The four time Hugo award winning author of the best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire was kind enough to answer some of our questions.  Listen to the interview or check out the transcript below!

Afterburn SF:  You were a professional writer for twenty years before you started on A Song of Fire and Ice. (Editor's note - The series is actually called A Song of Ice and Fire - nervous about interviewing one of my personal heroes?  Who, me?  Nah!) Is it a coincidence that you waited until later in your career to tackle something that epic in scope?

George R. R. Martin:  Well, I think my work has been getting longer and more ambitious as I get older and more experienced.  Of course, when I started back in the early seventies, I was writing predominantly short stories.  In fact, I was selling professionally for six years before I attempted my first novel, which came out in 1977.  And then, you know, for a number of years after that I continued to do a lot of short work, but more and more novels. The novels got longer and more ambitious.

Then I went to Hollywood for ten years, and that, I think, had something to do with the scale of Ice and Fire, because, when you’re working in television and film, you’re working under very strict parameters, in terms of length and, of course, the cost of it.  You always have a budget to keep in mind.  On some of our shows like Twilight Zone, or Beauty and the Beast, the budget would be a million one, or a million three, and that’s pretty tight. Very frequently I would submit scripts that were too long and too expensive, then I would have to go through the process of cutting them.  They would say ‘Well, the budget for that script is three million dollars. You have to cut ten characters, and this big battle scene, can we make that a skirmish? You have twelve matte paintings here, can we make it one?”

So, after a decade, of that, I mean, I did that.  I was a professional, and I did what was required to get the scripts down to being manageable in terms of length and being something that we could actually afford to shoot, but it was never a pleasant prospect when I had to remove what I thought was some good stuff, from some of those scripts.

So, after a decade of that I was ready to do something where I didn’t have to worry about the budget and I didn’t have to worry about the length, where I could have as many characters, locations and battles as I wanted, and they could be as big as I wanted.  I really wanted to spread out a little. And, I think, the scale of Ice and Fire is at least partially a result of that.

Afterburn SF:  If you had written the novels earlier in your career do you think they would have been as detailed and as awesome as they are?
George R. R. Martin:  Well, I like to think I’m better now than I was then, so, you know.  I suspect they would still be pretty detailed.  I’ve always had that kind of obsessive attention to detail.  But I think they are better now than they would have been if I’d written them ten years ago or twenty years ago, simply because I think I’m a better writer than I was then.

Afterburn SF:  Your characters are all very fully developed.  You have a genius for making characters seem monstrous at first, and then turning the tables and making them seem sympathetic to the reader.  How do you accomplish that?

George R. R. Martin:  Well, you know, people fascinate me, and I think characters are the heart of fiction.  You hear science fiction frequently talked about as a literature of ideas, but, actually, there is no sort of fiction that is an ideal vehicle for presenting abstract ideas.  If you want to do that, non-fiction is the best vehicle to use.  I think, the purpose of fiction, as far as I’m concerned, anyway, is, I tend to agree with Faulkner, what he said in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech – “The only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself.”  For my mind that means characters, that means you have to get inside the characters as much as you can.

We’re all fascinating in our own ways.  We’re all complex.  I mean, the one-dimensional characters, where one side is all good, and the other side is all evil, doesn’t interest me half so much as real people.  You read biographies of great figures of history, and what strikes you is that there are very few totally black villains or totally white heroes among them.  Even the blackest of villains has a few redeeming qualities, and even the most gallant of heroes has times where he did something that was questionable, or where he made an error.  Maybe his courage or decision-making ability failed him.  These are the things that interest me, the ambiguity, the complexity, the contradictions.  To my mind those are the things that make characters real.

Afterburn SF:  Speaking of characters, you have six or seven point of view characters in those novels, as well as scores of minor characters.  How do you keep track of the subplots and each character’s development? Do you have a process in place to do that?
George R. R. Martin:  With increasing difficulty.  (laughs) The cast has grown.  You know, there’s no special system there, it’s just something that I do.  I’ve been working on this series since 1991, really, off and on, with time off to do other things, occasionally.  So, I’m pretty familiar with these characters, and with Westeros, and it’s just something that I know.  They’re my children, and my grandchildren, in a sense, and yeah, sometimes I have to look up their birthdays, or what color their eyes are, but most of it is in my head.  I just know them very well.
Afterburn SF:  Speaking of characters, you obviously do care a great deal about your characters.  One of the things your famous for, that I really love about your works, is that you’re never afraid to kill off one of your significant characters to advance the plotline.  This has led to some public outcry in the past.  I remember everybody, at least all of my friends, were pretty upset after the Red Wedding.  Why do you do that, and what do you say to fans who get upset about it?

George R. R. Martin:  To fans who get upset about it, I say that there are a lot of other books out there, in which no one is ever in danger.  They can be perfectly happy reading about the protagonist safely defeating any number of orcs or Nazis, you know, however many, but that doesn’t interest me.

            I think, what I’m aiming for, is to give my readers a vicarious experience, so that they don’t just read a book, but they almost live the book.  I mean, if I could, I would shove them through the page, make them experience everything the characters experience.  So I strive, to the best of my ability, to make the sex scenes sexy and at the feast I want them to smell the food, I want their mouth to water.  I want them to smell the smoke in the air.  I want to make these scenes come alive and I want to engage their emotions.

What that means, of course, is in battle scenes, of any kind of fight scene, there should be a certain amount of jeopardy attached to it.  If you, when you next left the house, were suddenly attacked by three guys in the street, you’d be pretty scared, particularly if they had swords.  I don’t care how big you are, or strong, or heroic, you’d be scared, and you’d wonder whether you were going to survive that, especially if you got wounded a few times, and things like that.

But you read so much fiction where that doesn’t seem to be the case.  The hero goes out, and here’s three bravos attacking him outside the tavern, here’s three orcs jumping him.  There’s no fear, there’s no tension in that scene, because he’s the hero.  He’s safe.  It doesn’t matter if it’s three of them, or five of them, of twelve of them, somehow he is going to get away, or he is going to kill them all.  He’s going to have the magic doohickey in his sock, of he’s going to be such a great swordsman that even twelve guys can’t slow him down.  That, for me, is just so phony.  It’s not true to the human experience.  It doesn’t interest me.

I want you to be afraid.  I want the scenes of tension to have real tension to them.  To my mind, the only way to do that is to make it very clear, right from the first, that you’re playing for keeps, that this is as real a world as I can make it.  If you’re stabbed with a sword you might not survive it.  And being a hero, or a good guy, or being on the right side isn’t going to give you some imaginary, ethereal protection where nothing bad can happen to you.  The truth is, if we look through history, at wars, you know, people die in wars.  You can’t write about wars and have nobody die.  It’s dishonest.

Afterburn SF: And that is something you succeed brilliantly at, by the way, is bringing the story to life, and giving a real sense of jeopardy.

George R. R. Martin:  Thank you.

Afterburn SF:  Another interesting aspect of your works are the religions that you have in there.  They’re all so detailed and contrasting, the Seven, the Drowned God, the Old Gods, R’hllor, the Faceless God.  How do you create such detailed, believable religions, and do any of them reflect aspects of real world religions?