George RR Martin: He lives in a clinch with modern technology

George RR Martin
He lives in a clinch with modern technology

At 72 years of age, George RR Martin has more work to do than ever

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George RR Martin is not good at modern technology. Probably also because he sees himself more and more as their hostage.

US author George RR Martin (72) is a very busy man. He has just signed a five-year mega contract with HBO. For a decade, fans of his “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels have also been waiting for the latest part, “Winds of Winter”. So a lot of pressure for Martin, who is 72 years old after all. A week should have more seven days and each day more 24 hours “in order to meet these expectations in terms of time,” he says in an interview with “Welt am Sonntag”. But maybe it’s just modern technology to blame?

In any case, the successful author in the “Welt am Sonntag” interview does not have much to say about them. Twitter is “particularly bad” and “has not only produced intellectual junk food, but also recently produced a junk president in the US” – Martin never held back with his aversion to Donald Trump (74), who has now been voted out of office. In addition to Twitter, he is annoyed by everyday things that seem inevitable for him as a world-famous star: “I have to stop for selfies again and again. I could kill anyone who had the idea of ​​integrating a camera in a smartphone.”

His ode to the imagination

He himself had successfully fought against it for many years, but now he also owns a smartphone and has been “twisted little by little” from it. “Since then I’ve been like everyone else. I can no longer part with this thing. I check every hour whether someone has sent me a text or whatever. It’s an addiction.” And this is exactly where his assistant comes in: “Your job is to keep everything else at bay so that I can make my own way to Westeros and ignore the real world.” With this tactic it should finally work out soon with “Winds of Winter”. For a long time, he has not given any precise prognoses on this.

As a child he had far fewer problems renouncing reality and losing himself in strange worlds. It still seems to him today as if as a schoolboy he himself “crossed the mines of Moria with Gandalf and the followers of the Ring,” enthuses Martin. “It’s engraved in my memory. I can hardly remember my real life from that time, however.” And it is precisely this form of fantastic escapism that he wants to make possible for the new generation with his works. If Twitter and Co. allow it.

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