George RR Martin, fantasy sorcerer bewitches real lives
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
When the sixth season of the HBO television show Game of Thrones begins its run next weekend, it may just break the internet. In the biggest “simulcast” ever, 194 countries will air the season premiere at 9pm Eastern Standard Time on April 23. A tech company in Belfast, where part of the series is filmed, is giving employees a half-day holiday so they can stay up until 2am UK time to watch live. Online speculation is at fever pitch, especially since one of the most important (and attractive) cast members was apparently murdered at the end of season five.
This epic series, with a cast of scores of lead actors, and shot in glorious locations from Iceland to Morocco, is set in a medieval-era fantasy world created by the American author George RR Martin. The many plot lines all ultimately revolve around power: getting it, holding on to it for one’s family honour and removing enemies, often in bloody/spectacular/supernatural style.
Game of Thrones has become more popular and expensive every year. Each new episode has reportedly cost more than $10m, from $6m in 2012. It is worth it for HBO: the show picked up a record 12 Emmy Awards in 2015, including best drama. It also holds the dubious honour of being the world’s most pirated show and is one of the most sexually explicit shows on television.
HBO has imposed tight secrecy on its prize asset in an attempt to prevent leaks. With one exception. Barack Obama is a fan and, as Game of Thrones’ showrunner David Benioff revealed at the series launch, “When the commander-in-chief says, ‘I want to see the advanced episodes’, what are you going to do?”
Somehow, a series about an imaginary pre-industrial world has become a global sensation. Its modern appeal may lie in its old-fashioned and uncompromising lack of sentimentality. Many of the original lead characters have been killed off; the lucky ones have been exiled from power and family.
This fantasy show is, paradoxically, about “raw realism” — as the critic and poet Clive James puts it in a lengthy appreciation of Game of Thrones in the New Yorker. Its strength “is in the daring of its analytical psychology, much of it revealed through talk, which goes on even when the clothes have come off”.
While the TV series is created and overseen by Mr Benioff and DB [Daniel] Weiss, their vision is closely based on Mr Martin’s work. The sex-and-blood soaked kingdoms of Westeros, where most of the action is set, first appeared in 1996 in his almost-eponymous book A Game of Thrones. The author has a whole universe in his head and millions of fans hang on his every word.
Mr Martin, 67, was already a successful genre writer when HBO came calling. His first science-fiction short story was published in 1970 while he was a journalism student in Illinois. During the 1970s he combined writing with teaching journalism and eventually gave up the day jobs to write full-time. He suffered a professional crisis in 1983 when his fourth novel, about a rock band, flopped.
Mr Martin told the Financial Times in 2012 that it “destroyed my career as a novelist at the time. Oddly enough, the same book that essentially crippled my career as a novelist started my career in Hollywood.” He worked as a TV and film scriptwriter, earning “a lot of money but got very little [TV] made”. The financial security, however, allowed him to turn his attention to something more epic.
A Game of Thrones took five years to write. It was an immediate success and was followed by four books in the saga, collectively titled A Song of Ice and Fire. The fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, was published in 2011 just after the first season of the show aired.
While the books were bestsellers before the TV series (with more than 60m copies sold), Mr Martin was not then a celebrity. Five years on, the author, with his distinctive beard, is recognised by devoted fans worldwide. When not travelling to promote the show, he lives with his wife Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the couple (who met at a sci-fi convention) have bought and renovated a local cinema.
Some critics have been sniffy about Mr Martin’s prose style, most recently Mr James, who described it as “Dan Brownish” — a reference to the author of The Da Vinci Code. There is no doubt that Mr Martin is a compelling storyteller, with a vast frame of reference.
“I was mostly the kid with his nose in a book,” he told the FT, and the lands of A Song of Ice and Fire were in part inspired by his experience growing up on the New Jersey shoreline. “I had this desire to see the world. I couldn’t see any of it but I saw it in my imagination.”
A voiceover on a season six trailer intones: “The past is already written. The ink is dry.” But the saga is not finished. The Winds of Winter was due to be published ahead of the sixth series of Game of Thrones but Mr Martin said in January that he had missed his deadline.
Readers of the books have always been ahead of the series. Now we are set to be surprised. This may be a unique moment in television history. Will the show’s now divergent plot lines spoil the author’s vision for his saga in the sixth and a projected seventh volume? “All I can do is say ‘yes and no’ . . . the show and the books have diverged, and will continue to do so,” Mr Martin blogged.
As fans wait impatiently, not even its creator can know how this will play out. We are entering a world as uncharted as the frozen wilds that lie Beyond the Wall in the far north of Westeros.
The writer is FT assistant features editor
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