George R.R. Martin is the best known fantasy author alive, and with the possible exception of Lord of Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien, the best known period. He’s also the subject of an engrossing New York Times profile by Charles Yu, who writes engagingly about Martin’s work, the Song of Ice and Fire /Game of Thrones fandom, and Martin’s legacy as an author and creator. “I’ve read the books, and books about the books, and watched the show, and read recaps of the show, and listened to podcasts about the show and gone deep, deep down Reddit holes, discussion threads that start at the level of trivia and descend into minutiae,” Yu writes. “None of this would be possible with a lesser series, one without the complexity and consistency to support all of this geekery.” Amen to that.
The profile doesn’t have many quotes from Martin himself, but there are few, as when he explains what inspired him to quit his teaching job and start writing full-time in 1977: it was the death of friend and fellow author Tim Reamy, who passed at the age of 42. “I thought, ‘Do I have all the time in the world? I want to write all these stories.’” He decided he didn’t have all the time in the world, moved to Santa Fe, and the rest is history.
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Martin also talked about his abiding admiration for Tolkien’s work, which influenced A Song of Ice and Fire to a huge degree. “I’m a huge fan of Tolkien,” Martin said. “Sometimes it feels like I’m criticizing Tolkien when I talk about this stuff, but my admiration for him is huge. Nonetheless, sometimes I feel I’m in dialogue with Tolkien.”
"Tolkien wanted to do a mythology for England,. I wanted to make my world more complete and more realistic. Tolkien says, after the end of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘Aragorn [one of the primary protagonists] is the king and he ruled wisely and well for a hundred years,’ or whatever, but what does that actually mean? Many good men through history have been terrible kings. Many bad men have been good kings. Of course, now we live in a time where we have a bad man who is also a bad president."
As you can see, Martin also isn’t afraid to get political, which he does in a separate question-and-answer video session. Below, he fields questions about everything from the relationship between his books and climate change to the state of science fiction to where in Westeros he’d like to live (Braavos) to the golden age of TV (his favorite modern comedy is The Big Bang Theory) to his apparent predilection for redheads. Have a watch:
The profile is a good read. Read it in full here.
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