SAN FRANCISCO — In years past, George R. R. Martin, the author of the books that inspired the mega-hit HBO series Game of Thrones, has famously said he writes on an MS-DOS computer using WordStar 4.0.
Last night, appearing at the red carpet premiere here of Season 5 of Game of Thrones, Martin enthusiastically doubled down on his love for the 1980s-era word processor.
“Until they come up with something better, which they haven’t,” Martin told VentureBeat, he’ll keep on using WordStar 4.0.
Martin also said he hasn’t even dabbled in social media. That’s because, he said, he sees Twitter and Facebook as sinkholes “that I could vanish down and never been seen again.”
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Instead, he writes “Not A Blog on LiveJournal” and from time to time his assistants repost things he’s written there to social media accounts they manage in his name.
The proudly technology-averse Martin said that once, when collaborating with a couple of coauthors on a project, he was forced to use Microsoft Word. “It almost drove me crazy,” he said. “I hate that.”
Noting that he wanted nothing to do with word processing features that automatically reformat text and that have way more fonts than he’d ever need, he said, “Don’t help me. I’ve been writing for a long time. And don’t change my spelling.”
Added Martin, speaking of all non-WordStar word processors and their infernal spell-check tools, “I don’t need things underlined in red, like ‘Targaryen,'” one of the Game of Thrones royal houses. “I know how to spell ‘Targaryen.’ Don’t tell me it’s misspelled.”
