Mumbai: About 14 million people, across 200 territories, are expected to watch season four of Game of Thrones — HBO’s epic fantasy series, which premieres tonight in the US and on April 13 in India. A similar number of viewers tuned in for the preceding season, reported Reuters. The numbers aren’t surprising, considering Game of Thrones’ combination of excellent production values (the budget each season is reportedly over $50 million), great casting (including Emilia Clarke, recently voted the World’s Sexiest Woman, and Peter Dinklage), and ahaunting score by Ramin Djawadi. The real “star” however, is the plot: A suspenseful narrative replete with sex, violence and intrigue, that unfolds as the noble families of the fictional land Westeros vie for control of its Iron Throne. Put in some fire-breathing dragons and nearly indestructible “white walkers” (a sort of walking dead) and you have an action adventure that’s truly gripping. The show’s creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss skilfully craft each episode to keep the excitement at fever pitch, and with season three ending with the brutal murder of two prominent characters, the hysteria surrounding season four is high indeed.
The real “master of the game” however, is George R. R.Martin — the 65-year-old American author on whose Song of Ice and Fire books, Game of Thrones is based. Martin (who looks like a character from the world of fantasy fiction himself: A more genial Albus Dumbledore, with a less luxuriant beard) began writing the first book in the Ice and Fire series in 1991. Published in 1996, it has been followed by four other volumes, the latest in 2011. The sixth and penultimate book in the series — Winds of Winter — is still being written; as the Game of Thrones show catches up with the books, the clamour from fans for Martin to publish it, is insistent.
Speaking to us from Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives in what’s described as “an adobe-style house, with a letterbox in the shape of a castle, complete with a drawbridge”, Martin says he’s used to the pressure from fans. “There’s always been a certain amount of pressure since the first book came out in 1996. Then people wanted the second book and when that came out, they wanted the third. The TV series has just meant that even more people want the next book. I’ve become quite used to this over the last 20 years,” he says, and laughs. “It may take me five years to write this book, then it’ll get published and two days later, I’ll get an email asking, ‘When’s the next one coming out?’ So the pressure is pretty much a constant feature of my life these days.”
Martin was a literary star even before he started writing the Ice and Fire books at the age of 42 — he was well known for his science fiction works in the ’70s and he enjoyed a certain fame as a television writer in the late ’80s. He tells us that his television experience improved him as a writer: “It gave me a better sense of structure, improved my dialogue.” His degree in Journalism from Northwestern University in the 1960s had been similarly impactful. “It taught me a lot of things about writing, it improved my style. But more importantly, it got me out into the world,” Martin says. “As a child and high school student, I was very shy… (Studying) journalism forced me to go beyond that. As a reporter, you have to speak to many different kinds of people, you have to get involved in all the aspects of the world you’re covering — whether it’s sports or politics or a feature story. And that expanded my interests greatly.”
The Song of Ice and Fire books reflect not only those lessons in storytelling. They also reflect Martin’s passion for history (the War of the Roses is thought to be a reference point for Ice and Fire) and chess (he organised weekend tournaments for several years). The story, as it has unfolded over the five books (and the three TV seasons) so far, can be thought of as a grand game of chess, with two very powerful queens at either end of the board. But while the movement of pieces on a chess board is dictated by certain rules, a gamut of human motivations rule the Ice and Fire characters, including greed, jealousy, lust, love, honour — and some mysticism. The quest for power is a subject that fascinates him, Martin admits.
“What is the reality of power? Mao Tse Tung famously said that all power comes out of the barrel of a gun. That seems initially persuasive, but then you wonder if that’s true why do the people holding the guns obey those who actually send them forth? To me that’s a fascinating question and one that affects the fate of nations. Why did people obey their leaders when they told them to go half a world away and kill people they had no quarrel with? I’m trying to examine this in the books and I spend many thousands of words doing just that and dramatising it,” Martin says.
He’s also expended thousands of words dramatising war. Here you’ll see war from the perspective not only of a general, but also of a foot soldier. And you’ll be made to feel the full weight of the devastation it wreaks. The descriptions of battle feel tremendously real, surprising since Martin himself doesn’t have any firsthand experience of it, having registered as a conscientious objector during the Vietnam War. “It’s true, I did not serve in Vietnam. But I had friends who served in Vietnam, friends who I knew before they went off to war and after they came back... And then other people, who served in other wars, and of course, I read a great deal on the subject,” Martin says. “War is central to so many fantasy books from J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings onwards, and (as a writer) you really have to grapple with the subject — not just the realities of war, but also how you’re going to best depict those realities. Wars can be exciting to read about, but at all times you must remember the cost of war and the human tragedy that is involved in war and that’s certainly one of important themes in the book.”
With so much realism in his works — a paradox perhaps, considering their genre is “fantasy fiction” — there is a tendency among fans to look at Martin’s story as an allegory for the war in Iraq, or for Colonialism. Martin says that’s perfectly okay, “because people can take what they want out a story, and the best story is one that works at many levels”. But, he says, the Ice and Fire books are not meant as an allegory. If anything, he describes the story as “a medieval fantasy, with the universal theme of the human heart in conflict with itself”.
“In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, William Faulkner said that the only thing worth writing about was the human heart in conflict with itself and I’ve always taken that as my personal credo,” Martin says. “So whether it’s literary fiction or commercial fiction or mainstream fiction, science fiction, children’s stories — the best stories, the ones that stay with us for a long, long time, are the ones about the human heart in conflict with itself.”
Tonight, when Game of Thrones resumes on television, those conflicts — escalating, and ominous — will hold sway once again.
The Song of Ice and Fire:
· A Game of Thrones, 1996
· A Clash of Kings, 1998
· A Storm of Swords, 2000
· A Feast for Crows, 2005
· A Dance with Dragons, 2011
· Next: Winds of Winter
Cast of Characters
· House Lannister: Lena Heady plays Cersei, Peter Dinklage plays Tyrion and Nicolaj Costau-Walder as Jaime
· House Targaryen: Danaerys, played by Emilia Clarke
· House Stark: Kit Harrington as Jon Snow
· House Baratheon: Stephen Dillane plays Stannis
· Brit actress Indira Varma (previously seen in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love and Bride and Prejudice) joins the cast this season.
