Game of Thrones is waarschijnljk de beste TV serie in jaren, en op het ogenblik ongekend populair bij fantasy fans over de hele wereld. Daarom was een Panel op de Comic Con onvermijdelijk. Daar kwamen de acteurs en de schrijver van de boeken George R.R. Martin lang om vragen van de fans te beantwoorden. Het hele verslag er van kan je hier lezen.

As for the future of the book series, one fan asked Martin if he was afraid of pulling a Lost. "I am concerned about the ending," he admitted. "I still have two books to go and I'm juggling a lot of balls, and there is that fear that some of those balls will land on my head. But I'm just going to keep juggling as fast as I can." He reiterated what he's told fans before: expect a bittersweet ending.

And does he ever mourn those characters he's killed? Martin firmly believes that the knowledge that a character could die at any moment is important to a reader's emotional investment in the characters, but that hasn't made those deaths any easier. "Actually," he said, "I mourn all the characters as I kill them." He reminded the audience that he spends a lot of time crawling around inside his point-of-view characters' heads. "I've lived with some of these characters for 20 years, and it's hard when I have to kill them, and I tell myself it's not me killing the characters; it's the other characters."

He describes a certain death that occurs two thirds of the way through A Storm of Swords as "the hardest thing I've ever written." In fact, he put off writing that particular scene until after he had written the rest of the book. "It was as wrenching to write as I'm sure it was for many of you to read."

In fact, it's the one thing he's not looking forward to seeing on the show. "I think when they show it, I'm going to arrange to be out of the country to some place that doesn't have television yet."