(urth) The Book of the New Sun vs. A Song of Ice and Fire

[Jeff Wilson]

On 8/1/2012 1:19 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> I'll also speak out in favor of Martin -- he wrote what I consider to
> be THE best rock'n'roll novel of all time, THE ARMAGEDDON RAG. The
> ASOIAF books, to my mind, are brutally honest depictions of the kind
> of society that generic fantasy readers & writers like to, well,
> fantasize about.
>
> The Society for Creative Anachronism likes to say that it recreates
> "the middle ages as they should have been." Martin describes a
> medieval fantasy world as it really would have been.

Sort of: 
http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/07/08/game-of-thrones-author-george-r-r-martin-spills-the-secrets-of-a-dance-with-dragons/


"You once said that fantasy needs to reflect reality. Can you explain 
what you meant by that?

Well, I think all fiction needs to reflect reality. Fiction is lies, 
we’re writing about people who never existed and events that never 
happened when we write fiction, whether its science fiction or fantasy 
or western mystery stories or so-called literary stories. All those 
things are essentially untrue. But it has to have a truth at the core of 
it. You’re still writing about people, you’re writing about the human 
condition. I often quote Faulkner, who said in his speech after winning 
the Nobel Prize that 'the human heart in conflict with itself' is the 
only thing worth writing about. And I’ve always agreed with that. It’s 
true no matter what genre you’re writing in, even if there are dragons 
in it or it’s about a private detective or a western gunslinger, it’s 
still ultimately about the human heart in conflict with itself or it’s 
not worth reading."

Apparently, the history and other fantastic parts are implausibly 
grandeurous intentionally because they exist only to serve the realistic 
characters and plot.



-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >