George R.R. Martin talks to John Hodgman about killing off characters

A Song of Ice and Fire writer George R.R. Martin does a average number of audience , but his Sound of Young America interview with John Hodgman might be the best one ever . Hodgman does a great job of getting Martin to speak about his thoughts on writing and geek culture — starting with thefan post a teen Martin wroteto the Avengers comic .

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Martin talks about how impressed he was that The Avengers usher in Wonder Man , brought him into the group and killed him off , all in the same issue . And then comes this great bit , in which Martin confesses he thinks Wonder Man and Gandalf should both have stay dead :

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I do think that if you ’re bring a character back , that a character has gone through expiry , that ’s a transformative experience . Even back in those days of Wonder Man and all that , I loved the fact that he kick the bucket , and although I wish the case in later year , I was n’t so thrilled when he came back because that sort of undo the power of it . Much as I look up to Tolkien , I once again always felt like Gandalf should have stayed dead . That was such an incredible sequence in Fellowship of the Ring when he faces the Balrog on the Khazad - dûm and he flow into the disconnection , and his last words are , “ Fly , you fools . ”

What power that had , how that grabbed me . And then he comes back as Gandalf the White , and if anything he ’s sort of improved . I never wish Gandalf the White as much as Gandalf the Grey , and I never liked him coming back . I remember it would have been an even impregnable storey if Tolkien had left him dead .

My characters who add up back from death are worse for wear . In some ways , they ’re not even the same quality anymore . The body may be moving , but some aspect of the spirit is changed or transformed , and they ’ve misplace something . One of the characters who has come back repeatedly from destruction is Beric Dondarrion , The Lightning Lord . Each time he ’s recreate he loses a petty more of himself . He was sent on a commission before his first death . He was sent on a delegation to do something , and it ’s like , that ’s what he ’s cling to . He ’s forgetting other things , he ’s forget who he is , or where he live . He ’s forget the woman who he was once supposed to wed . Bits of his humanity are lost every sentence he comes back from death ; he remembers that mission . His bod is falling away from him , but this one thing , this purpose that he had is part of what ’s animize him and fetch him back to death . I reckon you see echoes of that with some of the other characters who have issue forth back from expiry .

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