The George R.R. Martin interview: On fandom, writing, and his work beyond Westeros (Exclusive)

George R.R. Martin is an author who needs no introduction...but today warrants one anyway, because we're diving deep into his career for an exclusive, in-depth discussion with the man himself. Over the past 53 years, Martin has established himself as one of the most important voices of our time in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. He began publishing stories professionally in 1971, when he sold his short story "The Hero" to Galaxy Magazine at the age of 21. After that, he wrote numerous works of short fiction before releasing his first novel in 1977, the space opera Dying of the Light. Along the way, Martin won both the Hugo and Nebula award, gained many more award nominations, and published dozens of stories, earning him a reputation as a rising star of speculative fiction.

But after climbing the ladder of success in his field, Martin's career was derailed in the 1980s when one of his books, The Armageddon Rag, sold so poorly that it dried up his options in publishing almost overnight. Fortunately, in 1985 he was invited to write a script for the revival of The Twilight Zone, which launched him as a screenwriter. He worked in television throughout the following decade, developing scripts and working on shows like Beauty and the Beast before returning to writing books in the '90s with A Song of Ice and Fire, the fantasy series which HBO adapted into Game of Thrones. That turned him into a household name.

In August 2024, I had the opportunity to interview Martin while he was in Glasgow, Scotland for the 82nd annual World Science Fiction Convention, Worldcon for short. Martin and I met at the bar of his hotel, where we spoke about a broad range of topics. The author has an interesting relationship with fame; speaking with him, it was clear that he's well aware of both its blessings and burdens. But I was also struck by how genuinely Martin wears his love for the genres of fantasy and science fiction on his sleeve. Before he was a professional writer, he was a fan, and that fandom still burns strong. He's also a repository of knowledge when it comes to the history of genre fiction, and happy to share what he knows.

There were a few topics we agreed ahead of time to steer clear of, like Martin's long-awaited sixth Song of Ice and Fire novel The Winds of Winter, or the HBO shows Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon. Instead, since we were meeting at a convention largely geared toward writing and books, we decided that should be the focus of our conversation. Martin has a strong philosophy about paying it forward to up and coming writers, and since Worldcon was a crucial part of his own journey as an author, it was the perfect opportunity to delve into his history with fandom, his thoughts on the business of being an author, the dangers of AI to creatives, and more. We even discussed some of Martin's works outside of Westeros which he's seldom asked about.

From all of us here at Winter Is Coming, it's our great pleasure to present you with our full interview with George R.R. Martin below. It has been edited for length and clarity.

DANIEL ROMAN for Winter Is Coming: Since we're here for Worldcon, I suppose I should start by asking what it is about this convention that keeps drawing you back. You've been attending it regularly since the 1970s, and rarely miss it. What makes this such a special con that it's worth coming out for year after year?

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: I've been coming since 1971, and that is a long, long time. I have missed a few in recent years...but I think the answer to that really has changed with the decades. I mean, in the beginning I had read, you know, that fandom was often referred to in the pro-zines at the time, especially Amazing Stories, in the introduction, the history. I knew that there was this culture out there of writers who went together, and fans who came and listened to them in panels, and I knew about the Hugo Awards that they gave, and I wanted to sample that. A decade earlier, I'd actually been to a few comic book conventions because I was a comic book fan, and those had been fun, but the science fiction conventions were the big thing.

So when one of them came in 1971, near to me, I went up to it. I really didn't have much money then, I'd just gotten out of college. So it was like taking a Greyhound bus up and finding someone whose room I could crash in because I couldn't afford a hotel room on my own, and you know, counting the nickels and dimes in my thing to see, 'could I afford to have a muffin for breakfast?' But I knew almost no one at that convention. I'd been to a local science fiction convention a few months earlier, so I knew a few people, most notably Gardner Dozois, who I'd met there. But I was a professional writer, which was an interesting aspect. I'd sold two stories by the time of that first Worldcon, only one of which had appeared. So even though I was a very obscure beginning writer with one story in print, that was enough credential to get me into like, some parties for professionals only. And there were editors there, and there were other writers and people I met and contacts I could make...and I was kind of a shy kid, I didn't make a lot of contacts, I wasn't the kind to go off and push and introduce myself to people, but a lot of the people were so friendly and so welcoming, especially the ones who did know who the hell I was...that I loved it. I loved it, and I knew I would come back.

That was '71. [In 1972], the convention was in Los Angeles. I couldn't afford to go to Los Angeles, I was living in Chicago at the time. I wasn't flying, didn't have money for airline tickets, and a bus trip would've been too far. So I missed Los Angeles. But I was back in '73 for the Toronto convention, first time I ever left the country. And I knew more people by then because I'd been to regional conventions. And I was up for an award at that convention, the first Campbell Award for Best New Writer [now the Astounding Award for Best New Writer], so I'd published more stories in two years, and that was thrilling. I lost, of course, but I was at it.

I loved those early conventions and I went to them every year I could. I missed a few in those days, most notably the one I wish I hadn't missed was '75, the first Aussiecon, when it went to Australia. That's where I won my first Hugo [for the novella A Song for Lya]. I'd lost the Campbell in '73, I'd lost the Hugo in '74...'75 I won but I wasn't there, I was back in Chicago in my underwear.

But they were a big part of my life. I mean for the '70s and into the '80s...I did miss one or two; when they went to England, for example, in '87, again I couldn't afford to do that. But it was a chance to meet new people, and meet other writers and hang with them, meet editors. It was a chance for promotion. At those early conventions...have you ever been to Worldcons before?

WiC: Yeah, I went to Discon in Washington D.C. in 2021. That's the only other one I've been to so far.

GRRM: Well, they're very big these days and they have multi-tracks of programming. Those early Worldcons had one track of programming, and they had panels. And there was a room where a panel was, the panel would have four or five people on it, but they certainly weren't inviting guys like me who had published four stories, you know? Every panel was all big names. So I would go to a panel, it'd be Isaac Asimov, and talking to Frederick Pohl, and talking to Harlan Ellison, and you know, then there would be another panel...but no one was asking me to be on a panel yet. You had to pay your dues in those days, and little by little, I did pay my dues. I actually [chuckles], as I said, I won the Hugo in '75...it still didn't get me on any panels. The first time I was put on a panel was '77. But they were great opportunities to see friends, to make professional contacts, and once I started getting on panels and doing autographings, to promote myself.

When I was asked, in the late '70s or early '80s when I was established, by younger writers, 'well what's a good thing to do to promote yourself?' I would say go to Worldcon. Go to Worldcon, make contacts, promote yourself, get your name out there. Get your books out there, do a signing. You might have to sit in the dealer's room at the table, at the autograph table, and four people will come up in the hour, or nobody will come up in the hour, but your presence is still there. And maybe you do it again next year, and now eight people come up. It's all part of the process of building a career in the world of science fiction and fantasy, which was a different world in those days.

But Worldcon changed as the years went. Worldcon got bigger and bigger. Obviously in '77 Star Wars came out, and suddenly there was a whole new fandom coming in, the Star Wars people. And some of them just liked Star Wars, or Star Trek before that, but others started reading the books, and suddenly we started having science fiction [and] fantasy books on the bestseller list and things like that. And you would come and you would hear what was going on in the field.

And there were the parties, which were also fun. And I think parties were more fun if you were known and [people] know who you are. I would go to a party and I would meet new people, and drink and flirt and party...and [it was] better than in the beginning when I was just, you know, this kind of geeky kid who no one knew yet and I sort of shyly stood in the background. So yeah, there was a great, friendly, welcoming, lively culture in science fiction in the 1970s and well into the '80s, and it continuted to be for me, not only something I really loved to do, but the way I saw friends and people that, you know...science fiction fans and writers lived all over the country. So I have a friend who lived in Philadelphia, or one who lived in Florida or California. I lived in Chicago. Once a year I got to see these people, but it was a great opportunity to see them. Yeah, there was still that promotional aspect, but by then it had become much less important.

And then, you know, nothing ever stands still. Things change, and they continue to change. Just when you think, oh, they've changed and now it used to be that and now it's this...now it's not this anymore. Now it changes to the other thing. At a certain point when my books started being best sellers and the show hit, some of the fun went out of it because now it became more promotion, but more promotion than I really wanted. I couldn't necessarily go to the parties and just, you know, drink and joke around with my friends, and sit in the hall and sing oldies TV theme songs, or talk about some story that Manly Wade Wellman wrote a long time ago. It was still good, but it was different, it was more work. It became more work...and sort of the enjoyable work, but still different.

And today, it's still changing. For me, Worldcon is very different than it used to be, and not necessarily always as much fun as it used to be. Some of it...certainly in the last 10 years or so, I kind of kept going out of duty. Robert A. Heinlein said you can never pay back the people who help you when you started, but you can pay it forward, and I wanted to pay it forward. I remembered the people who did help me when I started, the people like Terry Carr and some of the other early editors of the field, Ben Bova and all that. And many of them were gone now, but I could be the one who passed forward their traditions, and trying to keep things going and talk to the young writers. So some of that was the reason I went back, a little sense of duty, and some sense of the old fun.

WiC: What's one of your fondest memories of Worldcon? Maybe before it became as much work as it is now for you.

GRRM: Well, obviously I think...Boston, 1980, I won two Hugos. You know, I had won that first Hugo in Australia, but I wasn't in Australia so I got a phone call, 'hey you won, and Ben Bova accepted for you.' And that was a thrill, but actually being there. I'd been nominated before, but I'd always lost at the ones where I was physically present. But at that one, I won for Best Short Story, and I went up and I collected it from [Robert] Silverberg. That was "The Way of Cross and Dragon," my nominee in short story. And I collected the award and I went back to my seat, and then they opened [Best] Novelette and that was "Sandkings." So I had to turn around and go right back and get the second Hugo, an experience that no one had ever had before. So yeah, that was a kind of magical night.

And then I went around to the parties holding two Hugos. Gardner Dozois and I, in '76, the night I lost two Hugos and Gardner lost a Hugo, we had founded the Hugo Losers Club and had the first Hugo Losers Party. And so when I showed up with two Hugos in hand, Gardner had a can of whipped cream and he sprayed my whole head with whipped cream and he put a cherry on top of me and formally kicked me out of the Hugo Losers Club. That was a pretty memorable night. But there were others that were pretty memorable, too.

WiC: That's so cool. You've mentioned Gardner a couple of times. I was reading on your website that your very first con was Disclave in '71, and he was the first person you met there.

GRRM: That's right. He was working registration. He'd published some stories, but he wasn't a big name writer or editor by then. But he had an editorial job for Galaxy Magazine, he was the slush pile reader. So he was the one who got my story, ["The Hero,'] and fished it out of the slush pile, and gave it to Ejler Jacobson. And when I came in and told him my name, he said, 'Oh, I bought your story!' So we became friends there, and it grew over the years ever since. I miss him to this day. A lot of fun went out of Worldcon and fandom when Gardner died.

But he became, in time, a giant in the field. I mean, probably one of the three most important editors in the entire history of science fiction. He won the Hugo Award for Best Editor, Short Form 16 times, I believe.

WiC: So Gardner, he's interesting to me. I've loved your work with him, particularly your cross-genre anthologies like Warriors and Rogues. But for people who maybe aren't especially keyed in to sci-fi and fantasy history, they might not be familiar with Gardner's name. So I was wondering, if you could recommend Gardner's work to our readers, where would you tell them to start?

GRRM: Well, it depends on what you mean by Gardner's work. I mean, Gardner was a fine writer, and he broke in around the same time I did, a couple years before. But he was a very slow writer. He was not a prolific writer, by any means. He was often nominated [for Hugos], that's why he founded the Hugo Losers Club, because he was often nominated in the early days and he would always lose. And he made a joke of it that he had lost more Hugos than anybody, which ultimately came around and hit him because then he started winning.

But the point is, he couldn't pay his bills with the little money he made for his rare short stories. So he got a job as an editor, he was the slush pile reader for Galaxy, and later he was the slush pile reader for Isaac Asimov's Magazine. And then he became the full editor of Isaac Asimov's Magazine, a position he held for like 20 years. In addition, he edited anthologies...occasionally theme anthologies like, you know, unicorns or robots, whatever it was, he'd find some classic stories and all that. And he began to edit the Best Science Fiction of the Year, where he would read every science fiction story published in the year and select the ones best. It was a real honor to be included in Gardner's Best of the Year, and he did that for 20, 30 years, I don't even know. During the course of which he won 16 Hugos, lost four or five, as an editor.

So I think for the vast majority of people, Gardner is remembered as an editor. In a way, a lot like the precursor great editor, John W. Campbell Jr., who edited Astounding and then Analog for many decades. Campbell was initially a writer. In the '20s and '30s, he was probably the second most popular writer in science fiction. It was Doc Smith. Doc Smith was number one, everybody agreed on that, and Campbell was number two, under his own name and a little pseudonym, John A. Stewart. But when he became an editor, he stopped writing. And Gardner didn't stop writing, but he really slowed down writing.

So to sample Gardner's work, a lot of his short stories were collected in a book put together by Michael Swanwick, which consisted of a dozen of Gardner's best short stories and an extensive interview about how Gardner came to write each of them. And I think that book is called Being Gardner Dozois. He also wrote only one novel, Strangers, which was up for the Hugo in, I believe, '77. Lost, but still a really powerful kind of a story of a human being on an alien planet who gets involved with an alien woman, so there's alien sex...beautifully written, he was a beautiful writer. I think Strangers is...well it's his only novel so it's his best novel, but some of the short stories are great, too. His main work was as an editor.

WiC: Thank you for talking about that, I know it's a sensitive topic to even bring up.

GRRM: He was also the funniest guy in science fiction. Most of the memories of Gardner are laughing. I mean, to people that didn't know him, he was famous for putting things up his nose, like jelly beans, I have that classic picture of him. But many other things, and many stories of things he put up his nose — which did not, by the way, let me make it very, very clear because some people misunderstand, it did not include cocaine or anything like that. [Laughs]

For the rest of the interview, Martin and I were joined by Raya Golden, the art director for his Fevre River Packet Company. Golden has been working with Martin for years, both as an artist and as one of his faithful minions that helps him juggle his many responsibilities. If you're a reader of Martin's Not A Blog, you've no doubt read an update from Golden at some point or other (they typically come with a trademark profile picture drawing).

Last year, Golden adapted Martin's novella The Plague Star into a graphic novel, titled Voyaging, Volume One: The Plague Star. This is the first installment of what's hoped to be a series, which will adapt the rest of Martin's short fiction about the cat-loving spacefarer Haviland Tuf that was compiled in the fix-up novel Tuf Voyaging (1986)...as well as some other previously unreleased material.

WiC: Moving on to some of your works, and in particular some of your non-Westeros works, I wanted to ask how the possibilities are looking for another volume of Voyaging? And also, how did the collaboration for the first volume, The Plague Star, come about in the first place?

GRRM: Well, I guess it started when Raya was born. [Laughs]

RAYA GOLDEN: Oh, stop.

GRRM: No...yeah, I've known Raya since she was a little girl. Her mother was a dear, dear friend of mine, and of my wife. So we watched her grow up and she took up, instead of writing, she took up drawing and became a very talented artist, and went to school and all that. And at some point, we started talking about doing graphic novel versions of some of my short stories...and she did several of them. She did Meathouse Man, which is an adaptation of a short story I had written for Orbit [magazine] like 10 years before. And that was nominated for a Hugo; lost, so she got in the Hugo Losers Club. And then, Starport, which was a pilot I had written for, I think it was Fox. They never made it, I thought we were gonna make it and have a series — still trying to make it as a movie, by the way. But she did an adaptation of Starport that was very nice. But the one she really loved was Haviland Tuf.

RG: Love that character. And it wasn't available at the time...somebody else had the rights. But finally about five years ago, I asked again and he allowed me to do Plague Star. But I've always wanted to do it, I think Tuf has a lot of legs. And yeah, we're trying to get a second volume going, including not just stories he's published but some other stories, since [Tuf] is an open-ended character.

GRRM: But like anything, it all depends on the publishers, and you know, how well did the first one sell? And will their bean counters count the right number of beans and say, 'yes, we want to do another one.' I would love to see more of it, I mean I thought the first one turned out great. I always liked Tuf. Mind you, I meant to write more Tuf stories, but somehow I haven't gotten around to it in my copious spare time. But I have like, [more ideas] for Tuf stories written...Tuf Voyaging is a collection of like eight stories that I wrote for Tuf over the years, including Plague Star, [which] is the origin story and the longest development. It's only one of them.

RG: The stories that I have in mind for writing are based upon your notes and stuff, they're not out of the thin air. Every other volume would actually feature two stories. So, because The Plague Star was so long, every other volume would be either one of the published stories and a new story, or the other like long-standing story, which is The Manna From Heaven with the S'uthlamese. Which I probably would do still broken up...because it gives time between [the other stories].

WiC: That sounds awesome. I really hope you guys get to do more of those.

RG: I did a neat cosplay thing for New York City Comic-Con that we're actually developing into a produced toy. It's a little cat with magnets that can hang on to your backpack, in a little spacesuit.

GRRM: Space kitty! [Laughs]

WiC: If you could choose one other non-Westeros work of yours to be adapted with a Game of Thrones-type budget, which would it be?

GRRM [answering immediately]: Fevre Dream. I love Fevre Dream, and I've had numerous meetings. I've written a screenplay for Fevre Dream, we did develop it at one point. They didn't make the screenplay of course, but the rights reverted to me, so I own it. I've had meetings with Guillermo Del Toro about Fevre Dream. He loves it, he says wants to do it...he said he wants to do it, but he doesn't want to do it now, he always has this project first and that project first, and then this other project. But eventually he'll do Fevre Dream, if he lives that long and I live that long and movies live that long, I don't know.

But eventually we would do that and I think Fevre Dream would be great. We wanna star Ron Perlman, we've even cast it! My friend Ron Perlman as [steamboat captain] Abner Marsh. Ron wants to do it. Everybody wants to do it, all we need is $100 million. Do you have $100 million?

WiC: I wish! For Fevre Dream, I wish I had it to give. Okay, next I'd like to ask a writing career question. 'What advice would you give to new writers' is a fairly common author interview question...but since you've had a long career with many seasons, my question for you is a little different: What advice would you give to writers who are maybe in the middle of their career, who have suffered setbacks or have maybe been struggling in the midlist, and they're still just trying to keep going?

GRRM: Well, I mean if you look at the history of science fiction, which of course has changed a lot, just like Worldcons have, all the way back to the '20s and '30s...most of the greats of science fiction and people in the hall of fame had their entire career in the midlist. That's where science fiction writers lived, they lived in the midlist and the backlist. It wasn't until the '70s that any science fiction book or fantasy book made any bestseller list, and very few of them were made into movies. You know, these were people who worked [other jobs]...Isaac Asimov was a teacher, he worked for Boston University teaching biochem and wrote on the side. Clifford Simak was a newspaper man who spent his entire career in Wisconsin editing and reporting for a small town Wisconsin newspaper. Theodore Sturgeon, he bounced around, he had dozens of different jobs...he didn't make a whole hell of a lot of money from any of them. It was a field that you wrote maybe because you had to write it or because you loved it, but it wasn't a field that would necessarily support you or make you rich.

Now, things did change in the '70s, and a few people, like me, did start doing very well. But it doesn't necessarily last. I mean, from the early '70s into the mid-'80s, I was one of the hot young rising stars of science fiction. But then I wrote a book called The Armageddon Rag, and nobody bought it. And like overnight, from being a hot young rising star, I became a has-been and nobody wanted to look at my books. Fortunately, I got into television at the time...but there was a period there where I was afraid I was going to lose my house. You know, I'd gotten a big advance, and I had foolishly spent the big advance. I bought a new car, I bought a nicer house and got a mortgage on it...like a year and a half later I'm looking at, 'oh god, should I sell this car? I'm gonna lose my house, I better get another credit card.'

I say this whenever I speak to young writers: this is not a profession for anyone who needs or wants security. I didn't think I was a gambler, but that's what I turned out to be. You can be hot, and then you can be cold. In some ways it's not unlike an actor, or a singer, you know? I have a singer friend, I won't mention the name, but I have a friend...in the '60s, this person would fill giant stadiums — well, not stadiums, but basketball arenas, thousands of people. And now she comes to Santa Fe and plays in my bar with 130 seats, after an entire career as a singer, and a really great singer, who has won Grammys and other things like that. The creative arts...you're really rolling the dice. Now, are you temperamentally suited for that, is one thing to ask young writers. What do they want? Do they want stories to tell, or do they want the career of being a writer? It's tough. It's tough, and people have different feelings on that.

I think, when I look at my own career...if I hadn't become a writer, what the hell would I have been? I mean, I guess I would have been a teacher. I've taught journalism, and I've taught English and writing for a while. That's pretty satisfying, I'm pretty good at that. I could have done that. What else could I have done?

RG: You could have been like Gardner and done editing.

GRRM: Yeah, if I got that job, there's only like six of them around. But yeah...it's tough. What would you do if it didn't work out in comic books? Would you be doing like advertising art? 'Here's the new refrigerator!' [Laughs]

RG: No, I'd probably just be a manager at like a Gap or something, or a personal assistant. Artist, it's even harder, especially with AI getting visual artist jobs. And even being a comic book artist, I don't ever even think that that's gonna be enough to keep me going. It's just, I love it and I want to keep doing it and I like the industry.

GRRM: Also the other thing that's difficult, I'm thinking particularly with science fiction and writing, is the rules keep changing. The science fiction of the '60s and '70s and before was a midlist thing and it was a backlist thing. You know, you look at writers, great writers, hall of fame writers, you know...Jack Vance, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon...they never had a bestseller. Never one. They wrote a book a year. They wrote a book a year, and they got paid $10,000 for it — if they were a big name. Some of them never saw a $10,000 advance. But you know, you could live in those days on like $8,000. So they would write a book, they would write another book. But what made the difference was the backlist...and you can read about this in some of the old Science Fiction Writers of America [SFWA] bulletins. People like James Blish would write 'how to build a career in science fiction' and it was all about the backlist. Yes, you struggle in the beginning, but once you have 30 books, all 30 will be in print and then twice a year you'll get a royalty statement for, 'book number one, you're getting $800 for, book number two did really well you're getting $1,400 for it, book number three...' but you've got 30 of them. So it's all that. But then with Thor Power Tool...I'm getting a little esoteric here, that was a crucial tax judgment that basically destroyed the backlist and changed publishing forever. A decision of the IRS.

And so it's hard...yes, if I never wrote another word... [Martin leans forward and speaks directly into the recorder] I am going to write another word. I'm gonna finish the book. But if I never did, if I choked to death right now on my pineapple juice ice cube, my backlist would continue to sell. I was just over at a couple of bookstores yesterday, and I was signing, you know 500 copies of A Game of Thrones at each. So my backlist would continue to sell and do money, but eventually it'll stop selling. You have to keep producing new stuff.

So what's changing now? I don't know, the whole publishing industry is looking at AI and saying, 'Oh, what's gonna happen here? Do we need these writer guys? Can't we just tell it, write a book in the style of George Martin?'

WiC: Both you and Raya brought up AI, and obviously that's a thing that's weighing on a lot of different creative communities at the moment. I've heard stories from multiple authors about publishers trying to insert AI language into contracts right now, where they're signing new books and trying to reserve the right to train AI models off of those books. I was wondering if you have any thoughts about that as a practice?

GRRM: Well, the Author's Guild is suing [OpenAI], and I'm one of the plaintiffs to that lawsuit. Now, we don't think, speaking to the guild's lawyers and to the other plaintiffs in the suit, we don't think we're gonna outlaw AI. You can't outlaw new technology. You can try, people have tried through history...but it's here to stay. The question is: what kind of regulations are you gonna have? What rules are there going to be? I mean, if you do use a book to train AI, does the author get to consent to the use of the book? Does the author have any say about it? Does the author get any income from it?

I mean, obviously on AI they're not just training one writer or not using one book, they're using like 10,000 books. So they're using 10,000 books to train their AI, does each of the 10,000 authors get a nickel, or a dollar, or $100? If it's like $100, I don't know, maybe that becomes the new backlist; writers write books and then their books enter the big AI thing, or they give permission. I don't know. I don't know what rules they'll have but they have to have some kind of rules. If they have no rules, and things like the AI companies are just free to help themselves to anything they want, then I think we got a real problem because, you know, unlike AI authors need to eat and occasionally buy a house to live in and so forth.

In some ways, as challenging as it is for authors, I think the most immediate crisis will be for actors and artists. I mean, the artists are already getting it with AI [book] covers.

RG: And concept art. I have many friends in Hollywood and gaming who have just completely lost 10, 15-year careers because they only need someone to feed stuff into the AI, and they get [everything] back a lot faster than any human could produce it. But it all runs into the same problem: it's all regurgitated material. It's like, 'oh this looks a little bit like Elden Ring, and a little bit like Outland, and a little bit like this,' but it's nothing new.

GRRM: And for actors, first of all there's the lower level actors, the extras. We have a friend who, last time we were in Atlanta, we went to a company and they scanned them. They had one of these new 360 degree camera things, and he stood in the middle of it and turned this way and that way, and they scanned him from every angle, from up above, down and around. And I think they had him sign that you get $200 as an extra...so, $200 and now they own those images for all time. And he can be used as an extra in 10,000 movies, they can put him in a Roman toga, they can put him in a Nazi uniform, they can add a rubber nose to him and a bunch of floppy shoes and say he's a clown in a circus movie, over and over and over again...and they paid him $200, that's all they'll get.

Extras face that, and even big name actors. I mean, how long can Harrison Ford go on playing Indiana Jones? Well, I think the flop of the last movie may be an indication there. But what if you could cast Harrison, but you don't photograph Harrison, you use young Harrison in AI? And what if my next movie, I would like it to feature Marilyn Monroe and Errol Flynn? There you go.

So we need rules for all of this and we hope that our lawsuit is going forward...it's specifically targeted for the authors, and that question you raised about feeding the stuff in. But there are other lawsuits that are being filed by other people that could cover the actors and the illustrators and things like that. So it's a bold new world...but who will come out of it, and what will the rules be? I don't know.

But to get back to the young writers...you gotta keep apprised of this stuff. So maybe they should start going to Worldcons and other things, and know what's happening in the business. And you know, the real thing is to persist. I've been very lucky in some ways, but even with my luck, my career has crashed and burned twice. Once around 1984 with Armageddon Rag, and then I did the whole television thing for a decade, but then it crashed and burned again in like 1994 when my television show was canceled and I couldn't get another job. Fortunately, I had this idea for this Game of Thrones thing that worked out.

But I look at the people who broke in with me, the other hot young writers of the '70s. Well, a number of them are dead sadly, like Gardner Dozois and Howard Waldrop and Ed Bryant and a whole bunch...and a lot of others you don't hear of anymore, and what happened to them? I think maybe they had a flop, maybe they had writer's block. You never know who gets writer's block. And maybe they just couldn't do it, you know, they weren't building a backlist...at a certain point you're not a hot young writer anymore, you're this midlist guy who's been hanging around for a long time. But hey, that hot young writer just walked in and he's only 23 years old and boy, he wrote that story that everybody liked. Suddenly he's the hot young writer. You've gotta prepare for that and you've gotta persist. And you've gotta say, 'I'm gonna write my stories, and I don't care if one person buys another.'

Now, here's a potentially good thing...is that we now do have independent publishing, which is becoming bigger and bigger. It's not all, 'are you going to be accepted by one of the Big Five [publishing houses].' And not only accept it, are they going to put a lot of promotion behind you, and send you on a tour and print 100,000 copies of the book...or are they going to print 3,000 copies of the book, throw it out, and see? Now you can take it into your own hands. I mean, in [the] days when I was breaking in, we looked down on that, we said, 'Eh, the people who are publishing their own books, it's vanity publishing and people who are not good enough to do it.' Well now it's become more than that. There are people who are very good who are publishing their own books, and they will continue to do that and some of them will achieve great success.

That TV series, what the hell is it called...Silo. That's based on Hugh Howie's books, the first one of which, Wool, was a self-published book that caught on. And then he wrote more and more, and now he's got a TV series.

WiC: There are so many writers doing so well in the self-published space. Alright, I know we're pushing time, so to end on a fun note...if you were ruling a medieval fantasy kingdom, which fictional characters from other creators' stories would you want on your Small Council?

GRRM: Yes, well...do I want to actually rule the realm well, or do I want to have fun? You know? [Laughs] I mean, obviously, Tolkien says Aragorn was king, he ruled wisely and well for 100 years. So sure, you'd want Aragorn on, and you'd want Gandalf, he's a wizard, he's a Maia, he's sort of a god.

RG: Gandalf or Merlin? They're both wizards, they're both [good counselors].

GRRM: Merlin is living fucking backwards! [Laughs]

RG: Right, right. He might be an infant right when you need him.

GRRM: You've gotta go with some of Tolkien's people. If you want an Elf on the council, you can get Galadriel representing the Elf people. I suppose you could put a dwarf on the council, too, just to balance it. If you want a council that would be more fun to write about, you put like Jack Vance's Cugel the Clever. Oh, Cugel the Clever would be like Littlefinger times 10. Except his plots never work out, they're very amusing. So you'd have a lot of conflict, and fun like that there. Who would you want to be like...the master of armies? Who would you want to come and defend? Who's a great warrior? Well, you could go to King Arthur...I don't know...

RG: Lancelot?

GRRM: Well, Lancelot's a great knight...

RG: But not necessarily a great leader.

GRRM: And he's likely to fuck your queen. [Laughs] There's a lot of interesting characters that you could draw on. Ursula K. LeGuin, one of her characters, too.

An enormous thank you to George R.R. Martin, Raya Golden, Sid and the rest of the minions for carving out the time for this interview. And to you for reading it!

As of this writing, Martin is still hard at work on The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, and Blood & Fire, the sequel to his Targaryen history book Fire & Blood. He also recently toured the set of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the next Game of Thrones spinoff in the works at HBO, during a month-long trip to Europe which included this visit to Glasgow Worldcon. Based on Martin's Dunk & Egg novellas, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms just wrapped filming in Northern Ireland and is slated to debut on HBO sometime in 2025. Its first six-episode season will cover the novella The Hedge Knight, the story which introduced the world to the beloved characters Ser Duncan the Tall and his irascible squire Egg.

We'll have our ear to the ground for any updates about George R.R. Martin's written works as well as the HBO series, so if you enjoyed this interview make sure to check back soon! Until then, our watch continues.

Dig deeper with these exclusives:

• George R.R. Martin wants Guillermo del Toro to adapt his vampire novel Fevre Dream
• George R.R. Martin speaks on his AI lawsuit: "We need rules for all of this"
• George R.R. Martin shares which fictional characters he'd want on his Small Council
• Raya Golden and GRRM on the origin and future of their Voyaging graphic novels
• George R.R. Martin's Howard Waldrop short films are delightful and deserve to be seen

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