I can't remember - are you a book reader?

Because the plot lines literally exploded since Book 3. To properly adapt his series likely would have taken 12-14 seasons.

I think there are two possibilities here.

1. He just doesn't give a shit. He's a cranky old procrastinating prick sitting on a mountain of money. He doesn't care what anybody thinks, and the more people pester him, the less inclined he is to finish the books, just to piss them off. And what are we going to do about it? Demand refunds for the books we already bought? Good luck with that. He's under no obligation to ever finish anything, and we can all kiss his ass if we don't like it.

or

2. He's got the next book done, and is simply waiting for the series to end to publish it.

Personally, my money's on No. 1. Being a bit of a cranky old procrastinating prick myself, I'm 100% sure that were I filthy rich and answered to absolutely no one but myself, I'd do exactly one thing, and one thing only - exactly what I want to do, when I want to do it, and it wouldn't involve much heavy lifting. And to hell with everybody else. I know what I'm like on a lazy weekend when my wife keeps nagging me to do something I don't feel like bothering with. I think Martin pretty much goes through life like that.

This.
At minimum.

I could go with #1, if he weren't writing other things in the GOT universe plus the Wildcards stuff. That added to the very real fact of his books getting worse and looser with widening plot lines when they should be tightening up, means I think he's lost it.

Yes, all of them.

That's what I was thinking - I just don't think with George's style of writing that he's going to find a succinct end to so many of his "non-endgame" plot threads... especially to..

1. Whatever the hell is happening in Dorne
2. Faegon (which, is now show confirmed).
3. The Brotherhood

I think he's also locked himself in to corners with these plot threads

1. Arya (judging by the show's Deus Ex Machina)
2. The Brotherhood + Jaime & Brienne
3. The Mareeneeesesese Knot (The fact we didn't get the Battle of Fire in DOD still pisses me off.
4. On that note, we still don't have a Battle of Ice, but at least we have 20 pages of Stannis playing in the snow.
5. I am interested in Euron's valyrian steel armor and Dragonbinder, but fitting that in to the overall narrative?

Blah. I'm ranting, but still. I think he's locked in. Reading between the lines, his publisher is predicting that he's going to need eight books to finish the series. He seemed to publish Dance before he had finished with several of his arcs and I imagine he doesn't want to do that with Winds so he can stay on track for 7 books - but I'll believe it when I see it.

What's easier - writing new shit, or wrapping up old shit that you've grown tired of dealing with?

No idea, not a writer. Though I'd think he had an overall arc planned (proof is the series about to wrap up ahead of him actually writing another book) so wrapping it up shouldn't be so damn hard.

He's too damn busy playing with miniatures and playing at being a celebrity.

That last season was incredibly rushed tying a million loose ends. I'm afraid the show will end the same way. I hope not.

Think about it from his perspective - he's been working on the original series for decades. He's known how it ends since the second he decided how it ends - probably played it all out in his mind a million times. Now it's just a matter of tying up all the loose ends, which, due to the mass of extraneous shit he's jammed in, has to be a huge pain in the ass.

Or - he can just push it to the side and do something else.

I'm hopeful that was there way of getting the pieces where they needed to be for the final season.

At this point, I wish George would do the same thing.

And be a massive loser.

If he doesn't finish the series before he dies, fans should file a class action lawsuit against his estate.

He's never going to finish these books. I've only read the first two and that was enough to convince me that he is incapable of finishing an overall plot. There are just countless, unending, side characters and (most likely) pointless plots cluttering up the the story.

His idea of worldbuiding is a lot like the map in Steven Wright's standup bit:

'I have a map of the United States... Actual size. It says, 'Scale: 1 mile = 1 mile.'


Not every character needs a biography, or even a name for that matter. You don't need to recap the history of the Hittite's for a story about Vietnam. He's not going to stop until there is a life story for every character and a history for every neighborhood.


I had read 1,500 pages or so, and was 20 pages from the end of the second book and he was still introducing minor characters with half page biographies. "Oh, is that Sir Dumb**** I see?" Followed by 2 pages of Dumb**** family tree analysis . Capped off by Sir D dying from the clap in the middle of the street. This may lead to a lengthy but pointless tale about the whore he caught the clap from, or about his second cousin once removed (who may be that very same whore!) or it might be that it was just a pointless inchoate scene that Martin couldn't bear to throw away.

As I've said many times, I truly wish I'd never read the books. All they did was **** up the TV show for me.

Same here.