George RR Martin Reveals His Long Awaited Book
Offseason comics in full swing baby
Occasionally, GRRM (Writer of the Game of Thrones books, nerdy santa claus) posts a few words on his personal journal/blog about whatever he’s up to or thinking about. Every once in a while he will post about football and the nerds who are still waiting on the Winds of Winter will get extremely mad about it. I love it every time. He’s a NY football fan, so he likes both the Giants and Jets (something that both fanbases might consider sacrilegious but whatever). He’ll pop in to mention he’s excited about the Giants draft class or something and nerds will yell at him on Twitter to finish the damn books.
I have to imagine those same people yelling at him are probably one of the reasons he hasn’t yet. Besides the emotional deflation of having the show pass him, the show ended very poorly, and the daunting complexity of figuring out how to actually tie his story together in the first place from a world that got too big too fast, it probably doesn’t help to have legions of fans being mad at him every time he does anything else. Honestly, while I’d like to read how the story ends from the man himself and not from those dumbos who ran the show into the dirt, I kinda don’t blame him for not doing it.
On a much smaller scale, I know what it is like just from doing this comic to have people hounding you to do a thing, knowing I should probably do that thing, and subsequently losing all desire to do that thing. It is one of the reasons why none of the running gags last too long here. After a point, the people just want that, but they get harder and harder to do, and doing other things always feels more fun. I like that George is just doing what he actually wants right now. He’s making the House of the Dragon prequel series (which is pretty good if you are on the fence), he’s writing lots of side stories and such in the world of ice and fire, he did…something on Elden Ring, we have no idea what he actually contributed. It definitely felt like the confusingly similar royalty demigod names were on him.
I sorta hope he just keeps doing that. He’s in his 70’s. He’s successful and has earned the time to do what makes him happy instead of caving to fan demand for books that lots of people will probably dissect and call him a hack for anyway. The curse of the expectations. Do what makes you happy George. I watched Stephen King panic write the end of the Dark Tower saga after he had a brush with death and the results there were mixed at best. If the inspiration isn’t coming, then do the stuff that is inspired. You don’t owe me or anyone else the rest of the story.
you’re seven godsdamn right.
i prefer a meandering into nothingness over a botched ending.
like belichick is doing right now! HEYOOO
I mean, people talk about this like it’s a new things dude just developed. GRRM has *NEVER* been speedy at writing these things. I was a teenager when I read the first ASOIAF book. “Game of Thrones: Book 1” for you show watchers. 5 books later and I’m halfway through my forties. It takes him an average of 5-6 years to put out each book, his agent or the publisher, I forget which… said once that trying to keep him on schedule and on-point has ALWAYS been an issue, he continuously has to divide one book into 2 because he goes off tangent and starts cramming new stuff inside of it.
If I had to guess, the delay on the Winds of Winter is less about fans hounding him, and him just being distracted by all the shiny baubles that the popularity of the show has brought to him. Things like Elden Ring.
I stopped watching the show at season 5, so I’m not sure if the Giant Wun Wun made it in, but Wun Wun = 11. I wunder if there was ever a Giant wearing #11. He also has a Patriots reference. I’m only going to butcher it if I recall it from memory, so allow me to google it…
“Belicho was a renowned Volantene patriot whose famous exploits are recorded in the series The Life of the Triarch Belicho. His unbroken succession of conquests and triumphs ended rather abruptly when he was eaten by giants.”
Once the show was announced back in 2009 or 2010 or whenever, I pretty much assumed this would happen, so I’m not bothered by 12 years that have passed without the Winds of Winter. He said Winter was coming… but he never said how quickly. The Wheel of Time taught me that authors who say a lot and say it slowly are almost assuredly going to die without finishing their opus, and some hack will have to come in and half-ass the job.
He started writing in 1993 and had 3 books done by 2000. Then it took him 5 years to make book 4 and 6 years to make book 5. Since then it’s been 12 years without one. It’s not just that he has slowed down, he has outright stopped at this point.
The only problem I have with that take is he has objectively increased the scope and size of the series with every book. Book 5 is almost twice the page count of Book 1, for example. So it makes sense that the exponential feature creep increases the writing time more, and more, and more. The original Feast of Crows was too big to be published, and he had to get creative just figuring out how to make it into two books without losing anything. The series was supposed to be a trilogy, then two trilogies, and now they don’t mention trilogies at all.
I don’t doubt for a second he’s taking more and more breaks from it as the exciting new projects roll in, and it’s quite possible he has privately abandoned the project entirely. But I also don’t doubt for a second, based on the earlier books, that he kept on expanding and inflating things as he started writing it. It wouldn’t shock me if TWoW needs to get split into 3 books.
I guess we’ll see in another 5-10 years, when he’s dead and his notes are published.
His notes won’t be published, nor will his books be continued. He’s stated multiple times that when he dies, the executor of his estate is to destroy everything. No one will be allowed to continue his work. He considered what happened to Robert Jordan’s series a travesty.
We either get his books, or we get nothing.
Huh. I don’t religiously follow him, but I have never heard about that. It’s not surprising in the least, though. The Wheel of Time’s ending WAS a travesty, but I was hoping he would opt for something more benevolent to the fanbase, like hand-picking his successor in advance. It’s ok, though, I’ll just write my own ending where everyone is killed by a giant meteor wearing a fisherman’s cap that giggles like a demented 6 year old.
Also, everyone wants to know how it all ends, but as he knows from actual history of empires and such, nothing really ends, just more empires rising from other empires’ dusts. That’s probably why focusing on one family (as in House of the Dragon) is easier than looking across all of the kingdoms. He created a world that could continue in perpetuity, which isn’t great for the beginning-middle-end narrative structure.
Won-Won/11 is a Phil Simms reference. The character he kills was named after a friend that’s a Cowboys fan (the character’s shield/sigil is a silver star on a blue background). It was the result of a friendly bet on a game.
Great post, but shouldn’t you be working on the next Fort Elite Moneys comic?
I do miss Sexy Rexy, but I know why it was retired. The young’uns probably don’t know or remember the Sex Dragon.
It was always fun looking for it in the comics.
My opinion on George R. R. Martin is that he is a rather fat man.
It is ridiculous that people who are supposed to be big fans of his are so angry at him. He’s not being an ass, he’s simply doing what he wants instead of what some of his followers want. It’s important to remember that it’s just a small subset of his fans do that and that social media makes people worse versions of themselves.
He also likes to hide football Easter eggs in the Game of Thrones books. He mentions a character at one point called Triarch Belicho who was very successful until he was unceremoniously killed by a giant, in reference to Belichick’s almost-perfect season. He hates the Patriots because of Belichick’s GoT-style betrayal when he resigned from the Jets, and I think a big reason he likes the Giants is probably because they’ve been a thorn in Belichick’s side. It also feels like it’d fit in one of his books that right when Eli’s reign was about to end, they managed to find someone in the wilderness who looks just like him (possible illegitimate offspring?) to succeed him.
“He mentions a character at one point called Triarch Belicho who was very successful until he was unceremoniously killed by a giant, in reference to Belichick’s almost-perfect season. He hates the Patriots”
I cannot believe i missed this and now we know the real reason Dave is defending him lol
seriously though my respect for GRRM has increased
The Jets story got too grim dark ever since Namath made a deal with Satan. I dropped the book since then.
People are hounding him to finish the book because he’s gonna die any moment now.
No sympathy here, creative types need to suck it up sometimes.
Nobody who works a normal job gets the luxury of not finishing tasks because they don’t feel like it, so nobody who works a normal job should have any sympathy.
At this point he clearly has no plans to finish the series and should hand off his notes and outlines to someone with passion for the project
He’s worked consistently and productively for most of his life and is well past the age most people with “normal jobs” retire and stop working, he does not have to “suck it up” if he doesn’t want to. He is still doing a ton of work these days, just not on the specific book people most want.
If he was being directly paid to finish the book under contract by a deadline, yeah, he’d have to suck it up and finish it. That’s clearly not the case. He probably also knows he’s closer to death than not and I can’t begrudge him for using the freedom he has to work on what he actually wants to work on
I agree and all your points agree that he needs to hand the series off to someone who can finish it.
He doesn’t have to do that either, and I’m not sure I’d even want that. It’ll be a different story if he’s not making it.
Just feels like everyone demanding he do it is fan entitlement. Like we DESERVE the final chapters. It’s disappointing that he isn’t finishing it but whatever happens is his choice
David Gerrold started a series I loved “The War Against the Chtorr” when I was a teenager and I’m retired now.
George is a piker compared to Dave.
I figure their books will be finished (badly) after they die. At some point you just have to accept that they aren’t going to do it.
I agree with Dave’s assessment of King’s Dark Tower series too. I didn’t want it to end if it was gonna be ended like that. The man even said he lost his notes on the books direction (not too wild to consider since the first book actually took a decade by itself IIRC). First half written while he was still in college, and the point after the pump station where he meets Jake is after the birth of his son.