Game of Thrones creator and A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin is preparing for Worldcon 2019, which kicks off in a couple days in Dublin, Ireland. Speaking to The Irish Times ahead of the convention, Martin covered a wide range of subjects, including the first Worldcon he attended in 1971, to which he came armed with “eight stories in my suitcase that I was going to foist on the editors.” Was he successful?

Of course, I rapidly learned that the last thing an editor wants is a writer coming up to him at a panel or party at Worldcon and thrusting a manuscript in his face. That was lesson number one

Well, it more or less worked out for him.

“Science fiction could take you to different planets and other periods of time,” Martin continued, remembering how he first fell in love with the genre. “It was so much more expansive than just those five blocks where I lived my life, and I loved that sense of wonder that the great science-fiction stories had, and still have.”

Science fiction, for much of its history – and this goes back to before I was born – was not considered reputable,” says Martin. “It was seen as cheap gutter entertainment. I was a bright kid, but even I had teachers say to me, ‘Why do you read that science-fiction stuff? Why don’t you read real literature?’ You got that kind of snobbism. So the early science-fiction fans, in the 1930s and 1940s and early 1950s, felt that very much, and they gathered together, and it was sort of an ‘us against the world’ thing. ‘We know this is great stuff, and you on the outside might make fun of us, and mock us, but we’ll band together.’ And the writers started coming to the conventions, and many writers came out of fandom; they started out as fans.

Fast forward years later, and sci-fi and fantasy are hotter than ever, with Game of Thrones recently wrapping up its run as “the most popular television show in the world.” Naturally, Martin see that kind of success coming; no one did. In fact, in the beginning, Martin and fellow creators David Benioff and Dan Weiss weren’t sure if they would last a year, much less a decade. “I remember them saying, ‘Well, let’s hope we can get three seasons, so we can get to at least the Red Wedding’,” Martin recalls. “Obviously, we got more than that.” And how.

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It took a while for Martin to get there. Before starting in on A Song of Ice and Fire, he worked in Hollywood on shows like Beauty and the Beast and The Twilight Zone, but hated the experience of working on a project only for studios to decline to make it. “I want to know what people think of it,” he said. “Maybe they’re going to throw fruit, or maybe they’re going to give you a standing ovation. You never know, but you’ve got to get it out before people, right?”

Insert joke about The Winds of Winter delays here.

And before that, Martin wrote a flop of a book called The Armageddon Rag, a book that “almost destroyed my career. Nobody wanted my thing after that.”

It’s not a bad book… Why did it sell so poorly? Why did Game of Thrones sell so well? Have you ever read William Goldman’s Adventures in the Screen Trade? He says at one point, ‘Nobody knows anything.’ These are words to live by. If people knew what would work, they would do it all the time.

So aspiring writers: this is George R.R. Martin’s advice to you. Do what you want to do and don’t think about whether it’s going to be a success. No one knows how that part works, anyway, so you’re better off following your passions.

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