Just when we retrieve the Game of Thrones TV serial would stay our lasting obsession , George R.R. Martin ’s book A Dance With Dragons displaced it , with a fresh set of revelations and agonizing moments from Westeros .
Martin is at San Diego Comic - Con promoting his in vogue book as well as the television series based on it , and we were favorable enough to speak to him one - on - one . He told us why so many citizenry in Dance With Dragons are lose their identity , why we wo n’t be meeting the deity , and what he ’d like to write after this series .
looter for A Dance With Dragons — but no Brobdingnagian revelation — ahead …
Top image : Detail from Stephen You ll ’s cover art for A Game of Thrones .
Are you still having playfulness writing these books ?
Well , you know I have sport days and I have days that are less fun . You screw , writing is my profession , and it ’s a profession I for certain enjoy but I ca n’t turn a loss running of the fact that it is study . And it ’s very toilsome work and it ’s frustrating work . But overall I think I bask writing , as much as I have ever love writing . But I most of all enjoy having written . Knowing it ’s eat up and holding the al-Qur’an in my bridge player , I ’m enjoy the hell on earth out of . Going to signing … that ’s in all probability the most fun part of the job . But the composition is fun too .
It’sbeen pointed outthat a wad of characters in A Dance With Dragons are losing their names , and their very identities , as a result of intense lot . What ’s that about ?
Arya has been doing it for some clock time , really . Arya has gone through a dozen unlike identities , even receive to Braavos — where the ultimate finish of the Faceless Men is to become no - one , and to be able to put on identities as one assumes a lawsuit of wearing apparel . But yes , indistinguishability is one of the thing that I ’m playing with in this series as a whole , and in this particular volume — what is it that make us who we are ? Is it our birth , our blood , our position in the human race ? Or something more integral to us ? Our value our memory , et cetera .
Usually in a heroic fantasy series when someone loses their identity , you expect that to be watch over by them recover their selfhood in some dramatic style , or taking some heroic action that reasserts who they really are . Do you palpate a responsibility to deprave that ? Or play with that figure of speech ?
I ’m certainly playing with it . There are dissimilar way of assuming identities . Some of them I attempt to get at in books , and it ’s a little bit ponder in the chapter titles . In some causa , it ’s just someone putting on a mask . I mean Qwentyn Martell and his fellow traveller assume false names at several points during their journey from Dorne to Meereen . They assume dissimilar roles and different identicalness , but it never really affects who they are . When they ’re in private , they ’re still the people that they have always been . When you ’re dealing with Arya and what she ’s going through , or you ’re mete out with Theon … you ’re cover with something much , much deeper there , where the original identity is being menace or kind of erupt down by one means or another , and maybe is in peril of being mislay entirely .
There are several contend religions in this series now . Should we be wondering if some are more true than others ? In a humanity with magic , is faith just sorcerous with an extra stratum of mythos ?
Well , the readers are certainly costless to wonder about the validity of these religions , the true statement of these religion , and the teachings of these faith . I ’m a piffling leery of the give-and-take “ true ” — whether any of these religions are more unfeigned than others . I mean , look at the parallel of our literal world . We have many religious belief too . Are some of them more true than others ? I do n’t think any gods are likely to be showing up in Westeros , any more than they already do . We ’re not break down to have one come out , deus ex machina , to affect the outcomes of things , no matter how hard anyone pray . So the sex act between the religions and the various illusion that some masses have here is something that the referee can endeavor to puzzle out .
With the HBO show , leger two presents a lot of challenge to an adaptation , since it ’s much more dispersed . Can we expect to see more liberties being taken ?
This is the ongoing job with all of the books . The story start fairly tight in , with all the quality in the same plaza . But as the books go on , the case spread apart into smaller and smaller chemical group , that break apart . You get more and more locations , more and more secondary fiber . It sort of deltas out . Eventually , they will release around and get down delta - ing in again , but we have n’t quite reached that point in the Christian Bible . This is something the show is go to have to deal with , which is blend in to be a challenge .
One of the thing that strikes me in the recent books is , there ’ll be a major turning degree for a graphic symbol , and then you realize it ’s been building for hundreds of varlet . Do you always contrive these huge outcome and then find ways to build up to them , or do you sometimes write a character ’s journeying and then agnise that it ’s been leading to a huge turn item ?
All the major things have been planned since the beginning , since the early XC , the major deaths and the general direction of things . Obviously , the contingent and the minor things have been things that I ’ve discovered along the way , part of the fun of compose the Scripture is making these discoveries along the journey . But the general structure of the books has been in my head all along .
It ’s always a tightrope , writing — you do have to set up thing up . You do n’t want them to come out of nowhere , out of left field . You do need to foreshadow them . But you do n’t want the developments to seem predictable . If everybody knows what ’s fall two playscript before it comes , then it suffer all its shock . That ’s the problematical part . There ’s no easy answer to that . You just do what you may .
Your Scripture , particularly recently , are full of woman trying to wield power in a male dominated Earth who have to compromise themselves along the way . Are you trying to make a feminist command ?
You could certainly interpret it that mode . I do n’t assume to say I ’m give a instruction of this case or that type . But it is sure as shooting a patriarchal society , I am attempt to research some of the ramifications of that . I attempt to write adult female as masses , just as I attempt to write any other characters . Strong and weak , and brave and cowardly , and noble and selfish . It has been very gratifying to me how many women study my work and how much they care at least some of my female characters .
The anti - war speech by the Barefoot Septon , about confused man , is one of the most prominent things in A Feast for Crows , and it experience like a thematic statement for the serial publication . multitude have speculated this is your voice come through . Is the pointlessness of warfare something you want people to come away with as a central melodic theme ?
Well , I ’m very pleased with that particular actor’s line . But I do n’t know , I detest to think it ’s true that it ’s the voice of the author coming through . I do n’t need them to see me . You ’re not reckon to see the puppeteer , you ’re just opine to see the puppet . You ’re not supposed to see the screenwriter peer over the cover , you ’re just supposed to see the actors .
Yeah , if you know anything of my personal history , you know I was against the Vietnam warfare . And so one of the thing that ’s going on in the book as a whole , not just in that speech but elsewhere , is some reflections on warfare and ferocity , and the cycles we get into , and the costs of warfare . Some thing that perhaps are not sufficiently considered in a lot of phantasy novels or skill fable novel , for that subject . It ’s soft to write the big , magnanimous war story where no - one authoritative ever dies , so the only one you ever see slaughtered are the extras , the orcs or your own army . So you just say , “ Oh , it was a terrible battle , we lost 10,000 men . ” But it has no visceral result on the reviewer .
It ’s just like read a story in the newspaper about some unspeakable tsunami or earthquake in a distant part of the universe , where a lot of multitude died . You read it and absorb it , and of course you ’re very sad that 10,000 people just died at the other end of the world , and then you go and have your breakfast and go on with your day , and within half an hr you ’ve forgotten about it . But if your upright friend dies or your female parent fail , or one of your youngster dies , that ’s only one person , but it has staggeringly more emotional impact . So I desire the deaths in my world , the wars , to have an worked up impingement on the reader .
Ifyour good friend or your loved one dies , it ’s n … I want the
After you finish writing A dreaming of Spring would you come out another multi - volume fantasy series ?
Well , never say never again , but I do n’t think I would ever do anything quite this swelled again . I might do something like a trilogy , or something like a book that had a continuation . in reality , I think after wind up A Dream of Spring I might write some standalone novel , I have a twosome of ideas for those . And a set of curt stories . It ’s been a long time , I have a hatful of short story ideas I ’d really wish to do . I really began my career writing short stories .
BooksGame of ThronesGeorge R.R. MartinTelevision
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