Game Of Thrones Author Dismisses Sexism Suggestions

Game of Thrones author George RR Martin has said that the HBO series is not "mysoginistic."

Martin has accused his critics of being too "simplistic" when condemning the show that is based on his A Song of Fire and Ice novels.

He told Entertainment Weekly: "I think it's good people were debating those points [but] obviously I don't think I'm misogynistic or racist as some of those critics say. I don't hold myself up as a paragon of feminism, but I'm very gratified... on the fact I have so many female fans who love my women characters.

"[The show] provide[s] a variety of female characters.

"With all my characters, I try to show that we're all human."

Martin added: "One of the reasons I wanted to do this [series] with HBO is that I wanted to keep the sex. We had some real problems because Dany (Emilia Clarke) is only 13 in the books... and there's actual laws about how you can't depict a 13-year-old having sex even if you have an 18-year-old acting the part.

"We ended up with a 22-year-old portraying an 18-year-old, instead of an 18-year-old portraying a 13-year-old. If we decided to lose the sex we could have kept the original ages. The fact we made all these changes indicates how important we thought sex was [to the show]."

Game of Thrones will return to Sky Atlantic in 2012.