Thus spoke George Martin: One of the things I read a lot of is history and historical fiction. Im a big fan of historical fiction. I did read fantasy as well. As I read that, I sort of had a problem with a lot of the fantasy I was reading, because it seemed to me that the middle ages or some version of the quasi middle ages was the preferred setting of a vast majority of the fantasy novels that I was reading by Tolkien imitators and other fantasists, yet they were getting it all wrong. It was a sort of Disneyland middle ages, where they had castles and princesses and all that. The trappings of a class system, but they didnt seem to understand what a class system actually meant. Even though you had castles and princesses and walled cities and all that, the sensibilities were those of 20th century Americans. You didnt see that in good historical fiction. There were people who were writing fine historical fiction that really grasp it. In my kind of cross-genre/genre-bending kind of way was to go, you know, what Id like to do is write an epic fantasy that had the imagination and the sense of wonder that you get in the best fantasy, but the gritty realism of the best historical fiction. If I could combine those two threads, I might have something fairly unique and well worth reading.
Posted on: Mon, 02 Dec 2013 21:50:37 +0000
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