It’s Elio M. García Jr., 36, and Linda Antonsson, 39, responsible for the website westeros.org. The two came into contact with George RR Martin in 1998 when they were planning to create an online game inspired by the books of the A Song of Ice and Fire. The writer approved the idea. The website, created to serve as a repository of information for players, became the most complete website about the saga – and an important reference for the author himself.
García Jr. and Linda are asked to confirm all sorts of information, from the color of a character’s eyes to the degree of kinship between two others.
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In partnership with these two fans, Martin wrote The World of Ice and Fire, an encyclopedia that chronicles the battles and rivalries that precede the events of the saga. The initial draft of the book was in charge of the duo. They did some in-depth research work and came up with the draft that Martin would expand on. As the book is written in the voice of a Citadel maester, the couple had fun creating titles for ancient works found in Oldtown.
The pair were also free to suggest answers to the various questions that arose during the making of the encyclopedia. “If we felt we needed to clarify why, at a certain point, one house and not another became part of royalty, we provided an explanation,” García Jr. told STRANGE WORLD.
The guesses were sent to Martin, who forwarded the material to the pair with notes or new content – which, in the case of the author, could mean dozens of pages more. Initially thought of as a 50,000-word project, the book ended up yielding 180,000.
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CONSULTANCY Elio M. Garcia Jr.
SOURCES Websites salon, The New Yorker It is vulture; and George RR Martin’s interview on the show conan on TBS (June 2013).