Author George R.R. Martin has weighed in on the perceived competition between his upcoming TV adaptation House of the Dragon and Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power series. Martin addressed many of the most pressing topics in the Game of Thrones fandom on his blog last week, including the “battle of the fantasy giants,” as he called it. He felt that his commentary on the two shows had been intentionally twisted out of context.
As his adopted middle initials likely tell you, Martin is a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and his Lord of the Rings franchise. Middle Earth may have more in common with Martin’s Westeros right now than ever before — both fictional worlds are about to get new TV spinoffs based on ancillary material taking place long before their respective main series. It’s natural to draw comparisons between the two, and Martin was asked to comment on these comparisons in an interview with The Independent at the end of May. The results did not meet his expectations.
“If I may [be] permitted a moment of snark, damn, but those clickbait websites and podcasts annoy me,” Martin wrote candidly. He explained that in his Independent interview, he said “the whole ‘battle of the fantasy giants’ stories about House of the Dragon and Rings of Power being in competition was wrong, that there was plenty of room for both shows to succeed, plenty of room for more fantasy and [science fiction] on television. Somehow three-quarters of the clickbait sites out there, ignoring the entire thrust of my comments, twisted my words on their head into headlines about how much I want to beat the Tolkien show.”
In fact, Martin assured his readers, that is not the case. The author wrote that he has “a competitive nature, sure,” and admitted that it even applies to award ceremonies like the Emmys, the Hugos and the Nebula Awards. However, that doesn’t mean he roots for his competition to fail. Far from it, in fact – Martin holds the popular view that, in the world of publishing and entertainment, a rising tide lifts all ships.
“I try to keep this all in proportion,” he wrote. “I expect I will be watching Rings of Power when it premieres. I want it to be great. I want it to run for many years, to win Emmys and Golden Globes. And I want the same for House of the Dragon… The more fantasy hits we have, the more great fantasy we are likely to get.”
Martin wants the fantasy adaptation genre to thrive in part so that more of his favorite series can be brought from the page to the screen in the years to come. He name-checked some of his most desired adaptations – Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber, Conan the Barbarian by Robert E. Howard, Dying Earth by Jack Vance, Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny, Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore, Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams and just about anything by his contemporary, Joe Abercrombie.
“I want lots more… and lots more science fiction, too,” Martin wrote. “But we don’t get any of that unless some of the fantasy series now in development prove to be hits.”
Martin discusses the influence that Tolkien and many of the writers listed above had on him in his book Dreamsongs, which collects his short fiction work from throughout his career along with interstitial essays reflecting on his work and his life. That book is available now in print, digital and audiobook formats, as is Fire & Blood – the book that House of the Dragon will be based on. House of the Dragon is scheduled to premiere on Sunday, Aug. 21 on HBO. Rings of Power follows closely on Friday, Sept. 2 on Prime Video.
