- George R.R. Martin said he thinks nuclear war seems "more and more feasible."
- "What are we going to do if Putin actually does use nuclear bombs?" Martin asked Stephen Colbert.
George R.R. Martin said he wishes he had a real-life dragon to fly to the Kremlin and prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from using nuclear weapons.
Martin made an appearance on Stephen Colbert's "The Late Show" on Tuesday, where Colbert asked Martin why he thought science fiction books published in the last decades seemed to focus so much on the downfall of mankind and dystopian decline.
Martin said science fiction reflects people's worries, citing how books covered everything from the threat of nuclear war in the 1950s to the dread of a possible zombie apocalypse.
"Suddenly nuclear war seems more and more feasible again," he told Colbert. "It's back there. We may have a nuclear war. And we have new pandemic diseases that are wiping us out."
"Can we be optimistic about climate change? What are we going to do if Putin actually does use nuclear bombs?" he said.
"What do we want to do? I wish I had a dragon I could fly to the Kremlin," Martin said, to applause from the audience.
Martin's "Game of Thrones" series showed the power of dragons to end dynasties. One character, Daenerys Targaryen, had three dragons. One of her dragons decimated the capital city of the fictional continent of Westeros, King's Landing, in the show's last season.
Most recently, his work was brought to life in the hit HBO series, "House of the Dragon,"which featured even more dragons — including Aemond Targaryen's massive Vhagar, and Daemon Targaryen's Caraxes, the "Blood Wyrm."