AggieCon was last weekend and it was awesome (this coming
from someone who really only attended half of what was offered). The panel I
was looking forward to the most was the Saturday interview of author George
R.R. Martin by author Ernest Cline. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series is
the original story on which HBO’s Game of Thrones is based. Ernest Cline wrote
the screenplay for Fanboy, a geeky roadtrip across the country to Skywalker
Ranch and the 2011 novel Ready Player One (full of wonderful 80’s pop culture
references). Honestly, I was a little bit nervous before this interview even
though my only involvement was as a spectator. Cline posted a video of the
interview and Q&A here.
Ernest Cline seemed to be geeking out as much as the
audience was over George RR Martin. Martin was in College Station for the
opening of the Deeper
than Swords exhibit at Texas A&M’s Cushing Memorial Library. The
exhibit features letters, manuscripts, and other objects from Martin’s career.
One of the items in the exhibit is a letter he wrote to Stan Lee in November
1963. It was published in Fantastic Four #20. Martin’s descriptive writing
style was present even then.
Cline and Martin discussed Martin's career as a novelist and
screenwriter. Cline, and many other readers, believes that Martin improved upon
fantasy writing by adding sex and religion to his work. He enjoys exploring the
world of spirituality and infuses influences from different world religions into
A Song of Ice and Fire. In the Q&A session, his advice for prospective
writers was persistence. Keep writing, do the best work you can do, and don’t
worry about how people are going to see it. A couple of people asked specific
questions about Game of Thrones and Dance with Dragons. Basically he gets his
inspiration from everywhere – Three Stooges, comic books he read growing up, history,
friends, or other sources. One of the best moments was when both Martin and
Cline got geeky about Star Wars. Yes, someone politely asked if he felt
pressure to finish the books. He said he is more of a perfectionist now with
his writing and is being more selective about what projects he says “yes” to
doing. He did answer a question about a more “sensitive” subject – the sex
scenes in his books. He says that the people who would like him to have more
male-male encounters in his books are mostly women.
On Sunday, Martin read two chapters from The Winds of Winter
which is due out, um, when he finishes it! I will not post the names of the
characters and what they were doing, but if you really want to know, I can tell
you more via email.
Cline, on the other hand, grew up wanting to be a filmmaker.
In addition to playing video games, reading comic books and scifi, and going to
the movies, he collected and studied screenplays. The first one he wrote was a
sequel to Buckaroo Banzai in 1996. He gained notoriety when he posted it to the
internet and many people believed it was leaked from whoever was making the
film. Two years later he started writing Fanboys which was released in 2009. When
I read Cline’s novel, Ready Player One, I got geeky and nostalgic for the 80’s.
His DeLorean (ECTO-88) is the best business expense ever! Cline bought it when
he knew he would be going on a book tour for Ready Player One.
Another interesting panel I went to was on Special Effects
Makeup. I learned a lot of cool new tips, so I should be ready for Splatterfest
in a few months!
No comments:
Post a Comment