looking back on it now and realizing books that sell 3,000 copies 908 00:57:46,411 --> 00:57:54,181 are one thing but a television show that reaches 20 30 million people 909 00:57:54,181 --> 00:57:56,715 really influences us. 910 00:57:56,715 --> 00:57:59,348 They really reflect us. 911 00:57:59,348 --> 00:58:06,068 Now, in science fiction and fantasy we are seeing a great up swell of diverse voices. 912 00:58:06,068 --> 00:58:14,154 By many different sorts of people, different skin colors, different religions, 913 00:58:14,154 --> 00:58:20,221 different sexual orientations, they're producing their own takes on this. 914 00:58:20,221 --> 00:58:24,808 As with any other groups some of them are good some of them are not so good, 915 00:58:24,808 --> 00:58:29,093 but I think it's a healthy sign for the genre. 916 00:58:29,093 --> 00:58:33,544 I do hope that there's still room for some old white guys like me. 917 00:58:33,544 --> 00:58:38,564 EVE: You can stay there is room at the table. 918 00:58:38,564 --> 00:58:40,931 GEORGE: Good. 919 00:58:40,931 --> 00:58:43,265 EVE: There's only two seats here so we'll 920 00:58:43,265 --> 00:58:44,715 see how it goes. 921 00:58:44,715 --> 00:58:46,049 [laughter] 922 00:58:46,049 --> 00:58:47,880 EVE: I'm going to ask you one or two more 923 00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:50,669 questions and then I'll go to these fan questions. 924 00:58:50,669 --> 00:58:51,754 GEORGE: Great. 925 00:58:51,754 --> 00:58:53,901 EVE: I think my final question will be this, 926 00:58:53,901 --> 00:58:58,538 you are a very frequently and many times interviewed person, 927 00:58:58,538 --> 00:59:01,035 you've been interviewed a lot. 928 00:59:01,035 --> 00:59:05,244 What is the interview question that wish people would ask, and what is 929 00:59:05,244 --> 00:59:09,049 the one that you do not like, or that you loath the most with 930 00:59:09,049 --> 00:59:13,917 apologies to those who have previously asked this question including me if 931 00:59:13,917 --> 00:59:17,432 I'm one of the people, it's not personal it's just that I'm asking. 932 00:59:17,432 --> 00:59:21,240 So a question you wish people would ask, and a question you hate the most. 933 00:59:21,240 --> 00:59:29,619 GEORGE: Obviously these days the question I hate 934 00:59:29,619 --> 00:59:33,175 the most is when will 'Winds of Winter' be out. 935 00:59:33,175 --> 00:59:34,854 [laughter] 936 00:59:34,854 --> 00:59:37,988 Because I have no good answer for that. 937 00:59:37,988 --> 00:59:41,044 When the day comes that 'Winds of Winter' is done and I can say, and I can when 938 00:59:41,044 --> 00:59:43,874 asked that question, October. 939 00:59:43,874 --> 00:59:46,230 That will a happier time for me. 940 00:59:46,230 --> 00:59:51,128 It's no fun to be asked repeatedly the same question over and over again, 941 00:59:51,128 --> 00:59:53,513 and you don't have a good answer for it. 942 00:59:53,513 --> 00:59:57,765 There are a lot of questions, I won't say I hate them but I've been asked them so 943 00:59:57,765 --> 01:00:03,336 often that it gets a little tiresome. 944 01:00:03,336 --> 01:00:08,001 It also shows that however much the person may be a huge fan of mine they've 945 01:00:08,001 --> 01:00:13,259 never actually gone online and looked at any of the 137 other interviews of me 946 01:00:13,259 --> 01:00:15,471 that you can find on youtube. 947 01:00:15,471 --> 01:00:19,444 Which is your favorite character, which character do you like to write the most, 948 01:00:19,444 --> 01:00:22,581 which character do you like to write the least? 949 01:00:22,581 --> 01:00:27,408 Ya know I've been answering that question since 1996. 950 01:00:27,408 --> 01:00:33,100 There are a number of questions that fall in that category. 951 01:00:33,100 --> 01:00:42,014 As to a question that I want to be asked, that's harder, 952 01:00:42,014 --> 01:00:44,019 I don't think I have one question. 953 01:00:44,019 --> 01:00:49,968 I do like the fact that in your questions you've discussed some things other than 954 01:00:49,968 --> 01:00:56,007 Game of Thrones, I love Game of Thrones, I love 'Song of Ice and Fire' but I do 955 01:00:56,007 --> 01:01:02,021 have a long history of writing other things and I'm very happy and proud 956 01:01:02,021 --> 01:01:04,374 of those things too. 957 01:01:04,374 --> 01:01:09,745 It's fun to discuss things that I haven't been asked about before. 958 01:01:09,745 --> 01:01:17,227 To talk about Fever Dream or Armageddon Rag or the Wild Card series, 959 01:01:17,227 --> 01:01:23,697 or Dying of the Light, or any of my short stories that I've written 960 01:01:23,697 --> 01:01:25,637 over the years. 961 01:01:25,637 --> 01:01:28,949 EVE: Good, I'm glad that if you hated one of 962 01:01:28,949 --> 01:01:32,503 my questions you're keeping it to yourself for the time being. 963 01:01:32,503 --> 01:01:34,133 [laughter] 964 01:01:34,133 --> 01:01:35,567 It's very polite of you. 965 01:01:35,567 --> 01:01:39,440 OK so I'm gonna ask you some fan questions, for which I can only moderately vouch 966 01:01:39,440 --> 01:01:43,086 for the quality, after having had asked you that last question. 967 01:01:43,086 --> 01:01:44,404 GEORGE: Should I be afraid? 968 01:01:44,404 --> 01:01:46,020 EVE: No I think these are all fine, 969 01:01:46,020 --> 01:01:48,190 I'm going to take my glasses off. 970 01:01:48,190 --> 01:01:52,355 OK so, Brendan B. Fish, I presume not his real name on Twitter asks, 971 01:01:52,355 --> 01:01:56,879 "Speaking personally, do you believe that Robert, Ned, and Jon Aron were justified 972 01:01:56,879 --> 01:02:01,082 in their rebellion against the Mad King, if it were you would you have stayed loyal 973 01:02:01,082 --> 01:02:03,665 to the Targaryens?" 974 01:02:03,665 --> 01:02:08,521 People in the audience are freaked out by this question for some reason. 975 01:02:08,521 --> 01:02:10,836 [laughter] 976 01:02:10,836 --> 01:02:14,166 GEORGE: I don't think I would have stayed loyal to 977 01:02:14,166 --> 01:02:16,520 the mad king. 978 01:02:16,520 --> 01:02:18,450 Do I think I would justify it? 979 01:02:18,450 --> 01:02:20,134 Ya, yes and no. 980 01:02:20,134 --> 01:02:24,636 I don't like to provide easy answers to that, I like to make the reader wrestle 981 01:02:24,636 --> 01:02:30,054 with the question and think about it. 982 01:02:30,054 --> 01:02:38,615 Because some of these questions never are easy when we encounter them in real life. 983 01:02:38,615 --> 01:02:45,799 It's been interesting coming back here to Chicago, 984 01:02:45,799 --> 01:02:53,147 because I spent ten years in Chicago and the Chicago area, 985 01:02:53,147 --> 01:02:58,950 I was at North Western from 1966 to 1971, up in Evanston. 986 01:02:58,950 --> 01:03:03,669 Then I was in Chicago from 71 to 76. 987 01:03:03,669 --> 01:03:11,725 If you look at that era, particularly the early part of that era, the 60's. 988 01:03:11,725 --> 01:03:16,354 It was sometimes known in the history books, for you young people who have read 989 01:03:16,354 --> 01:03:19,507 about it in history as the turbulent 60's. 990 01:03:19,507 --> 01:03:23,567 There was an altercation going down in Vietnam that some of us didn't like, 991 01:03:23,567 --> 01:03:29,811 there were a lot of protests and demonstrations, people in the streets 992 01:03:29,811 --> 01:03:34,280 by the tens of thousands by the hundreds of thousands in some cases. 993 01:03:34,280 --> 01:03:40,552 I look back on that era now and ya know, I ask myself that question, 994 01:03:40,552 --> 01:03:45,901 were the protests justified, did we do the right thing, did we do the wrong thing, 995 01:03:45,901 --> 01:03:49,285 should we have gone further? 996 01:03:49,285 --> 01:03:55,909 I was very much a clean for Gene guy, I still believed in the American system 997 01:03:55,909 --> 01:04:00,823 and elections and let's elect Gene McCarthy 998 01:04:00,823 --> 01:04:03,141 and put an end to the Vietnam war, 999 01:04:03,141 --> 01:04:05,695 and there were more radical people who wanted to destroy the state 1000 01:04:05,695 --> 01:04:08,844 and tear it all down and rebuild it. 1001 01:04:08,844 --> 01:04:14,662 When I look at all the things that happened, I don't know, 1002 01:04:14,662 --> 01:04:17,893 it was a confused time and its still a confusing time when you 1003 01:04:17,893 --> 01:04:20,698 look back at history. 1004 01:04:20,698 --> 01:04:23,550 Maybe 100 years from now when everybody who participated are dead, 1005 01:04:23,550 --> 01:04:26,337 we'll be able to sort it out and find the answers. 1006 01:04:26,337 --> 01:04:30,407 Is violence ever justified to oppose evil in the world, if so, 1007 01:04:30,407 --> 01:04:34,486 to what extent is violence justified? 1008 01:04:34,486 --> 01:04:38,394 These are the questions that Ned and Robert had to deal with. 1009 01:04:38,394 --> 01:04:44,191 There was no doubt that the mad king was mad. 1010 01:04:44,191 --> 01:04:49,927 He was paranoid and violent and he was abusing his power. 1011 01:04:49,927 --> 01:04:53,243 Westeros has no magna carta or anything like that. 1012 01:04:53,243 --> 01:04:57,483 There was no way to handle this within the rule of law. 1013 01:04:57,483 --> 01:05:03,218 Was what they did justified? 1014 01:05:03,218 --> 01:05:10,953 Especially when you consider that it was triggered by a personal grievance. 1015 01:05:10,953 --> 01:05:16,503 The execution of Ned's father and brother, was really a thing that radicalized, 1016 01:05:16,503 --> 01:05:21,275 as we would have said in the 60's, Ned and put him in opposition to it. 1017 01:05:21,275 --> 01:05:26,341 Robert was just broiling for a fight, and didn't like the fact that he lost 1018 01:05:26,341 --> 01:05:29,455 his girlfriend. 1019 01:05:29,455 --> 01:05:34,474 The personal informs the political. 1020 01:05:34,474 --> 01:05:43,283 As a reader I like the writers who ask questions and get you to think. 1021 01:05:43,283 --> 01:05:45,786 I try to do that as a writer. 1022 01:05:45,786 --> 01:05:49,648 I don't necessarily like the writers who give answers. 1023 01:05:49,648 --> 01:05:54,420 Often I don't agree with the answers they seem wrong to me in some cases, 1024 01:05:54,420 --> 01:05:57,383 or they seem overly simplistic. 1025 01:05:57,383 --> 01:06:01,102 Questioning is important. 1026 01:06:01,102 --> 01:06:07,740 Theodore Sturgeon, who was one of the great great science fiction writers 1027 01:06:07,740 --> 01:06:11,992 of the golden age, a real individualist, and free thinker, I think. 1028 01:06:11,992 --> 01:06:17,375 He had a slogan which was called "Ask the next question", 1029 01:06:17,375 --> 01:06:22,977 and he wore it, he had a medallion that he wore with a big Q with 1030 01:06:22,977 --> 01:06:26,496 an arrow through it that stood for "Ask the next question.", 1031 01:06:26,496 --> 01:06:31,096 I always admired Sturgeon and his views on that. 1032 01:06:31,096 --> 01:06:32,368 EVE: Your answer about not giving answers 1033 01:06:32,368 --> 01:06:35,473 was a very good answer. 1034 01:06:35,473 --> 01:06:36,523 [laughter] 1035 01:06:36,523 --> 01:06:37,717 GEORGE: Thank you! 1036 01:06:37,717 --> 01:06:40,388 EVE: Leah Rachel Von Essen writes to the 1037 01:06:40,388 --> 01:06:41,860 humanities festival, 1038 01:06:41,860 --> 01:06:46,470 "I'm inspired by Sansa's character," She wrote books only, in parenthesis. 1039 01:06:46,470 --> 01:06:51,058 "I'm inspired by Sansa's character and the way she her soft skills 1040 01:06:51,058 --> 01:06:54,938 aren't denigrated even as Arya is the more classic strength warrior, 1041 01:06:54,938 --> 01:06:57,531 do you think they parallel each other and how does their relationship 1042 01:06:57,531 --> 01:07:03,093 mirror the dynamics of real life sibling relationships?" 1043 01:07:03,093 --> 01:07:07,165 GEORGE: Well I hope that they are both realistic 1044 01:07:07,165 --> 01:07:10,352 characters in some sense. 1045 01:07:10,352 --> 01:07:14,368 I've known people who are like both of them 1046 01:07:14,368 --> 01:07:20,804 and in some sense I'm like both of them. 1047 01:07:20,804 --> 01:07:27,685 We're talking about two of my women characters, girls in that case. 1048 01:07:27,685 --> 01:07:33,629 I've been asked about writing the girls, and women in my books. 1049 01:07:33,629 --> 01:07:38,272 I have the advantage in 'A Song of Ice and Fire', 1050 01:07:38,272 --> 01:07:45,800 is that I have a lot of women. 1051 01:07:45,800 --> 01:07:49,001 Therefore, I can do a lot of different women characters. 1052 01:07:49,001 --> 01:07:52,585 In an interview that I did in Canada a number of years ago, 1053 01:07:52,585 --> 01:07:58,538 the host asked me how do I write women characters and I said well, 1054 01:07:58,538 --> 01:08:03,873 I had this revolutionary idea, I act as if women were people. 1055 01:08:03,873 --> 01:08:05,557 [laughter] 1056 01:08:05,557 --> 01:08:09,559 [applause] 1057 01:08:09,559 --> 01:08:10,993 That's my feeling. 1058 01:08:10,993 --> 01:08:14,345 If you have a book and you only have one woman character, 1059 01:08:14,345 --> 01:08:18,361 sometimes there is not room for any more because you're writing a short story. 1060 01:08:18,361 --> 01:08:24,933 Or a novel that only has three or four main characters. 1061 01:08:24,933 --> 01:08:29,417 People sometimes take it as oh that's his opinion of women or something, 1062 01:08:29,417 --> 01:08:31,935 because this character has these flaws. 1063 01:08:31,935 --> 01:08:34,951 But you have an advantage when you have twenty women characters 1064 01:08:34,951 --> 01:08:40,454 that you can show the variety of people, some of them are noble, some of them 1065 01:08:40,454 --> 01:08:44,589 are selfish, some of them are smart, some of them are stupid, 1066 01:08:44,589 --> 01:08:52,726 I think that's true of all groups, men, women, straight people, gay people, 1067 01:08:52,726 --> 01:08:54,843 whatever color. 1068 01:08:54,843 --> 01:09:02,113 They come in all varieties and even the individuals have good and evil 1069 01:09:02,113 --> 01:09:04,946 within them. 1070 01:09:04,946 --> 01:09:13,067 I think that's realistic, and I think we're all grey. 1071 01:09:13,067 --> 01:09:16,920 We all have good and bad in us, we've all done good things 1072 01:09:16,920 --> 01:09:21,305 and we've all done bad things. 1073 01:09:21,305 --> 01:09:28,425 Real history is full of stories about people who did something wonderful on 1074 01:09:28,425 --> 01:09:33,225 Tuesday and something horrible on Thursday, same person. 1075 01:09:33,225 --> 01:09:36,528 There is a wonderful writer who passed away a few years ago, 1076 01:09:36,528 --> 01:09:39,646 not a science fiction writer but, Pat Conroy, 1077 01:09:39,646 --> 01:09:42,096 have any of you ever read Pat Conroy? 1078 01:09:42,096 --> 01:09:43,530 [applause] 1079 01:09:43,530 --> 01:09:47,815 Terrific writer, one of the great writers I think of the 20th century. 1080 01:09:47,815 --> 01:09:53,267 A lot of his books were made into movies, "The Great Santini", "The Water is Wide" 1081 01:09:53,267 --> 01:09:57,583 which was made into the movie "Conrack", based on his own experiences teaching 1082 01:09:57,583 --> 01:10:00,070 the words of discipline. 1083 01:10:00,070 --> 01:10:04,205 Probably the best known books of his is "The Prince of Tides", 1084 01:10:04,205 --> 01:10:11,040 I remember that book, that book has a character in it who is an absolutely 1085 01:10:11,040 --> 01:10:16,876 abusive father, he terrorized his children he abuses them both verbally 1086 01:10:16,876 --> 01:10:18,975 and physically. 1087 01:10:18,975 --> 01:10:24,296 He's horrible to his wife, he's really a despicable, horrible person. 1088 01:10:24,296 --> 01:10:28,597 But there are flashbacks within that to World War II, 1089 01:10:28,597 --> 01:10:33,732 about an American aviator flying a mission over Nazi Germany who was shot down 1090 01:10:33,732 --> 01:10:38,918 he parachutes out to safety but now he's in the middle of Nazi Germany 1091 01:10:38,918 --> 01:10:40,950 and he has to get all the way back to the lines. 1092 01:10:40,950 --> 01:10:47,454 He makes his way through the German lines, hiding in haystacks, and 1093 01:10:47,454 --> 01:10:51,789 occasionally meeting Germans who try to turn him in, and then other Germans who 1094 01:10:51,789 --> 01:10:54,174 are kind to him and hide him. 1095 01:10:54,174 --> 01:10:58,509 It's an interesting secondary story line. 1096 01:10:58,509 --> 01:11:01,692 It's the same character, and you realize as you read this, 1097 01:11:01,692 --> 01:11:05,028 you're reading this story about this brave American aviator trying make his way 1098 01:11:05,028 --> 01:11:08,697 through the Nazi's and to get back to the lines and you're really rooting for him 1099 01:11:08,697 --> 01:11:12,281 and you're identifying with him and you think he's great, 1100 01:11:12,281 --> 01:11:17,450 and then you get to the present day and he's this horrible wretched person, 1101 01:11:17,450 --> 01:11:22,250 based on Conrad's own father, who was mistreating his family. 1102 01:11:22,250 --> 01:11:25,452 I loved that, I loved that depth of character there. 1103 01:11:25,452 --> 01:11:30,371 It was amazing, the fact that Conrad did it so greatly. 1104 01:11:30,371 --> 01:11:34,805 That's some of my views on characters. 1105 01:11:34,805 --> 01:11:41,476 Arya and Sansa, indeed many of my characters, are complicated people. 1106 01:11:41,476 --> 01:11:46,061 I try to show all of the complexities. 1107 01:11:46,061 --> 01:11:50,729 I don't want it to be just one note. 1108 01:11:50,729 --> 01:11:56,864 Arya is certainly more popular than Sansa. 1109 01:11:56,864 --> 01:12:02,399 Sansa has her people who love her too, of course we'll have to see when I 1110 01:12:02,399 --> 01:12:07,867 write the book, the end that I have in mind for both of them. 1111 01:12:07,867 --> 01:12:12,287 EVE: Wow, yes, it takes me back to the point 1112 01:12:12,287 --> 01:12:15,638 that you made earlier about length, and one benefit is we can actually see 1113 01:12:15,638 --> 01:12:20,257 that character transformation, even over the course of a single novel, 1114 01:12:20,257 --> 01:12:24,508 we can see this character begin in one condition and end somewhere else. 1115 01:12:24,508 --> 01:12:29,976 Another question, this is from Lucifer means light bringer, 1116 01:12:29,976 --> 01:12:34,011 which I also assume is not this persons government name. 1117 01:12:34,011 --> 01:12:36,030 [laughter] 1118 01:12:36,030 --> 01:12:39,063 "You've created several notable in world, mythical figures which seem to serve 1119 01:12:39,063 --> 01:12:42,703 as archetypes that other main characters echo at times, 1120 01:12:42,703 --> 01:12:45,201 can you say a few words about your use of myth and internal folk lore and 1121 01:12:45,201 --> 01:12:51,002 the way those things interact with the main story and characters?" 1122 01:12:51,002 --> 01:12:53,454 GEORGE: Ya I've had a lot of fun, it's part of the 1123 01:12:53,454 --> 01:12:55,672 world building process. 1124 01:12:55,672 --> 01:13:02,039 Every world, every culture has its myths, has its legends, has its heroes. 1125 01:13:02,039 --> 01:13:08,193 I suspect everybody in this room, even if you haven't read the books, 1126 01:13:08,193 --> 01:13:13,408 knows who Robin Hood was or a little about him, or King Arthur. 1127 01:13:13,408 --> 01:13:17,612 Or maybe some of the American myths, Paul Bunion. 1128 01:13:17,612 --> 01:13:20,064 EVE: Or Spider-Man or Super Man. 1129 01:13:20,064 --> 01:13:23,697 GEORGE: Right, right. 1130 01:13:23,697 --> 01:13:28,567 We refer to them occasionally, we make references to them. 1131 01:13:28,567 --> 01:13:34,001 It's sometimes amazing to think of the extent to which some of these 1132 01:13:34,001 --> 01:13:39,586 ancient myths and ancient characters permeate our culture. 1133 01:13:39,586 --> 01:13:43,587 We watch football as somebody blows out his Achilles tendon, 1134 01:13:43,587 --> 01:13:46,506 we're referring to a character from Homer. 1135 01:13:46,506 --> 01:13:50,974 If he existed at all he existed 3,000 years ago. 1136 01:13:50,974 --> 01:13:55,060 Ya know, and his only vulnerability was his heel. 1137 01:13:55,060 --> 01:13:58,693 And because of that we're talking about an injury to a football player. 1138 01:13:58,693 --> 01:14:00,611 It's amazing. 1139 01:14:00,611 --> 01:14:05,080 So, a mythical world, obviously I can't reference Achilles, 1140 01:14:05,080 --> 01:14:10,948 or Paul Bunion or Spider-Man, but has to have its own heroes, 1141 01:14:10,948 --> 01:14:13,867 and its own legends. 1142 01:14:13,867 --> 01:14:19,002 I try to put them in to give that flavor. 1143 01:14:19,002 --> 01:14:24,205 I had a lot of, I don't know how many of you have read my latest Westeros book, 1144 01:14:24,205 --> 01:14:26,271 'Fire and Blood'. 1145 01:14:26,271 --> 01:14:28,855 [applause] 1146 01:14:28,855 --> 01:14:34,273 'Fire and Blood' was a little different because it's not part of 'A Song of Ice and Fire' 1147 01:14:34,273 --> 01:14:38,008 It's a fake history book, imaginary history. 1148 01:14:38,008 --> 01:14:42,660 About the first 150 years of the Targaryen dynasty. 1149 01:14:42,660 --> 01:14:47,580 It's written in world, it's written by archmaester Gyldyan at the citadel, 1150 01:14:47,580 --> 01:14:52,865 three hundred years after many of the events which he is chronicaling. 1151 01:14:52,865 --> 01:14:58,132 So like a real historian, like someone writing now about the American revolution, 1152 01:14:58,132 --> 01:15:01,384 well he wasn't there for the American revolution he has to go back and look 1153 01:15:01,384 --> 01:15:03,904 at primary sources. 1154 01:15:03,904 --> 01:15:06,721 So did archmaester Gyldayn, and what you find out when you do that 1155 01:15:06,721 --> 01:15:09,805 is that primary sources disagree. 1156 01:15:09,805 --> 01:15:13,723 They have different versions of events, one person said it happened this way 1157 01:15:13,723 --> 01:15:17,059 another person says no that never happened it happened this way. 1158 01:15:17,059 --> 01:15:21,175 Archmaester Gyldayn trying to be a good historian is replicating all 1159 01:15:21,175 --> 01:15:23,393 of the different versions. 1160 01:15:23,393 --> 01:15:26,018 That was a lot of fun for me because I could play with 1161 01:15:26,018 --> 01:15:28,245 the whole concept of history. 1162 01:15:28,245 --> 01:15:31,579 History being told by the winners, history being cleaned up and 1163 01:15:31,579 --> 01:15:35,048 made politically correct, or religiously correct, 1164 01:15:35,048 --> 01:15:38,415 and I could present different versions of the various stories. 1165 01:15:38,415 --> 01:15:43,502 I enjoyed that and I think some of my readers enjoyed that too. 1166 01:15:43,502 --> 01:15:48,253 Particularly the version of history told by Mushroom the court fool. 1167 01:15:48,253 --> 01:15:54,106 Who always told everything in the most sexual lascivious and shocking 1168 01:15:54,106 --> 01:15:56,855 way possible. 1169 01:15:56,855 --> 01:15:58,923 Usually with himself as the hero. 1170 01:15:58,923 --> 01:16:01,307 EVE: And you have a history degree, 1171 01:16:01,307 --> 01:16:02,991 so that's helpful. 1172 01:16:02,991 --> 01:16:04,658 GEORGE: Well not a history degree, 1173 01:16:04,658 --> 01:16:06,559 but a history minor. 1174 01:16:06,559 --> 01:16:08,243 I love history, I read a lot of it. 1175 01:16:08,243 --> 01:16:11,561 I'm not a historian by any means, I'm just a history nerd. 1176 01:16:11,561 --> 01:16:15,246 EVE: So I'm going to give our final question 1177 01:16:15,246 --> 01:16:19,247 to someone named Adam Prestigicomo, who wants to know, 1178 01:16:19,247 --> 01:16:23,531 oh what up you're here, did I say your last name kind of right? 1179 01:16:23,531 --> 01:16:26,716 Oh great, nailed it. 1180 01:16:26,716 --> 01:16:31,036 Our good friend Adam wants to know, "what is something that makes you happy?" 1181 01:16:31,036 --> 01:16:32,936 [applause] 1182 01:16:32,936 --> 01:16:34,720 [laughter] 1183 01:16:34,720 --> 01:16:41,074 GEORGE: There are a lot of things 1184 01:16:41,074 --> 01:16:44,277 that make me happy. 1185 01:16:44,277 --> 01:16:51,309 I love books, reading a good book makes me happy. 1186 01:16:51,552 --> 01:16:55,717 I've been reading since I was a small kid I still read veraciously. 1187 01:16:55,717 --> 01:16:59,659 I read a chapter or two from a book almost every night. 1188 01:16:59,659 --> 01:17:03,094 Every once and a while I pick up a book where I read that chapter or two 1189 01:17:03,094 --> 01:17:05,812 and then I have to read another chapter and another chapter and another chapter. 1190 01:17:05,812 --> 01:17:08,725 I wind up staying up all night, I love it when that happens. 1191 01:17:08,725 --> 01:17:11,892 I love good movies, I love good television. 1192 01:17:11,892 --> 01:17:15,778 The kinds that get their hooks into me and I have to binge all on Netflix. 1193 01:17:15,778 --> 01:17:19,778 I actually kind of hate the concept of binging but I find myself doing it anyway. 1194 01:17:19,778 --> 01:17:21,480 [laughter] 1195 01:17:21,480 --> 01:17:24,398 As my waste line will testify I love good food. 1196 01:17:24,398 --> 01:17:29,400 Especially Greek food in Chicago, Opa Opa! 1197 01:17:29,400 --> 01:17:34,534 Great barbecue when I'm in Texas. 1198 01:17:34,534 --> 01:17:38,719 In New Mexico where I live, I moved to New Mexico in 1979 and I can 1199 01:17:38,719 --> 01:17:42,370 never leave because I became addicted to green chille. 1200 01:17:42,370 --> 01:17:45,854 Which you can really on get in New Mexico. 1201 01:17:45,854 --> 01:17:49,423 Someone there knows the truth of what I speak. 1202 01:17:49,423 --> 01:17:53,285 You'll probably all boo me for this but of course pizza in New York. 1203 01:17:53,285 --> 01:17:58,894 EVE: It is what it is. 1204 01:17:58,894 --> 01:18:04,063 GEORGE: So I love all that. 1205 01:18:04,063 --> 01:18:10,899 And I love writing my own stories, particularly I love finishing them. 1206 01:18:10,899 --> 01:18:15,567 [laughter] 1207 01:18:15,567 --> 01:18:18,452 I actually don't love, I mean people say do I enjoy writing, 1208 01:18:18,452 --> 01:18:20,952 EVE: No one likes writing. 1209 01:18:20,952 --> 01:18:22,920 GEORGE: Writing is hard. 1210 01:18:22,920 --> 01:18:24,204 EVE: Writing sucks. 1211 01:18:24,204 --> 01:18:25,270 [laughter] 1212 01:18:25,270 --> 01:18:27,037 GEORGE: I'm constantly questioning myself every 1213 01:18:27,037 --> 01:18:29,254 sentence I put down I wonder whether its good enough. 1214 01:18:29,254 --> 01:18:33,507 I reread what I wrote yesterday and I hate it. 1215 01:18:33,507 --> 01:18:38,243 But when I actually finish a book, the rush that comes through me, 1216 01:18:38,243 --> 01:18:41,177 it was easier to write short stories cause then I would get that rush 1217 01:18:41,177 --> 01:18:47,596 every few weeks but now I get that rush every eight years or something like that. 1218 01:18:47,596 --> 01:18:49,680 [laughter] 1219 01:18:49,680 --> 01:18:55,233 It's a great rush, and I'm hoping to have it again in the relatively near future. 1220 01:18:55,233 --> 01:18:59,701 When I finish 'Winds of Winter', I do know that the day after 1221 01:18:59,701 --> 01:19:04,835 'Winds of Winter' comes out I'll get the first text saying, 1222 01:19:04,835 --> 01:19:08,469 when is 'Dream of Spring' coming out? 1223 01:19:08,469 --> 01:19:10,470 [laughter] 1224 01:19:10,470 --> 01:19:14,171 So, ya know, these pleasures are temporary. 1225 01:19:14,171 --> 01:19:17,958 There's a lot of things I love, I love the people in my life. 1226 01:19:17,958 --> 01:19:19,842 I've been very fortunate. 1227 01:19:19,842 --> 01:19:24,142 I have my wonderful wife Paris who unfortunately couldn't be with me 1228 01:19:24,142 --> 01:19:25,510 on this trip. 1229 01:19:25,510 --> 01:19:29,562 I have an amazing staff of minions who serve me. 1230 01:19:29,562 --> 01:19:32,730 One of them, Sid is here with me tonight. 1231 01:19:32,730 --> 01:19:36,197 Four or five others are at home, they try to keep my working, 1232 01:19:36,197 --> 01:19:39,067 and try to keep the distractions at bay. 1233 01:19:39,067 --> 01:19:42,567 I love my publishers David Munch, who didn't want me to come here. 1234 01:19:42,567 --> 01:19:44,452 [laughter] 1235 01:19:44,452 --> 01:19:47,620 And my editor Anne Groll, and my wonderful publishers. 1236 01:19:47,620 --> 01:19:52,387 There's a lot of things that make me happy, thank you. 1237 01:19:52,387 --> 01:19:55,421 [applause] 1238 01:19:55,421 --> 01:20:02,691 EVE: Well, George R. R. Martin, 1239 01:20:02,691 --> 01:20:10,811 it has made me very happy to have the chance to speak with you 1240 01:20:10,811 --> 01:20:14,980 and I think I speak for a lot of people in the audience who share that sentiment. 1241 01:20:14,980 --> 01:20:18,315 Please give one more round of applause to George R. R. Martin. 1242 01:20:18,315 --> 01:20:29,800 [applause]