A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin recently gave an interview to German-language outlet Welt, which was helpfully translated by Reddit’s own u/mellycafe. There’s some interesting stuff in there, including Martin pontificating on how his books may end differently than HBO’s Game of Thrones.
“People know an ending – but not THE ending,” Martin said, making book-readers everywhere stand to attention. “[Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss] passed me, which I hadn’t expect. Nevertheless, I will continue to do what I have been doing for the past years: I still try to finish the next book, The Winds of Winter and then the following novel, A Dream Of Spring. These are the things I am concentrating on. After that, we will see.”
The HBO show, as I’m sure you remember, ended with Daenerys Targaryen burning down half of King’s Landing, Jon Snow killing her, and Bran Stark becoming the new king of the
Seven
Six Kingdoms. Is Martin suggesting that things could go a different way in the books?
We can’t know for sure, but I’m betting that A Song of Ice and Fire will end basically the same as Game of Thrones. It’s well known that Martin told Benioff and Weiss the ending he had planned years ago — the showrunners have more or less confirmed that he told them about what happened to Bran, for instance.
But that doesn’t mean the journey to get to the end won’t be very different. When talking about this, Martin is fond of trotting out the example of Gone With the Wind. In the books, Scarlett O’Hara had three children. In the movie, she had one. Which is the “real” version? Neither, because Scarlett O’Hara isn’t real, her kids aren’t real, and you can choose whatever version suits you. He talked about that again here, but also added some new references:
"Or take The Little Mermaid. We know her from the fairytale of the same name by Hans Christian Andersen and from the Disney movie. Which one is the true mermaid? Well, mermaids do not exist. So you can chose the version that you personally like the best. Changes are inevitable in this process. Even if the adaption is as faithful to the literary source material as it was the case with Game of Thrones."
So according to Martin, there is no “real” version of this story. That makes sense to me, but I still want to read Martin’s version as soon as possible. The world waits…
Of course, fans have been waiting for The Winds of Winter for years now. Martin’s love of multitasking may help explain why it’s taking so long:
"I like doing many different things. What I don’t like is writing the same story over and over again. In the beginning of my career I wrote science fiction, then fantasy and later horror stories as well. Also reviews for a short period of time. I taught journalism, since the mid 80s I have been writing scripts – and today I am also working as a movie producer. Since the completion of Game of Thrones I am currently developing a prequel series for that for HBO. Furthermore, I have another deal with the network: I am supposed to produce more shows for them which do not originate from the universe of my stories."
That deal, FYI, includes an HBO adaptation of author Nnedi Okorafor’s science fiction novel Who Fears Death, which is exciting. But I know there are fans out there who worry that all these other projects take Martin away from the thing they really want him to work on: A Song of Ice and Fire. And as Martin has admitted before, he’s the kind of writer who needs to be in the right headspace to work. “I have writer friends who can work on three or four different projects at once,” he said. “They start with a novel in the morning, continue with a short story in the afternoon and write a script at night. I am not able to do that. When I am writing novels, I dive deeply into the fictional world. This demands my full imagination, I have to live through it, so to say. It is easier to edit a draft, to work as a producer for movies or simply be a cinema owner compared to writing novels.”
Martin does own a cinema, by the way: the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe. And speaking of movies, did you know that Benioff and Weiss originally pitched the final season of Game of Thrones as a series of movies? This was years ago, back when they didn’t think TV could give them the resources they needed to do what they wanted. But as Martin notes, the dividing line between TV and movies is pretty thin noways. “Everything is changing at the moment,” he said. “What is being shown at the cinema right now? Everything is mixing up. Nowadays we don’t know where the lines between cinema, streaming services and television are.”
The irony is that Game of Thrones itself played a big part in blurring that line. We’ll all be watching to see where it goes next.
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