George R.R. Martin has been writing consistently for decades, but is by far best known for his A Song of Ice and Fire books, adapted for TV as Game of Thrones. He's doing press right now to promote the movie In The Lost Lands, which is based off one of his short stories. While he's happy to talk about Game of Thrones and all of its offshoots, reading these interviews, you also get the idea that he wishes more people were interested in his non-Game of Thrones projects.
In that way, Martin relates to Frank Herbert, the author of the Dune series, which has been consistently popular ever since the first book came out in 1965. "Frank made Dune, which was one of the great, great books in the history of science fiction," Martin told Collider. "But I know him a little, not a lot, just over conventions, and I think he was a little bothered that all they wanted was Dune. 'Give us another Dune. Give us another Dune. Give us another Dune.' He wrote other good books. He wrote Under Pressure, a deep-sea novel about exploration. He wrote The Santaroga Barrier. That's all of us writers. We want our other children to get some attention, too."
I'll admit: I'd never even considered that Frank Herbert might have written other books, although of course he did; he also worked on series like ConSentiency and WorShip. I guess I'm one of those people who would have just asked for more Dune.
I am familiar with some of Martin's other work, and there's a lot of it. I can understand why Martin would be a mite bit frustrated with everyone treating him like he's only ever written about the Seven Kingdoms when he has an extensive catalog beyond that. Then again, I don't get the impression that he's ungrateful; it's not very often that authors have smash hits on the level of A Song of Ice and Fire or Dune and I'm sure he's well aware of that.
Frank Herbert died in 1986, long before the current crop of Dune movies directed by Denis Villeneuve and starring Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides. They're widely considered the best adaptations of Dune to ever come out. "If Frank had lived long enough and seen what they're doing now, that would be great, but he's gone," Martin mused.
Martin, on the other hand, is very much alive to see his books adapted for the screen, something he has mixed feelings about:
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