George R.R. Martin reassures fans the books won’t end like Game Of Thrones
Martin hopped on his "Not A Blog" this week to address fans' biggest concerns since Game Of Thrones ended back in 2019
Aux News George R.R. Martin
George R.R. Martin, one of America’s most prolific authors (of blog posts about his books), has issued a new missive today on his “Not A Blog,” touching on the question that’s haunted him ever since the TV show based on his works aired its big finale back in 2019. To wit: Will the end of A Song Of Ice And Fire shit the bed the same way Game Of Thrones’ did?
Martin being Martin—i.e., a pretty thoughtful guy overall, and protective of his writing process and the world that he’s created—he’s usually pretty quiet about the plots of his forthcoming books. (As he notes in the post, it’s why he’s stopped doing readings from his decade-in-the-writing The Winds Of Winter, since “If I had kept on with the readings, half the book might be out by now.”)
All that being said (and with the caveat that he’s always free to change his mind), Martin made about as definitive a statement as we could ever hope to expect about the ending of ASOIAF this week:
One thing I can say, in general enough terms that I will not be spoiling anything: not all of the characters who survived until the end of GAME OF THRONES will survive until the end of A SONG OF ICE & FIRE, and not all of the characters who died on GAME OF THRONES will die in A SONG OF ICE & FIRE. (Some will, sure. Of course. Maybe most. But definitely not all) ((Of course, I could change my mind again next week, with the next chapter I write. That’s gardening)).
And the ending? You will need to wait until I get there. Some things will be the same. A lot will not.
Martin also goes out of his way to call out differences between his books and the show—shoutout to Lady Stonehart—and generally makes it clear that his writing “is taking me further and further away from the television series. Yes, some of the things you saw on HBO in GAME OF THRONES you will also see in THE WINDS OF WINTER (though maybe not in quite the same ways)… but much of the rest will be quite different.”
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It all seems pretty reasonable. The real question is, when will Simon Callow deliver the next volume of his Orson Welles biography?
I’ll be happy if Robert Caro finishes The Years of Lyndon Johnson.
I can only imagine what sort of stuff he’ll dig up, those final years are pretty fucked. I hope he gets unfettered access to all the paperwork.
Caro should look into cybernetics as well if the project takes him into his 90s.
I have a strong feeling Caro will actually deliver because he’s not a hack.
I’m sure he will if only he has the time! The man’s 86.
For me it’s Beatles: All These Years, Volume 2.Lewisohn ain’t getting any younger either.
the 1,700-page extended edition of All These Years is incredible. it’s like a whole different book.
I read it on Kindle and They only have the regular version which is disappointing.
Sold.
THE LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS, HARLAN!(Yes I realise there could be some impediments to this. Fortunately maybe J. Michael Straczynski to the rescue in 2023 finally?)
Talked to a few people with stories supposedly in that who make faces when it’s mentioned over the years. The Firesign Theatre had their script for “The Giant Rat of Sumatra” in for some reason.
Speaking of Welles, he’s coming out with his recut of The Magnificent Ambersons really soon now, right?
Kills me that there was a work print of his original cut in Brazil at one point. Be nice if it turned up like the long version of Metropolis.
I anxiously await the Unedited Transformers: The Movie Unicron Tapes.
If the books never come out then they cant end the same way as the show.
Exactly. My immediate thought about what the biggest difference would be is that the show had an ending and the books will not.
I expect the books will have an ending eventually. Not expecting Martin to be the one to actually write it though.
He’s been pretty adamant that no one besides him will finish these books.
He doesn’t have much say in it if he’s dead.
Then the rights to the books will probably go to his widow, who will respect his wishes.
Public domain gets everyone in end.
Even if he dies tomorrow, I’ll never live long enough. Probably no one here will. Cheers
Is anyone going to give a shit about Game of Thrones by then? I seriously doubt it.
Tell that to Mickey Mouse
Assuming she doesn’t like dump trucks full of money, sure, maybe.
I assume he could something in his will
Maybe. I’m not a lawyer, but I have my doubts about how enforceable requests in wills are, unless theres’ someone involved that actually wants to enforce it (wife, children, executor, etc), who isn’t more interested in the money that would be made by releasing the books.
Yeah I suppose you’d need at least 1 kid who’s willing to take on the fight instead of cashing in
Can’t say much posthumously.
He’s been pretty adamant that no one … will finish these books
Perhaps someone will publish what he wrote of Winds of Winter after he dies. But there will be nothing to publish for the last book because he won’t have started it.
But there will be nothing to publish for the last book because he won’t have started it.Given the way he writes, he’s probably got about a third of the book after Winds o’ Winter written, to go with the ¾ or whatever of Winds that’s done.
For Feast For Crows and Dance w Dragons, he had some viewpoints written on well into the next book, before deciding where to place the cutoff between novels.
In his pitch letter he said there would be three novels: A Game of Thrones, A Dance With Dragons and The Winds of Winter. The first dealt with the Westerosi civil war, the second with Dany’s Dothraki invasion, and the third with the Others north of the Wall. That first book got split into three, then instead of writing the middle entry of his trilogy like he planned he wrote what was to be a mega-prologue describing what would have happened in the five year gap between novels. But that kept expanding and he decided he couldn’t skip five years, and the next book wasn’t titled A Dance With Dragons at all but instead A Feast for Crows. After an even longer amount of time he published a book with the ADWD title, but it didn’t contain that invasion, nor even any actual Dance of Dragons. And then The Winds of Winter WASN’T to be the last book, but instead A Dream of Spring.So he has remained two books from the end for decades even though he published two more books after finishing the first of three acts. If he ever does finish The Winds of Winter, he will probably decide he needs two more books after it because he has two many loose threads remaining to wrap up in the next book. And as he continues “gardening” there’s little reason to expect those narrative threads to get cleaned up over time, as all available evidence is of him just spreading out the story and getting slowed down/distracted by worldbuilding.
Chill out, grammar police, clearly punctuation was left out of the headline:
“George R.R. Martin reassures fans, “The books won’t end. Like — Game Of Thrones.” Like, the Game of Thrones books. They won’t end. Duh.
I’m going to bet the books end with a fat old dude having a heart attack and a ghost writer feverishly finishing them before returning to their day jobs writing Tom Clancy books and helping James Patterson wipe.
Exactly. He’s leaning more on the “won’t end” part of this headline than the “like Game of Thrones”.
Definitely the way most of us read that headline.
Exactly
That headline should read:George R.R. Martin reassures fans the books won’t end
Maybe Martin gave the producers the ending he wasn’t sure would work.
I was a huge fan of the first 3 books when they came out, and even enjoyed the parts of A Feast for Crows where it really delved deep into how fucked the common people were because of the war (even if it was kind of a retread of the Jamie chapters of Storm of Swords), but Dance with Dragons pretty much solidified my opinion that this story is dead in the water (hot take, I know). There’s no disrespect meant toward GRRM–I’m grateful for the story he gave us and hope he’s enjoying himself.
I agree. I’m happy to be proven wrong, but I won’t know until the final book is released.
I agree with this hot take. The last great Song of Ice and Fire book was Storm of Swords in 2000. I didn’t like Feast and Dance much.
Count me as someone who agrees with you too.
I’m old enough to remember when Feast and Dance were all supposed to be one book, but Martin wrote too many pages, so he had to split it into two and release Feast first. But don’t worry, that’s a good thing, because having all those pages left over meant Dance was already “mostly done” and would be published shortly…in a year…okay maybe 2, no, 3 years, tops…Six years later Dance finally comes out and it’s a bloated, directionless mess, and it’s clear Martin had truly lost the thread. Given the books’ release schedules I think it’s obvious Martin had a tight 3-book outline and then either found it impossible to map out the rest of the series or figured he could write his way out of the problem. And when that strategy proved fruitless I assume he just gave up. I sincerely would not be surprised if hasn’t written a page in years.
it’s a bloated, directionless mess, and it’s clear Martin had truly lost the thread. Given the books’ release schedules I think it’s obvious Martin had a tight 3-book outline and then either found it impossible to map out the rest of the series or figured he could write his way out of the problem.This is one reason why the literature scene doesn’t care so much for the nerdy spec fic scene: a lot of what the dire hard fantasy/sci-fi fans consider not just good writing, but absolutely necessities of their genre, is, well…just flat out bad writing practice – especially what you said about “writing your way out of a problem”. There’s very a much “more=better” mentality. More exposition. More backstory. More worldbuilding. More characters.It tends to be that while these guys have great concepts and stories, they absolutely care not two shit about the actual art, craft, or skill of writing. Words on page? Done. Anything else is gravy.Got a problem your current character can’t solve? Make a new one and put him in. A location or a concept you just want your readers to read about? Shove it in there. If it doesn’t make sense, write more explaining it. It’s not a crutch – it’s an improvement! Doing more writing shows you work harder, and your readers must be smarter for being able to keep track!What happens is that these guys tend to get very small, very niche fandoms. These are the masochist who are proud of keeping tracking of your 54 main characters, 236 locations and their backstories and full histories, 330 minor characters, your magic system, &c, &c.But Martin got huge…and was obviously appealing to much more than just hardcore fans…I wonder if that had something to do with it?
I think in retrospect we’ve learned Martin is a seriously undisciplined writer and we’re lucky he got as far as he did.
Feast and Dance originally weren’t even supposed to exist. He was going to do a 5 year time jump. Then he was like “actually I need to write a book to cover that time” then he was like “make it 2″
Yeah, so much of this mess is down to Martin realizing “shit, why did I make half of my principle characters 14-years-old? How can I possibly make this work?”
I’m the other way round. I was sure he’d lost his mojo after AFFC, but DWD is the second best instalment (after ASOS) in the whole series, IMO.
Dang, I wish I could see what you see tbh. If it wasn’t such a time commitment, I would do another run of the series because the premise of DWD (which, as I understand it, is setting up the endgame is interesting) and I’d love to give it another chance considering how much I loved the first 3 books.
I think there’s something interesting in the first 3 books drawing so much narrative strength from referencing the recent past (Robert’s rebellion) to flesh out the world, and now for the characters in DWD, the events of the first three books fill the same role as Robert’s rebellion did.
I’ve only watched the show but season 5 (based on those two books) was my least favorite season for those same reasons. Now that the show finished I have better context for it though. Book 3/season 4 sort of ended with the main conflict between the Starks and Lannisters in a stalemate. Both were wounded enough not to be able to keep up the fight with anything near the same intensity. So the next chapter is spent resetting the board so to speak. All the characters are moving in their individual arcs, but it isn’t clear what any of it has to do with the overall story. It’s like the beginning of a new story that’s being spent introducing the characters. But, by the end of season six a new trajectory for the main storyline is made clear again
I read A Dance of Dragons and spent the bulk of it mumbling “Who the fuck is this? What the fuck is this? I don’t remember any of this shit? Who is The Shavepate and why does this book name drop him constantly?”After waiting a half a decade between books to get a whole ass book of Dany’s waffling on retaking Westeros where the big payoff is RUT ROH I THINK ONE OF YOUR DRAGONS MELTED A DORNISH PRINCE…it makes you realize A Feast For Crows was really the best time to stop.
Boy these titles are fruity.
Another item to add to the “Things R R Martin says that won’t be followed through on” me thinks.
Well it’also such bullshit. Everyone knows he gave his intended ending to Benioff and Weiss, and is only distancing himself because fans had a collective hissy fit over it. Personally, while I thought the last two season could have benefited from better execution, they weren’t terrible and the ending fit the story. If anyone thought things came out of left field, they certainly weren’t paying attention throughout the series.
It wasn’t the ending. It was that they rushed it and didn’t earn it.
Biggest mistake yeh show made was having the Wall fall as the S7 finale cliffhanger. It put the whole final season on rails. And I say that as someone who likes the final two seasons. But once the Wall fell, that’s all that mattered.
I guess I pretty much agree with that, and I’ll never understand why they rushed the ending. It just seems so counter-intuitive. but I’ll also say that for many fans it was the ending that was part of the problem.
Hubris, I think. They were white-hot at the time and wanted to move on to other projects (HBO even offered to throw god knows how much money at them if they stayed). I’ll grant that there were many who didn’t like the ending, but I agree that the seeds were planted and it wasn’t totally out of the blue— my sense is that those who didn’t like it found it unearned and abrupt, whereas if they had taken the time to do it properly it could’ve been great.
The ending definitely leaned towards unearned and abrupt. Although not so much for me personally, I get other fans’ feelings about it, and I think they’re valid. I didn’t “need” those extra episodes, but it would have been nice to have them. B&W did a disservice to what they had created prior to the last two seasons (I thought season 6 was fine). But I’ve also had discussions with a lot of fans who hated the ending, not because of the execution, but because of where the story went. Still, if the last two seasons had been fully fleshed out, it would have helped those fans come to terms with how the story ended.
I have a feeling a lot of those those fans you talked to also didn’t think it felt earned but didn’t know how to express that. “I didn’t like where the story went” is an easy explanation to grab on to if you’re trying to explain why you’re dissatisfied.
My brother was furious that it didn’t end with the war against the White Walkers. He thought they had been set up as the ultimate conflict as opposed to the penultimate. I kinda get his point but the show was never a zombie horror show. It was always going to end in human conflict.
Especially counter-intuitive since it came out that HBO wanted them to do at least 10 episodes of the last season and basically gave Benioff and Weis carte blanche to end it however they wanted. I think those guys got distracted by the prospect of doing a Star Wars trilogy which, I think, went up in flames b/c GOT last 2 seasons were derided.
Oh the reaction to the end of GOT absolutely played a part in B&W losing the Star Wars Trilogy, but it was also what was going on over at LFL. The divisiveness over The Last Jedi hadn’t waned a bit and the Han Solo movie turned out to be another big issue. Kathleen Kennedy couldn’t afford another bad/divisive Star Wars movie. And then remember Confederate, the planned slavery fan fiction that B&W were going to do for HBO? Like everybody was like wtf when it was announced, and boy did HBO dodge a bullet when they cancelled it in January of 2020. Considering how we all watch the police murder George Floyd in May, 2020.Also on a somewhat related note, I’ll believe Rian Johnson SW trilogy is happening when they’re actually selling tickets to it.
How would Confederate be more problematic than The Man in the High Castle?
You tell me. I never watched The Man in the High Castle.
Neither did I, although I read the book. Thing is, you called Confederate “slavery fan fiction” without watching the show(since, you know, it doesn’t exist). I wonder if you assume High Castle is Holocaust fan fiction.
I don’t really assume anything about High Castle. I don’t even remember what the premise of the show was. I just remember thinking it didn’t really interest me. I probably wouldn’t have watched Confederate either if it had actually come to fruition. For one thing, I’m not a fan of alternate history fiction. And I got “slavery fan fiction” from the NY Times. I figured they knew what they were talking about.
That NYT article was written by Roxane Gay, who says she got the “slavery fan fiction” line from a journalist named Pilot Viruet who said: “Give me the confidence of white showrunners telling HBO they wanna write slavery fanfic.” I wonder if she thought it was arrogant for a Gentile like Philip K. Dick to write “Holocaust fanfic.”
Pilot Viruet actually used to write here. They liked punk rock, pro wrestling, and not editing their articles.
That NYT article was written by Roxane Gay, who says she got the
“slavery fan fiction” line from a journalist named Pilot Viruet who
said: “Give me the confidence of white showrunners telling HBO they
wanna write slavery fanfic.” I wonder if she thought it was arrogant for
a Gentile like Philip K. Dick to write “Holocaust fanfic.1. Why would we measure the appropriate ration of representation and leadership of an entire television production in the 2020’s with dozens of writers and multiple producers spanning several seasons by comparing it to one 240 page book one guy wrote on in the 1960’s? That’s inane as hell, fam.
2. Funny thing about sci-fi in the 1960’s. People tended to not listen to your opinion if you’re a member of the group that isn’t a white dude writing sci-fi in the 1960’s. So people complaining didn’t matter to the publishers.
3. CSA exists already. One of the guys has an Oscar. Why wasn’t he on the phone call? Why isn’t he being sought as a producer?
4. D&D have a habit of hiring women for three or four episodes then getting rid of them when they push back. So when we learned there was one black woman attached to this project about slave owners written by white sons of millionaires, people reacted with the expected rolling of eyes given their track record.
1. We have no idea how diverse the entire production would’ve been. We know that a black couple(Malcolm and Nichelle Spellman) was set to be prominently involved, and a lot of the people(like you in point 4) who blasted the show for being created by two white guys accused it of tokenism after their involvement was revealed.2. Isaac Asimov was of Jewish heritage and he was one of the most successful sci-fi writers of that era.3. So if someone’s done something similar to what you’re doing, you’re obligated to consult them?4. I’m not up on all the behind-the-scenes details, so a link would be helpful. Also, what does them being sons of millionaires matter?
Having read the book and watched the show, they’re not the same animal and I don’t just mean in an “adaptation” sense. The show bounces between the American Reich, Berlin, the Japanese Pacific States, Japan itself and the Neutral Zone very frequently (and that doesn’t even include the adventures in the alternate timeline). If you liked the book, you’d likely find some form of enjoyment from the show, although I’ll say it can be difficult to put down and pick back up again in the middle- and if you like Frank, he has less of a focus in the series as a whole. Not to hijack your argument, but agreed that “Holocaust fan fiction” would be a purposefully obtuse reading of either the show or the book. But then again as you noted, that quote about Confederate came from a blogger that likely trades in outrage, and they would absolutely find something to bitch about.
I still think one or more of the cast refused to sign on past season 8
Exactly! I have no problem with Dany flipping and killing everybody, but you have to lead me there with a story. Not one day she is a saviour and the next she burns thousand of innocents because she is a mad Targaryen. Cheers
It wouldn’t have even taken that much more story to get there. They almost pulled it off, but again came up short, and for no good reason. Bad decisions with storytelling-writing that I’ll never figure out why. Frankly I could have lived without seeing Jon Snow’s naked ass (although it was a fine ass), for more actual story development.
Dany was leaning towards tyranny for freaking ever. From the jump she believed she was destined to rule Westeros. The only reason that seemed okay was because it was wrapped up in her brother’s gross abusive madness. Then it was okay because she wanted to free slaves. But anyone who paid attention to her characterization could see the hints of what she would become. The final season just sped that process up.
I totally agree.But there are plenty of people who gripe about every aspect of the ending. Like every. Damn. Thing.
“he gave his intended ending to Benioff and Weiss”Who were under zero obligations to use said ending.
And had almost zero talent for writing new material, so probably didn’t deviate much from it.Besides, as other have said, the ending works on paper. Rushing to get there and not setting it up properly is a problem of execution, not theory.
You’re pinning your hopes on two dudes who deviated from day one. Good luck with that.
At this point, I really don’t have much hope of anything regarding Winds of Winter, let alone A Dream of Spring. I’ll be flat out shocked if they ever even come out.
I simply don’t know how you can look at last seasons and see it as anything less than a complete train wreck. The idea that viewers just needed to pay more attention is laughable.
I may be the only one but I am waiting for Bob Dylan: Chronicles Vol 2.
Did he check with Brandon Sanderson since odds are he will be the one tapped to finish the book once JRR Martin goes tits up.
Sanderson already said he would refuse to do it. He’s a Mormon who doesn’t want to write that sort of edgy material.
They need to put Joe Abercrombie on standby to finish things up. There’s a guy who knows how to deliver content.
Stylistically, Joe Abercrombie could do it (so could Scott Lynch, but he has a similar-to-Martin procrastination thing going) but I kinda hope Martin just finishes them somehow. Sue Grafton died having only gotten up to Y in her Kinsey Millhone books, but the family says no one will be hired to do a Z book, which I think is the right thing. She apparently didn’t leave an outline and had no one designated to take over in the event she died. Martin is an over-writer and a perfectionist, but if the books finally come out, I’ll buy them and read them. Meantime I’m hoping someone adapts his Fevre Dream which is one of the best vampire novels I’ve ever read.
I wasn’t hugely keen on Fevre Dream but I did enjoy Tuf Voyaging.
Like, I appreciated Sanderson’s finishing off of The Wheel of Time, but there are literally thousands of other authors out there who could plausibly finish ASOIAF if Martin bites it.
Yeah, this is a sort of ‘joke’ people love to parrot, like replacing problematic actors with Tig Notaro because that’s a thing that happened once.
The actual joke is that the notably prolific Sanderson took 6 years and 3 books to finish A Memory of Light, with the implication being that there is so much crap left to tie up in Game of Thrones that Sanderson could never finish it before his own death.
Or it could be like bringing in JJ Abrams because you can’t think of anything… which has happened on at least 3 occasions
And everyone knows it’s going to be Daniel Abraham.He’s one of Martin’s guys, he wrote the comic, he’s written two series that are similar.
Hilariously, he wrote those two series while GRRM was still fuckin’ about.
Tad Williams will have started and finished a sequel series to “Memory, Sorrow, Thorn” series (a series that inspired GOT) in the time that people have waited for Winds of Winter.And Williams took 24 years between the end of the original and starting the sequel.
Holy fuck I hadn’t given that series a thought in a minute, it was great!
Oh, nice one. I have the first two books on my kindle and I think this summer is a good place to start this series. Thanks for the reminder! Cheers
I think it’s a moot point. Last I checked, anyway, Martin had vowed the series would die with him.
I’ve pointed out the same thing in other iterations of this conversation, but against that is the precedent of Robert Jordan saying something similar and then changing his mind when he realized how little time he had left.
Martin has gone on record saying his estate won’t let anyone take over.
I absolutely believe him, as these books are never coming out EVER. He’s too old and, um, portly to live long enough to finish them.
He’s in a seriously good position here. There’s essentially a rough draft he can iterate on already, complete with a ton of feedback. Also, he’s already rich and successful, so it’s not like his career’s at stake here.He just needs to capitalise on it all, if he can.
you underestimate the number of conflicting plot threads he’s dreamt up in the books. for some reason, gurm populated the books with like, ten times the number of named characters there were on the show. each one is off doing some unique side quest, so it’s almost impossible to have each one doing something that doesn’t end up conflicting or running into another plot. there’s currently a teenager who is supposedly the “legitimate” targaryen heir who tyrion is looking for, this was completely and utterly ignored in the show, how do you even reconcile that with the books? this is the main reason he can’t finish the books. he has no discipline, he just sits down and writes and lets his editors catch any paradoxical or conflicting events. but when you’re entire book is made up of those, it becomes hard to even write.
After nearly ten years (!) since the last book, I’m not even sure its possible to really remember all the loose threads and tangents floating around in those books, even for a writer with discipline.
There are apps that help with writing and managing huge plotline heavy projects… Also it’s been eleven years this July. Cheers
Eleven? Good grief. Get off my lawn, etc
“Jon Connington, Young Griff, Lady Stoneheart, Wyman Manderly, Victarion Greyjoy, Jeyne Poole, Harrold Hardyng, and Arianne Martell died on the way to their home planet.”
I don’t mean he can literally just novelise the show with minor tweaks; what I mean is there’s already a shaky execution of some of his broad plot points that he can factor into his approach.
He has said its the same ending, a broadly similar ending with variations for some characters, and now it mostly won’t be similar. Pick one George. Oh whatever it doesn’t matter he’ll never finish the series. Its like asking for the meaning of life at this point.
The meaning of life is to be the eyes, ears, thoughts, and emotions of the universe 😉
Well, this is as close as I could come up with on such short notice for the meaning of life thing at least. You’re on your own for Game of Thrones, unfortunately.
I guess his whole point though is that his style of writing doesn’t really allow him to know with any certainty, and that when he told show-runners ending he probably thought that’s what would happen, then it shifted as he worked on it more, and it’s shifted even more as the years passed. But like you said, we”ll never get to see or know his ending anyway.
His new comments are vague enough not to contradict the earlier ones. I interpret them to mean the variations for various characters will be greater than originally planned, but the broad similarities will still be there
Both can be right. His original statement was true at the time, but now after seeing the reception to how the show ended, he decided literally re-write the entire final 2 books to ensure it doesn’t have the same ending. I might be joking here, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if this turned out to be true.
He would have told them how it ended 14 years ago. But dude completely changed the focus of his books from the initial write-up if you’ve seen his treatment and character bios before he even got to that meeting. He also started critiquing the changes back in Season 4.
If that’s the case then the interview where he mocked writers who change there endings due to reactions or people guessing correctly will be extra ironic.
There’s no way he’s finishing the series. It’s unlikely he even finishes The Winds of Winter.To wit: fuck you, GRR Martin.
Because they’ll never end!
““George R.R. Martin assures fans the books won’t end”Fixed that for ya!
Bless his heart.
Of course, because thankfully the show finally came to an end
George, we talked about this: No talking about the fucking book unless it’s to announce the publication date. Go get the genital cuff.
I’ll get the nipple clamps! Or…or is this not that sort of thing.
He’s still writing new chapters and not just editing at this point?
He’s entered Late-Stage Fantasy Anthology Syndrome. Next book will be 1200 pages long! And won’t be one book! It’ll be two books! Both 1200 pages long!
He’s one step away from Jay Electronica territory: “I’m not even sure you can consider my next work a book, in the traditional sense.”
I think at this point he’s deluding even himself on what or how much he is writing. Cheers
He’s probably suffering from a crippling writer’s block; or has lost interest in the story at this point. Maybe that’s why he keeps going off to work on other books, stories, shows, and video games…
I have literally lost count of how many other projects he’s picked up since then but yeah, he’s writing every day, sure he is.
Pretty much made my peace with the books not ending. Period.
Prove it.
One can imagine B & W reading this and WTF’ing that George didn’t give them the proper ending.
Shit the bed? GOT actually DIED in bed, rotted in bed, and stunk up the whole neighborhood.
Headline is 4 words too long.
Hey, it’s our monthly “I’m going to finish the series, really I am” news item.I assume his publisher calls him a couple of times a month and says “if you even hint that you’re not coming back to these books we will fucking end you, now get out there and remind people that you exist so they buy more books.”
I know the author of the article doesn’t usually write the headline, but that headline is very misleading. Martin says a lot will be different, but some will be the same. He is being deliberately vague since he doesn’t want to spoil anything, but consequently his comments don’t really tell us much.
From what Martin and Benioff & Weiss have said over the years it sounds like the major plot points will be the same. I interpret that mean that, at minimum, !Spoiler! Daenerys will still burn down the red keep, will still be assassinated, and Bran will still become king.I imagine the differences are going to be with individual character arcs that don’t change the main storyline. For example, Varys could live, Brienne could die in the battle of Winterfell, and that wouldn’t change the main storyline very much.
The TV people, IMO, jumped on a huge grenade for ol’ George. They were given the broad strokes of the ending, executed it, and people hated it. I can’t imagine a world where part of the reason this is taking him so long is that he had to scrap the stuff that folks hated about the least season of GOT. Now, my toxic trait is I think the general beats of the final season are all fine, it was the pacing that was off…so, in theory, a book version of the events of the last season might actually work perfectly fine (when you’re not dealing with cast and crew who are very much Over It and very badly want to move on). Baby being thrown out with the bathwater.
Game of Thrones didn’t shit the bed, it ended as it started, as a brilliant subversion of the tropes that build modern fantasy. If you think it did you are a goddamn hack who has no business doing actual critical analysis; though I think more likely you’re pandering to your audience rather than educating them.
Naw, you’re going to be disappointed on a whole new level. Just wait and see.
Why does anyone care what he says? These books are never coming out.
In turn they just won’t end.
Books can’t end if you don’t start them.
OH MY GOD MARTIN IS COMPLETELY FULL OF SHIT AND WHY DO WE EVEN CARE NOW.
He can’t help himself. I think he was hoping that the Game of Thrones ending was going to be well received and it was going to relieve him of the burden of writing the books since even the showrunners got rid of all the stuff in between all the big moments that Martin no doubt provided. It sucks to do all the writing in between those and that’s what is probably keeping Martin stuck.Since the final season was a failure, he now has pressure on him. Which he has doubled since now he’s raising expectations. Have fun answering questions about these missing books for the rest of your life.
George R.R. Martin reassures fans the books won’t end There. I fixed it.
It won’t end like the show because I’m never going to finish it HAHAHAHA!
Dance of Dragons being 11 years old is a kick right to the mind nuts. I’m well past caring about SOIAF, but will I read WoW when it comes out? Yep!
I have come to accept that the books will never be finished and the show (as much as a let down it was in the last couple of seasons) was the bullet points of how the books would end.
I could change my mind again next week, with the next chapter I write.Lol. He is not writing a chapter next week. Or the week after. Or ever.