George R.R. Martin Has Further Delayed Next ‘Game of Thrones’ Book, Worst News Fans Have Had Since Their Mom Couldn’t Take Them to Comic-Con
George R.R. Martin is never going to finish A Song of Ice and Fire, the series of books that Game of Thrones is based on. The first book in the series, A Game of Thrones, was published in 1996 and was supposed to be the first book of a trilogy. Twenty-two years later, fans are still waiting for the sixth book in the trilogy, and that isn’t even the last one.
At 69 years old (nice) and something like 800 pounds, there’s pretty much no way Martin is finishing A Song of Ice and Fire with both feet still attached to his body. I can only assume he’s more gout than man at this point. At this point we just have to hope that Martin’s beard is some sort of brain parasite that is just controlling his body and writing his novels like that spore that turns ants into zombies.
As not close as Martin is to finishing his fantasy epic, he’s announced he’s even further than we thought because he’s taken a break to write two full-length novels about the history of the Targaryens, the family of Game of Thrones heroine Daenerys Targaryen, called Fire and Blood. He laid all of this potentially huge news out in the comments section of his LiveJournal because apparently in addition to being the most-respected living fantasy writer, George R.R. Martin is also a teenage girl in 2003 who cuts himself to deal with how much his parents suck.
Yes, most of FIRE & BLOOD consists of the ‘sidebars’ I originally wrote for THE WORLD OF ICE & FIRE. Abridged versions of some of those pieces appeared as “The Princess and the Queen,” “The Rogue Prince,” and “The Sons of the Dragon,” but these are the full versions, together with some chapters that have never appeared anywhere.
F&B will be in two volumes. Vol 1 before, vol 2 after.
The first volume should be completed soon. The second is hardly begun.
The before and after he’s referring to in those comments is referencing the publication of The Winds of Winter, the forthcoming sixth book in the A Song of Ice and Fire trilogy.
As a writer, I can actually relate to how Martin keeps getting sidetracked while finishing his epic. I often start writing something to get distracted by a new idea I have to get out of my head right now. Martin’s writing has become more and more sprawling as he’s decided his story needs more fleshing out in various places, leading to the ballooning length of the series and the increased wait between each volume. This isn’t unique to Martin, either. It kind of tracks with One Piece, the world’s best-selling comic book, which cartoonist Eiichiro Oda originally estimated would run some seven years. After twenty years and 88 volumes, his latest estimate is that he’s roughly 2/3rds finished, give or take. Of course, Oda puts out a new chapter of his comic nearly once a week while Martin’s last A Song of Ice and Fire book, A Dance with Dragons, was released in 2011, so his fans are probably a little more impatient.
