{"id":26118,"date":"2012-07-17T15:32:15","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T14:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=26118"},"modified":"2012-07-17T15:43:01","modified_gmt":"2012-07-17T14:43:01","slug":"an-introduction-to-george-rr-martins-a-song-of-ice-and-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/blog\/an-introduction-to-george-rr-martins-a-song-of-ice-and-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"An introduction to George RR Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"George<\/a>
Sean Bean as Lord Eddard Stark in the HBO adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Game Of Thrones<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When did you first climb on the George RR Martin<\/a> train? Perhaps you were among the prescient few who noticed his earlier novels, starting with the Hugo-nominated Dying Of <\/em>
\n The Light<\/em> in 1977. You may have been there in August 1996, when the first novel in his A Song Of Ice And Fire<\/em> series was unleashed upon the world. Maybe you caught wind of his sprawling, sophisticated blend of historical fiction and fantasy around the time of the one-two punch of A Clash Of Kings<\/em> and A Storm Of Swords<\/em>, published in 1998 and 2000 respectively. Or was it A Feast For Crows<\/em>, and the five long years Martin took to reach its conclusion, that finally piqued your interest?<\/p>\n

The truth is that a significant proportion of his followers only joined the fold in the last 18 months \u2013 that\u2019s what a critically and commercially successful HBO adaptation will do to a career \u2013 but fan debate over A Song Of Ice And Fire<\/em> has been blazing in some corner of the internet ever since an Australian website called Dragonstone became the first venue dedicated to its vivid world and winding narrative in 1999. Since then, that debate has become uncomfortably intense.<\/p>\n

Taken to its extremes, fandom can be troubling. As it became clear that the wait for the fifth novel, A Dance For Dragons<\/em>, would be even longer than the five years required for its predecessor, a passionate cadre of Martin\u2019s fans began to turn against him. With at least two more books to go and Martin in his early Sixties, many began to question whether he would live to finish the novels, and one, Gareth, decided to invite Neil Gaiman into the debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen writing a series of books, like Martin is with A Song Of Ice And Fire<\/em>, what responsibility does he have to finish the story?\u201d Gareth asked in a letter to Gaiman\u2019s blog. \u201cIs it unrealistic to think that by not writing the next chapter Martin is letting me down, even though if and when the book gets written is completely up to him?\u201d<\/p>\n

The response was legendarily blunt: \u201cLook, this may not be palatable, Gareth, and I keep trying to come up with a better way to put it, but the simplicity of things, at least from my perspective, is this: George RR Martin is not your bitch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gaiman was more accurate than he realised. George RR Martin knew from bitter experience the dangers involved in being anybody\u2019s bitch. It was the only reason A Game Of Thrones<\/em> existed at all.<\/p>\n

George Raymond Richard Martin\u00a0was born in 1948 with stories in his\u00a0blood. His father wasn\u2019t an author,\u00a0and there was no notable aptitude for language or imagination in his family line, but Martin was selling tall-tales\u00a0for pennies when he was still in grade school. As his skills increased and\u00a0demand for his stories grew, he put\u00a0the price up to a nickel. Like we say, it was in his blood.<\/p>\n

A close encounter with Robert A Heinlein\u2019s classic juvenile Have Space <\/em>
\n Suit, Will Travel<\/em> was Martin\u2019s entry into what his father disdainfully termed, \u201cweird stuff\u201d: Isaac Asimov, HP Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Jack Vance, Mervyn Peake, JRR Tolkien and so on. To his parents and teachers it was trash, but to Martin \u2013 who was slowly realising that actually becoming an astronaut or a barbarian was probably quite unlikely \u2013
\nit was everything.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A Game of Thrones: The Story Continues seven volume box set is available now from Harper Voyager<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the time Martin left high school, he had already decided on his career, and began the process of honing his craft through the early comic fanzines. In 1970, at the age of 21, Martin sold a story entitled \u2018The Grey\u2019 to Galaxy Magazine; in 1973, his short-story
\n\u2018With Morning Comes Mistfall\u2019 was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. In 1975, his novella A Song For Lyra<\/em> won the Hugo.<\/p>\n

By the time The Armageddon Rag<\/em> was published in 1983, Martin considered himself an old hand. Between 1977 and 1982 he published three novels, each one an award-nominee, in addition to three story collections. Writing prose fiction has been his sole source of income for years, but The Armageddon Rag<\/em> proved that he still had much to learn. It was ambitious and experimental, it fused subtle fantasy with a meditation on the evolution of rock music, and was an abject failure. The public didn\u2019t buy his current book, and so the publishers lost all interest in the next one.<\/p>\n

But The Armageddon Rag had at least one fan: a writer, producer and passionate follower of The Grateful Dead called Philip De Guerre, who optioned the troubled novel for a film. As is so often the case in Hollywood, it was never made, but when De Guerre was asked to revive TV series The Twilight Zone<\/em>, Martin was the first person he called. It was 1985, and Martin flew from his life as an author in Santa Fe, New Mexico to a new life as a screenwriter in Los Angeles, California. He wouldn\u2019t publish another novel for more than a decade.<\/p>\n

\"Game<\/a>
George RR Martin on the Game Of Thrones<\/em> set with Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Martin had a knack for television. The Twilight Zone<\/em> was ultimately doomed, but the quality of his work saw him rise to story editor, then executive story editor. When the show was cancelled in 1987, new job offers rolled in. Martin opted for a role as executive story consultant on Beauty And The Beast<\/em>, before rising to producer a year later. In less than five years Martin had attained a position of esteem that other writers struggle for their entire careers without reaching. He was given the chance to leave the grind of staffing somebody else\u2019s show to develop ideas of his own. This was it \u2013 the big time.<\/p>\n

Yet the second half of Martin\u2019s ten years in Hollywood marked a change in the way Martin looked at writing. On The Twilight Zone and Beauty And The Beast, Martin was used to having his first drafts returned with extensive notes. His work was always too big and too expensive right out of the gate, but subsequent revisions allowed Martin to refine, polish and rein in his epic tendencies. Importantly, there was always an end product, and an audience waiting to receive it.<\/p>\n

His time in \u2018development\u2019 left him with six failed pilots and a pixel-sharp view of what Hollywood meant for a writer. The work was just as demanding, but the value of that work was decided by the whims of businessmen.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very lucrative in Hollywood,\u201d Martin said on his podcast. \u201cTelevision, film; they\u2019ll give you dump trucks full of money, and a lot of writers are content with that. They\u2019ll sit out there, around their kidney-shaped swimming pools, sipping their drinks with their trophy wives. They\u2019ve never had anything produced, but they make a lot of money from writing and rewriting and rewriting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt took me five years, but I finally figured out that this wasn\u2019t for me. I really need an audience\u2026 I\u2019m not gonna write for four guys in a room, no matter how much money you give me.\u201d<\/p>\n

George RR Martin was not their bitch. He honoured his remaining contracts and flew back to Santa Fe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I returned <\/strong>to prose \u2013 which had been my first love \u2013 in the Nineties, I said \u2018I\u2019m going to do something that is just as big as I want to do,\u2019\u201d Martin said in an interview with The New York Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
The first edition of the first book, A Game Of Thrones.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI can have all the special effects I want. I can have a cast of characters that numbers in the hundreds. I can have giant battle scenes. Everything you can\u2019t do in television and film, of course, you can do in prose because you\u2019re everything there. You\u2019re the director, you\u2019re the special effects coordinator, you\u2019re the costume department, and you don\u2019t have to worry about a budget.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, the idea that would allow him to realise the vision that had been swimming around in his imagination since summer 1991. During an idle period between Hollywood assignments, while simultaneously trying to develop a science fiction novel called Avalon, the opening scene of a new story emerged from the ether: of a young boy travelling through the snows with his father to see his first execution; a rite of passage in whatever society this would turn out to be. As the party makes its long journey home, they discover a brood of huge wolf-like creatures, which are divided between his brothers.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a medieval setting \u2013 I knew that. I knew it had a large cast of characters. It seized hold of me,\u201d Martin said on his podcast. \u201cI don\u2019t know where it came from, but it came to me so vividly: I could see the scene; I could see the snow; I could feel the cold. I could see the blood when the sword took off the man\u2019s head, and I could feel the boy\u2019s feelings about this\u2026 He was excited, and a little scared at the same time.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so Martin chased his muse for the remaining summer months before his next doomed television project began. The words of that first chapter seemed to \u201cflow out of my fingers and onto the page.\u201d The next chapter came to him, this time from the point-of-view of an entirely different character, from a distinct part of the new world he was creating. The next chapter shifted perspective again.<\/p>\n

But Hollywood was calling once more, and so A Game Of Thrones<\/em> went into the same drawer as Avalon. He wouldn\u2019t take it out again until his return to Santa Fe, but the story lived on in his head; the characters talked to him on his long journeys through the choking traffic of the Los Angeles freeways. It was a world where magic was a subtle and mysterious force, and politics, corruption and blood were the driving forces behind the narrative.<\/p>\n

It would be as debauched and uncompromising as our own history, only without the consolation of knowing how it ends. Was it a single novel? A trilogy, perhaps? Martin wasn\u2019t sure, but he knew one thing: it was going to be big.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always wanted to do something in epic fantasy, but not just to rehash Tolkien,\u201d he recalled to The New York Times<\/em>. \u201cI wanted to do something to make it my own.\u201d<\/p>\n

More than 15 years later, it\u2019s safe to say that Martin has achieved his goal. A Game Of Thrones<\/em> and the other A Song of Ice And Fire<\/em> novels feel like little else in fantasy, and nothing at all like Tolkien. The world and its myriad characters and cultures are the product of a creative mind seeking an outlet that didn\u2019t require it to pander to the lowest common denominator or rush to meet an arbitrary deadline.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s both the lie and the compliment of the anguish of Martin\u2019s fans. A Song Of Ice And Fire<\/em> is the sort of work that inspires devotion; the sort of work that most authors aspire to but never realise. Martin is open about his gratitude for that affirmation \u2013 there is praise wrapped up in their selfish fears about his untimely death \u2013 but those indignant fans fail to realise that were he to comply with their demands, the spirit that gave rise to these remarkable novels would disappear. They would be no better than the Hollywood producers who stifled Martin\u2019s creativity to make him their bitch.<\/p>\n

\u201cTen years from now, no one is going to care how quickly the books came out,\u201d Martin wrote on his blog in July 2007. \u201cThe only thing that will matter, the only thing anyone will remember, is how good they were. That\u2019s my main concern, and always will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Get the seven-book A Song Of Ice And Fire<\/em> box set from Waterstones.com for \u00a333 – saving \u00a0\u00a322!<\/a><\/p>\n

\nhttps:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3buJaaeI5HE<\/a><\/video><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Getting started with the fantasy saga that inspired HBO’s Game Of Thrones, the seven books to date are available as a box set priced \u00a333.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":26123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[1,1624],"tags":[2651,1342,1674,386],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/gamesthrones_2156137b.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}