George R.R. Martin speaks up against changes to books and stories in adaptations for the sake of “improving” them.

George R.R. Martin unchained, without filters or mincing words. With the excuse of sharing his opinion on ‘Shogun’ (the big premiere of the year on FX+ and Hulu and now one of the 10 best series in history), the writer has turned to his own blog to share all the accumulated frustrations against series and movies that change things from the books.

“Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own.’,” he said. “It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone. No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and “improve” on it. “The book is the book, the film is the film,” they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”

Martin’s words seem to come from personal experience and make it impossible not to think about ‘Game of Thrones’. It’s no secret that the show didn’t end too well with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the showrunners of it, who were kept far away of all spin-offs and, during their time at the front of the franchise, refused to follow HBO’s original plan for the series finale. The author himself has repeatedly lamented that the show went beyond what he had written at the time and took a different direction than the original story, and has assured time and again that the ‘Game of Thrones’ books will not end like the series.

Some may wonder what all this has to do with ‘Shogun’, but it’s very simple. According to Martin, the series is “faithful to the Clavell novel " and that turns out to be the key for him. “I think the author would have been pleased. Both old and new screenwriters did honor to the source material, and gave us terrific adaptations, resisting the impulse to ‘make it their own.’”What will he think then that they have confirmed seasons 2 and 3, which will no longer be based on Clavell’s work and will be completely original?