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That J.R.R. Tolkien / George R.R. Martin feud is something made up by trolls says Game of Thrones author (and not the Lord of the Rings kind)
The most influential writer of George R.R. Martin's life is J.R.R. Tolkien. Full stop.
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“If J.R.R. Tolkien is the grandfather of modern fantasy,” writer Joe Hill said to George R.R. Martin at New York Comic Con’s spotlight panel on him, “then I guess that makes you the father.”
And yet, to read some stories, Martin hates Tolkien and always has, a point Martin himself brought up.
“The internet is constantly running these…I’m trying to phrase this in a way that isn’t obscene…stories, ‘George R.R. Martin blasts Tolkien, George R.R. Martin attacks Tolkien, George R.R. Martin bombs Tolkien,’” Martin complains. “Tolkien is the most influential writer in my life.”
“So when I say ‘Eh, Gandalf should have stayed dead,’ that’s not an attack on Tolkien," Martin went on. "That’s a discussion of a literary decision. If J.R.R. was here on the panel, we would debate it.”
Martin also acknowledged his debt to other fantasy writers.
“Even before I discovered Tolkien I was occasionally reading sword and sorcery dominated by the ghost of Robert E. Howard and Conan the Barbarian. And there were others in that tradition, Fritz Leiber’s Fahfrd & the Gray Mouser; Jirel of Joiry by C.L. Moore.” Hill agreed, noting “I always thought the Game of Thrones books was very much in conversation with those earlier works.”
He noted the importance of historical fiction, too.
"I read Ivanhoe and the works of Thomas Costain, a big historical writer of the 1950s, and Nigel Tranter, the amazing Scottish fiction writer, who just died. I like the grittiness of historical fiction.”
If Tolkien perhaps gave him some sense of a world to play in, historical fiction showed Martin different ways of playing.
“I thought, Let’s see if I can combine some Tolkien things with some of the grittiness and hard edge of the best historical fiction.”
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