Now it's certain: The 'Game of Thrones' show will reach the ending before the books
By Chris Taylor
Longtime readers of "A Song of Ice and Fire" — the still-incomplete book cycle on which HBO's Game of Thrones is based — get ready to roll your eyes.
Author George R. R. Martin's publisher, HarperCollins, confirmed that book six, The Winds of Winter, for which we've been waiting since 2011, will not be published in 2015. His publisher, Jane Johnson, tried to mollify fans by reminding them that a series of "prequel novellas" based in Martin's world of Westeros would arrive later this year. Nevertheless, she was adamant.
"These are increasingly complex books, and require immense amounts of concentration to write," Johnson told The Guardian. "Fans really ought to appreciate that the length of these monsters is equivalent to two or three novels by other writers.”
What HarperCollins didn't draw attention to is that the later arrival of Winds of Winter all but guarantees that the HBO series will do what Martin has long hoped it wouldn't: overtake the books. Here's why. (Caution: What follows indulges in mild speculation, and includes mild spoilers if you haven't read the books.)
Season 5 of Game of Thrones arrives in April. It is based on book four, A Feast for Crows, as well as parts of book five, A Dance With Dragons. (The producers managed to split book three into two seasons, but that was jam-packed with plot; sadly, there's barely enough meat in Crows and Dragons combined to make for a single season.)
The HBO show is on a regular schedule; it films every fall, and screens every spring. There's little hope of delaying Game of Thrones, especially given its large number of teenaged actors who are growing up faster than the pace of the story allows. Isaac Hempstead-Wright, who plays Bran Stark, has already gone through so much pubescence that the producers have already parked Bran at the place where he arrives in book five.
The producers have made it quite clear they intend to end the show with Season 7. So we already have a clear road map: Season 6 arrives in 2016, and the HBO show will grace our screens for the last time in 2017.
Martin's roadmap, meanwhile, involves two more novels: The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. The titles were announced nearly a decade ago.
So let's be generous to Martin, and imagine that Winter is coming in early 2016, just ahead of the TV season that will likely be based on it. That schedule is not entirely beyond the bounds of reason, given that he has already offered two sample chapters of the new book online.
What is beyond the bounds of reason, however, is that Spring could be completed just one year later, in time for Season 7 in 2017. Martin's books are behemoths lasting between 800 and 1,100 pages each, and even the early books — when he was actually writing fast — had two-year gaps between them.
In other words, at his fastest conceivable writing speed, he would have needed to release Winter this year — and that possibility has just been taken off the table. So we can definitively say that all the long-debated secrets of the series (who Jon Snow's mother is, who ends up on the Iron Throne, whether the dragons and the arrival of winter destroy everything and everyone) will be revealed on screen before they arrive on the page.
In fact, one Washington Post analysis based on Martin's writing speed suggests that Spring won't see publication until 2023 — or a full six years after the show wraps up.
At this point, it's beyond a cliche to say that Martin should write faster. He knows it (and admitted as much, in exactly those words back when I interviewed him for the premiere of Season 3). He invariably describes the TV show as a "freight train" barreling down on him, as he tries to lay track in front of it. The hit YouTube song imploring him to finish books six and seven, "Write Like the Wind," is now nearly 3 years old.
On the other hand, Martin is as stubborn as any writer, and insists he'll be done when he's done. He may even expand the series to eight or nine books if he feels like it — it wouldn't be the first time the number of books has grown.
When it comes to Westeros, Martin is the boss.
So what if the screen version of something beats the book it was based on for the first time in history? Martin told show producers key plot points years ago to cover that eventuality. So what if he wants to write prequels (and the essays in last year's lavish, but critically panned, The World of Ice and Fire) before he finishes the series he got us all hooked on in the first place? That's his prerogative.
The final word on all of this has to go to Martin, and it was never better expressed than at the 2013 Comic-Con event w00tstock. The musicians behind "Write Like the Wind" began to sing their urgent instruction to Martin — who unexpectedly emerged on stage to destroy their guitars.
Following him was fellow fantasy writer Neil Gaiman, who got the singers to repeat a line he'd used in a blog post four years earlier: "George R.R. Martin is not my b*tch."
Repeat after me, fellow fans: George R.R. Martin, the most frustratingly slow writer of our modern age, is nevertheless not your b*tch.
