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Was GRRM influenced by Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series?


MorgulisMaximus

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I didn't believe this completely spurious nonsense until I got to "Both the Westlands and Westeros were about 3000 miles wide!". Now, I have seen the light. Thanks Morgulis, your passion in this thread has been rewarded. Did you notice that they both contain the word "West" in them? I also haven't found direct quotes yet, but I believe in both areas, there is is a foreboding mountainous region in the northern portion. Will get back to you with further damning evidence once this thread hits 18 pages.

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"game" as a metaphor for strategic conflicts or wars is probably centuries old (as conversely century-old games like chess were inspired by armies in battle) but it was most prominent in the phrase "The Great Game" describing the confrontation between Russia and the British Empire in Asia in the 19th and early 20th century.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game

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5 hours ago, MorgulisMaximus said:

Hence, GRRM read WoT. Thanks!

DarthRichard's point is that Martin already had a book published, entitled A Game of Thrones, and featuring a map, direwolves, and the Three-Eyed Crow warging stuff, before he read any of Wheel of Time.

I strong suspect you are trolling at this point. 

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1 hour ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I strong suspect you are trolling at this point. 

Thanks for pointing that out. In hindsight, I see how it could be interpreted negatively. My intentions were definitely positive. If you look at my comments in this thread I always try to be positive even when others are clearly unrelentingly negative. No problem, that's just life.

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Please understand that people tend to get impatient if you keep citing fantasy tropes (like shapeshifting/warging) that clearly predate both Jordan and Martin by decades as evidence for influence from Jordan to Martin. Either read more fantasy beyond those two or at least check tvtropes to see what can be common because it is older than either author's books.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Couldn't find other active Jordan thread... From David Drake's January newsletter:

http://david-drake.com/2017/newsletter-95/

I realized that if I continued to do the same thing over and over again, I was going to get tired of it. That wasn’t necessarily a problem from a sales viewpoint: doing the same thing over and over again is usually a good idea for sales. That writer’s not the person I want to be, though, and there’s nothing pushing me to be that person.

I knew Jim Rigney (Robert Jordan) well enough to know that he really cared about his fiction. It bothered him that marketing factors forced him to write the later books of the Wheel of Time in a fashion different from what he thought was the right way.

I’ve chatted a couple times with George Martin about writing. George is not only (probably) the best writer of our generation, he’s one of the most serious about his craft. We haven’t talked about writing since Game of Thrones hit it big, so I can only judge by results. Still, when somebody repeatedly says, “The book’s almost done,” and the book doesn’t appear, he’s probably bullshitting.

Somebody who’s happy with what he’s writing turns out work. If (like Karl Wagner) he doesn’t turn out work, he’s not doing the work. Maybe it’s better not to write something you don’t like than it is to turn out writing you don’t like (which it seemed to me that Jim Rigney did).

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Wow, that newsletter is something else! Drake projecting his anger at Lord of the Isles onto Jordan (because New York Times #1 Bestseller Robert Jordan couldn't write his books the way he wanted, lol), the mean spirited jabs at Scalzi, talking up the return of thieves world to be published by noted fraudster Connor Cochran, and than blaming his slow writing on the government because they give him social security.  Dude is a fragging tool.

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Yeah, I'm going to agree with most of you that similarities between WoT and ASOIAF are based on pre-existing fantasy tropes that both writers may have been using subconsciously or on purpose (and putting their own spin on it). If anything, WoT's sales may have influenced Martin or his publishers to put out A Game of Thrones. I remember reading something in this forum years ago about how Robert Jordan's recommendation smack dab on the AGOT paperwork cover probably helped drive sales up. 

As a feminist myself, I can say that one can enjoy LOTR and appreciate the female characters it has (see little me watching the Rankin-Bass Return of the King movie and being ecstatic when Eowyn shows up out of nowhere to be AWESOME) while recognizing that there are problems with their portrayal and inclusion. And plenty of female fans love male-character-dominated stuff (just look at various anime and video game series- heck, I read that the most recent Final Fantasy installment has a largely male cast specifically to appeal to female fans). 

Now, if you'd dangle a Rey and a Luke figure in front of a child version of me and said I'd have to choose? I'd want both, dangit. 

Also, reading about Martin's influences just reminds me that I have a LOT of reading to catch up on.

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I considered the same thing upon first diving into the WOT series. I noticed similarities in plot structure and themes that seemed remarkably close. Then I realized that while RJ wrote a huge story, his tale was actually pretty small (traditional). He uses tried and true elements of general fantasy that GRRM has of course touched on (because he is writing a fantasy series). So that seemed as though the former influenced the latter, but really it didn't in an author to author or story to story sense. GRRM for lack of a better word, disrupted those tried and true elements in ASOIAF to create something new and fresh while still being a part of the genre.

Also, while I did enjoy the first few books of WOT, the writing is IMO not even close to what GRRM has done. Not just from a storytelling perspective, but from a purely literary one. 

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