George R.R. Martin talks Fire & Blood, worldbuilding in Westeros

On November 20, A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin will take readers back to Westeros with Fire and Blood, the first half of a two-volume history of House Targaryen. Naming Thomas B. Costain’s four-volume history of the Plantagenets as an inspiration, Martin explained to Publisher’s Weekly that the compendium will be accessible even to people unfamiliar with his other books:

"Obviously if you do know something about them it probably makes it a somewhat easier experience, but there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end, and you can follow it easily enough, and that’s what I’ve tried to do with my own book. It would help to have some familiarity with reading histories, and in particular reading popular histories. And there’s an authorial voice there that I had fun trying to create, the Archmaester Gyldayn, who is an opinionated guy and has his views of these people, that definitely leak into it. In some places, he has prejudices and gripes and his own cavils, and you have to realize that you’re reading the voice of a character, even as you’re reading about other characters who existed hundreds of years before him. But that was some of the fun of it. And I think that will be some of the fun for the readers who enjoy that sort of thing."

Martin also clarified that Fire and Blood is not a novel in the traditional senses, but that “it’s very entertaining—a lot of people will like it, I hope—but I don’t want them to buy it thinking that they’re getting the latest Ice and Fire novel.” [Insert obligatory comment about The Winds of Winter taking forever to write here]. Fire & Blood is a little more like the appendixes in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, with Martin jokingly calling his book “the GRRMarillion.”

So what should we call this book, then? What genre is it in? Martin prefers the term “imaginary history,” which evolved from the more tongue-in-cheek term “fake history,” which some fans didn’t take to.

"[T]hey felt that it was demeaning, and that I was demeaning my own work. As much as I might steal from real history, file off the serial numbers, do my own version of it, and draw inspiration from it, it’s not meant to take its place, or suggest that there’s any level of reality to it. So I thought imaginary history was a good way to describe it."

Although by the sound of it, Martin isn’t too keen on sorting books into genres at all, and railed a bit against the “genrefication of fiction, where you go into bookstores and there are science fiction fans and there are mystery fans, whatever they are, and they never leave that section of the bookstore. They’re not even aware of some of the wonderful work being done in what’s classified as other genres. I like the idea of breaking down these barriers, and everyone just reading good books.”

Yeah, anarchy! Things just got interesting.

In any case, the Song of Ice and Fire universe isn’t the only one Martin has created. SyFy is currently adapting his Nightflyers novella (which also received a re-release in print). Martin hasn’t followed that project closely, but did say that SyFy has made some “substantial changes” to the source material. “It’s not part of my The Thousand Worlds universe anymore,” he said. “It’s still set in space, but it’s more near-future space, set in the solar system, and it has a considerably larger cast. So, it will go in different directions but hopefully keep the theme of it and some of the principal characters, and I’m excited to see it.”

Martin’s Thousands Worlds universe is the setting for a great many novellas and short stories he’s written over the years. How does writing in that shared universe compare to writing stories set in Westeros and Essos?

"Westeros and the world of Ice and Fire is a traditional secondary universe in the manner of Tolkien. It requires a lot of detail, a lot of close attention. The Thousand Worlds is much more of what we used to call, in science fiction, a “future history.” And it is much looser—there are a few characters who are referred to as legendary figures from the history of The Thousand Worlds, but they don’t by and large actually appear in the stories. The worlds are so far apart, separated by centuries and by light years, that they’ve developed very different…civilizations—so it did not demand anything approaching the close level of interaction as in The Song of Ice and Fire."

Finally, Penguin Random House has turned Windhaven, a sci-fi novel co-authored by Martin and Lisa Tuttle and originally released in 1981, into a graphic novel. Martin has been a fan of comic books for a very long time, so he’s mighty pleased: “Basically, any of my works, when they tell me that they want to do it as a graphic novel, I’m always thrilled by it, and I think Windhaven lends itself to that format very well. I think it’s turned out to be a splendid-looking book.”

Windhaven is out on August 21.

Next: The 2019 A Song of Ice and Fire calendar is out: Check out the beautiful art work

To stay up to date on everything Game of Thrones, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Watch Game of Thrones for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels