Author George RR Martin Explains Why Gay Sex is Missing From Game of Thrones

At the Edinburgh international book festival on Monday, Game of Thrones creator George RR Martin was asked why his novels only hinted at gay and bisexual encounters between characters, while the TV adaption included more explicit same-sex love scenes, reports The Guardian.

Martin explained that because the characters who have narrated the stories to this point have all been heterosexual, the stories are limited to what those characters see and experience. But a TV series "doesn't have those limitations."

However, the author says he has two additional books in the Game of Thrones series left to publish and he's not against including steamy same-sex love scenes if it works for the story. "I've had letters from fans who want me to present particularly an explicit male sex scene -- most of the letters come from women," he told the festival audience. "If the plot lends itself to that, if one of my viewpoint characters is in a situation, then I'm not going to shy away from it, but you can't just insert things because everyone wants to see them."

He added, "It is not a democracy. If it was a democracy, then Joffrey [the sadistic boy king] would have died much earlier than he did."

While LGBT fans of fantasy and science fiction are drawn to the genre for a variety of reasons, Martin touched on one in particular - pointing out that the genres have often experienced prejudice in the literary world of fiction. "When I was 12 or 13, I had teachers take away science fiction books by [Robert A] Heinlein and [Isaac] Asimov and say: 'You're a smart kid, you get good grades. Why are you reading this trash? They rot your mind. You should be reading Silas Marner.' If I'd been reading Silas Marner, I probably would have stopped reading," he said.

"I take heart with the fact that it is changing," he added. "These things are breaking down. It is an artificial distinction anyway - literary fiction in its present form is a genre itself."