Show is show, books are books: JRR Martin on 'Game of Thrones'

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Press Trust of India Los Angeles
Last Updated : May 19 2015 | 2:57 PM IST
George R R Martin said the response to the brutal "Game of Thrones" episode was not unanticipated but told fans to accept the fact that show will be different from his books.
The fans were shocked and angry over a scene in which Sansa Stark was raped on her wedding night by her new husband Ramsay Bolton.
The story plays out more brutally in Martin's book "A Song of Ice and Fire" but in it Ramsay is married to someone else and not Sansa. Martin said there will always be differences into what is in the book and what finally appears on the hit HBO show.
"How many children did Scarlett O'Hara have? Three, in the novel. One, in the movie. None, in real life: she was a fictional character, she never existed. The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story," Martin wrote on his blog.
"There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes," Martin said.
The author admitted that it was a demanding task to adapt his "lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels" which come with multiple layers of plots and subplots.
"David and Dan and Bryan and HBO are trying to make the best television series that they can. And over here I am trying to write the best novels that I can.
"And yes, more and more, they differ. Two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose... But all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place," Martin concluded.
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First Published: May 19 2015 | 2:57 PM IST

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