There's some­thing about fan­ta­sy writ­ers that de­mands two R's in their mid­dle names. JRR Tolkein, George RR Mar­tin, the 62-year-old lat­ter read­i­ly ad­mits his debt to the for­mer. He start­ed writ­ing sci-fi and fan­ta­sy sto­ries in the 1970s with mixed suc­cess, pay­ing his way writ­ing pi­lots for TV. In 1996 A Game of Thrones, the first vol­ume of his sev­en-book epic A Song of Fire and Ice was pub­lished-drenched in his trade­mark melan­choly and cyn­i­cism. HBO picked up the TV rights in 2007 and the first sea­son stars Sean Bean, Lena Heady, Mark Ad­dy and Pe­ter Din­klage. Here's what the au­thor and co-ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er of the TV se­ries had to say about it.

George RR Mar­tin: It's been pret­ty ex­cit­ing all the way. First it was: 'Can we sell this to HBO?' David (Be­nioff) and Dan (Weiss) pitched it. They liked the pi­lot; we got a se­ries or­der...so it's grat­i­fy­ing to see it be­come re­al. And some­times I have to pinch my­self a lit­tle. I worked in Hol­ly­wood for ten years, in-be­tween my book writ­ing. Rough­ly from the mid-80s to the mid-90s I was on a cou­ple of shows, ini­tial­ly Twi­light Zone and Beau­ty and the Beast and af­ter that I did five years of de­vel­op­ment. I wrote about five or six pi­lots for tele­vi­sion se­ries. And I wrote a num­ber of fea­ture films and I think I did some pret­ty good work here. I was proud of it, but none of it ever went all the way. I learned at a cer­tain point that Hol­ly­wood will break your heart. Don't be­lieve in any­thing un­til it ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens, but when it hap­pens it's very sweet. David and Dan have done an in­cred­i­ble job, and we've put to­geth­er this amaz­ing cast and ter­rif­ic di­rec­tors.

Q: How much in­volve­ment did you have in the pro­duc­tion?

GM: My ti­tle is co-ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er. I write one script a year for the show, so I wrote episode eight of this sea­son. And I've been in­volved with the cast­ing and var­i­ous oth­er dis­cus­sions. I don't have any ve­to pow­er, but we have a great re­la­tion­ship, they con­sult with me, and some­times they lis­ten to me and some­times they don't. But I def­i­nite­ly feel I'm part of it. If I could on­ly clone my­self, I would write three or four episodes in­stead of just one, and be on the set every day like David and Dan are for the usu­al req­ui­site 27 hours a day. But un­for­tu­nate­ly then the books wouldn't get writ­ten. I'm way late with this fifth book and I have two more books to write be­yond that. So the present sit­u­a­tion is work­ing well for me.

Q: David and Dan ref­er­ence things like The So­pra­nos and The Wire. What was your in­spi­ra­tion for the nov­els orig­i­nal­ly?

GM: Well, cer­tain­ly epic fan­ta­sy was one of the great in­flu­ences. I'm a huge fan of Tolkien. I first read him back when I was in New Jer­sey, at a very ear­ly age, and it just blew me away. It's a book that I re-read every few years just for plea­sure. I wrote fan­ta­sy short sto­ries back in the 70s, and al­ways in­tend­ed to do some­thing in the field. But I al­so like to mix and match gen­res and if you look at my his­to­ry as a writer you'll see a lot of that, where I'll take a sci­ence fic­tion and hor­ror and weave them to­geth­er, or I'll take a mys­tery sto­ry and a fan­ta­sy sto­ry and mix some­thing like that. In the case of this, I want­ed to mix the tra­di­tions of epic fan­ta­sy with those of his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. His­to­ry is amaz­ing. If you read pop­u­lar his­to­ry, the ones full of sto­ries - that's what I love. I'm al­ways read­ing those and say­ing to my wife, 'You can't make this stuff up; this is amaz­ing. Look at these things that have hap­pened here.'

Q: Have you liked what you've seen of the cast­ing and the footage?

GM: Com­plete­ly.

Q: Most of your char­ac­ters are very moral­ly am­bigu­ous...

GM: Well, much as I ad­mire Tolkien, he did things in Lord of the Rings that were bril­liant in and of them­selves, but in the hands of the Tolkien im­i­ta­tors who have fol­lowed him these things have be­come ter­ri­ble clich&ea­cute;s. One of them is this ques­tion of good ver­sus evil, where there's a Dark Lord and he has min­ions who are usu­al­ly dressed all in black and they're very ug­ly and they have no re­deem­ing qual­i­ties what­so­ev­er. I think the bat­tle be­tween good ver­sus evil is with­in the in­di­vid­ual hu­man heart. We all have the ca­pac­i­ty for good in us, we all have the ca­pac­i­ty for evil, and I've al­ways been at­tract­ed to grey char­ac­ters rather than black and white char­ac­ters. You read about these peo­ple who per­form a hero­ic act and then the next day or the next year, ten years from now, per­form a hor­ri­ble act.

And it's the same per­son. So is that an evil per­son be­cause they did an evil thing? Does that dis­count the good act? The ques­tions of re­demp­tion and char­ac­ter change are very in­ter­est­ing to me and that's what I'm ex­plor­ing. And that's one of the things I'm proud­est of about these books-the char­ac­ters I've cre­at­ed are very grey. On the fan sites and the Web sites and e-mails, I see peo­ple de­bat­ing whether they like this char­ac­ter or that char­ac­ter. And that's the way we de­bate about re­al peo­ple.

Q: With fan­ta­sy there's al­ways a lot of vi­o­lence. Why do you bring sex­u­al­i­ty to the genre?

GM: Well, sex is a huge part of life-it's a huge part of hu­man na­ture, part of his­to­ry and peo­ple's mo­ti­va­tions. I think ex­clud­ing sex is ex­clud­ing a very im­por­tant part of hu­man na­ture. Crit­ics will talk about whether it's gra­tu­itous sex. I've balked at that word "gra­tu­itous." What does that mean? What is gra­tu­itous feast­ing and gra­tu­itous her­aldry and gra­tu­itous de­scrip­tions of the clothes that peo­ple wear? I re­ject all of that. My goal as a writer is to cre­ate a vic­ar­i­ous ex­pe­ri­ence, to put them in the book, to get that tran­scen­dent mo­ment where it's not like you're sit­ting in a chair read­ing but you're liv­ing the book and it's hap­pen­ing to you. I wan­na give my read­ers a feast, and I want them to taste the food, and I wan­na take them in­to the bed­room and show them what's hap­pen­ing in the sex scene, whether it's a great tran­scen­dent, ex­cit­ing, mind blow­ing sex, or whether it's dis­turb­ing, twist­ed, dark sex, or dis­ap­point­ing per­func­to­ry sex (laugh­ter), or what­ev­er is hap­pen­ing there.

Q: There are some pret­ty spec­tac­u­lar lo­ca­tions-Belfast quar­ry, ship­yards, Mal­ta...

GM: When we shot in Mo­roc­co (pi­lot), we were us­ing the King­dom of Heav­en set that Ri­d­ley Scott had built, the walls of Jerusalem, which is an amaz­ing set. It looks like a re­al me­dieval walled city sur­round­ed by rot­ting siege tow­ers and tre­buchets. When David Be­nioff told me that we would be reshoot­ing the footage in Mal­ta in­stead, I said, 'You know, we are go­ing to lose that great Ri­d­ley Scott set that he built there for the walls of Jerusalem,' and David said, 'Well, it's true that Ri­d­ley Scott built some fan­tas­tic sets, but he doesn't have any­thing on the knights of Saint John and the for­ti­fi­ca­tions that they built in the mid­dle ages,' (laughs) so I am re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to see­ing those on film...

George RR Mar­tin is au­thor of the book se­ries A Song of Ice and Fire and co-ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er for the TV se­ries Game of Thrones.