GRRM was actually asked about him dying before finishing. Response = Hilarious

[King in the North Carolina]

Punching someone in the gut or the face is far more offensive and dangerous than simply asking after their health, no matter how rude the question is.

I don't get offended by being punched in the gut. Because I have rock-hard abs.

[Frey Filet]

You're clearly implying that if he wrote the exact same story but it was less popular, then he would have no obligation.

This clearly means you're pretty entitled.

All of ASOIAF fandom is deserving of an end to the series. This isn't an individualistic concept but one of the masses.

[LordStoneheart]

^ That's a pretty big judgment.

[Civility Reigns]

I don't get offended by being punched in the gut. Because I have rock-hard abs.

I'd be surprised if anything managed to offend you with those abs.

[RoamingRonin]

I'd be surprised if anything managed to offend you with those abs.

E-Ro got competition up in here.

[Good Guy Garlan]

That was one awkward bird flipping

All of ASOIAF fandom is entitled. This isn't an individualistic concept but one of the masses.

Clearly we are all Targaryens

[north of the wall]

I can't believe how many posts I have read that state he is an "old man". He's 65 people not 85. He is not old yet!

And unless there was to be some news about him battling cancer or some other life threatening illness I assume he has another 10, 20 or even 30 years left in him!!

I kinda feel like he needs to finish the series. Not because he may die soon but because many people love his work. He might not "owe" it too his fans but we definately deserve it. Its such a huge series and I was daunted to start based on the size alone. If he decided to not finish (not if he died but just cbf anymore) I'd be more than just pissed off!

Also why cant we feel sad for his friends and family if he were to die but angry the series was never finished? Is it impossible to feel both?

[Dornish Vinegar]

All of ASOIAF fandom is entitled. This isn't an individualistic concept but one of the masses.

Definitely not everyone feels that way. Plenty here have said, rightly so, on this thread and dozens before it, that GRRM does not owe us anything.

[JonCon's Red Beard]

Clearly we are all secret Targaryens

But really, if GRRM wants to say "fuck you" to all of these people, he should finish the books by tomorrow. No, way... tonight! yeah, come on George! You tell them!

[willofDorne]

I'm just gonna add my *MIDDLE FINGERS* to this thread. Seriously, don't question GRRM or his health!

[Lady Blizzardborn]

<snip

Btw, I'm not even that sympathetic to that "George Martin is not your bitch" stuff. He wrote a Storm of Swords in one year.

ONE YEAR. And that's his masterpiece. I can understand creativity can just decrease with passing of time, but c'mon...

He seems to have planned all of the future books plots already, hell we know it now thanks to HBO!

If he managed to write ASOS in one year of intensive work, I don't see why he can't write tWoW in three/four years of less intensive work. He really is relaxing a little too much considering he's leaving one major fictional work that the whole world seems to love hanging.

No, he didn't. He wrote the first three together as one book that ended up being split into three. So all of the groundwork for ACoK and ASoS was done before AGoT was published. The final edits and polishing might have taken a year, but the first draft (which is the majority of the time-suck quotient) was done.

[beautifulsouth0]

Good for him. That's pretty fucking morbid and selfish for people to continue speculating his death prior to finishing the series. Not to mention rude. People need to keep their editorial comments regarding his weight/overall health to themselves. Next thing you know, they're gonna start wagering on when+how he dies. Or there's gonna be a Misery scenario. I mean, we are mortal, imperfect beings, but 65 isnt that old these days. Take a cup o' STFU and find something else to occupy you time til the next book comes out. Get a hobby. Spend some time with your family. Read his other stories. Skin Trade's really good. Or maybe find another author to follow to pass the time. Or genre. I started reading romance novels from 1978-1979 time frame. They're hilariously far-fetched. I'm gonna laugh at those til TWOW comes out- it'll make me appreciate this series more.

[mormont]

[mod] This thread will be closed unless people can discuss the issue politely and maturely.

I will add that no, GRRM does not have any current health issues, and it would be none of our business even if he did. You may disagree with that view, but it is the moderators' view, and so we won't tolerate uninformed speculation on the topic. [/mod]

[Free Northman Reborn]

Jordan was asked this question too back in the early days, and his reply was matter-of-fact, if I recall. Basically he said that then the ending dies with him. And he then went on to say that this was at least partly motivated by the desire to keep some crazy fan from deliberately offing him just to get the ending revealed sooner.

In short, he seemed to regard it as a legitimate question, rather than be offended by it. Of course, when he found out that he really would not be able to see it through, he took steps to address the issue for his fans.

Millions of people are emotionally invested in this series and are worried to a greater or lesser degree about whether they will be able to experience it through to the end.. That's just a fact of life.

[Werthead]

I paid for three books I enjoyed and for two that left me really disappointed.

And I did not buy simply 5 books. I bought 5 books of a series of seven. And if an author sells books of a series and promises me to finish it, I think it is my right to demand the last books.

That is an unrealistic expectation. The history of literature is riddled with the corpses of unfinished series, or series finished by other people. Wheel of Time, Dune, The Chronicles of Amber, Gormenghast, the Middle-earth books, Foundation, Amtrak Wars, War Against the Chtorr, The Exiles Trilogy and a hell of a lot more, and that's just in SFF.

If you want a finished series, wait until a series is done and then go and read it. Otherwise it doesn't matter if the author is 25 and in the prime of life or 90 and half-blind, no conclusion to a series can be guaranteed.

No great author would ever wish something like that and Martin is no different. Only difference is, he really doesn't seem to care that much, and people do understand something like that.

I'm not sure where the, "He really doesn't seem to care much," argument comes from. With the exception of three short stories and a pilot script, he hasn't written a single word of non-ASoIaF-related fiction in 23 years, since he started AGoT in 1991, despite saying he has multiple other projects he's eager to get on with (including a Fevre Dream sequel and maybe looking at his SF novel Avalon again). Lesser writers would have thrown in the towel when experiencing problems of the sort GRRM had with AFFC and ADWD. If anything the problem on the timescale front, especially with the previous two books, was that he cared too much and rewrote and rewrote chapters that I suspect many readers would have been fine with in their earlier incarnations.

It would be different if he would make some kind of statement on how far he is. Considering how much he travels, there is probably one day a week on which he writes. Maybe even less.

Or you could actually look at his website which shows where and when he is travelling? This year and last year was actually fairly restrained, and the bulk of the time he has been at home writing (even his comic appearance on John Oliver's show a few weeks ago was filmed at his house).

As for a progress report, that's why we have that thread on the board. The last word was that work on TWoW was proceeding satisfactorily, that he was making rapid progress and he had done very little rewriting compared to the previous two books. He also felt confident enough to tease what plots and storylines would be in the novel a couple of weeks ago. TWoW is clearly not coming out next week, but that mooted (by his publishers) 2015 release date looks more plausible now.

I do actually agree with this. I think he could save himself a lot of hassle if he agreed to give us a page count every 6 months.

This is not always possible due to his writing process. George writes a sequence of chapters from one POV and then switches to another. He'll then rewrite those initial chapters and send them to his editors. At that point he considers them 'finalised' and gives us a page count update. However, with ADWD he found changes in one POV necessitated going back and rewriting even 'finalised' chapters from other POVs (particularly circulating around the Meereenese Knot), making the value of the page count as a tracker of progress dubious. As a result he no longer seems to be able to 100% guarantee that finalised chapters are indeed finalised. I suspect we won't get page counts now until the book is almost done.

That's why I like brandon sanderson so much. I don't know if you know him or if you have read something by him, but the awesome thing is: when you visit his website, you're seeing how far he is with his books. On which draft, prewriting, editing, etc. And that is really great.

GRRM's writing process is considerably less mechanical than Sanderson's, which is bad for being able to estimate completion times (and even then Sanderson has often been off, sometimes by months) but good for not making your books occasionally read like they've been assembled in a sweatshop. I like Sanderson, but the mechanical-like writing process does sometimes result in some very uninspired prose.

he managed to fly under the psycho-fandom radar until the show took off

No, not at all. GRRM has had demanding and sometimes demented 'anti-fans' for a decade or more at this point.

my only problem with this is why GRRM cant allow any other author to finish the series incase if something happened to him

GRRM has, to my knowledge, never said this. What he has said is that he does not have a detailed outline for the rest of the series, so if he did get hit by a bus unexpectedly no-one else would be able to finish the series according to GRRM's vision. This was prior to him creating such an outline for HBO, so that may no longer apply. He has also said that he is very unhappy with how some other 'sequels by other hands' have turned out, with reference to the Amber series in particular (and a possible implication for Dune), so wouldn't want somone willy-nilly finishing the books at random. However, he also said that if he was in the same boat as Jordan was, suffering from an illness with several years' warning of his mortality, he probably would take avoiding action of some kind and prepare an outline or summary of the rest of the series, and might even consider asking another writer to finish the series if it was someone he had trust and faith in.

He wrote a Storm of Swords in one year.

As said above, he did not. AGoT-ACoK-ASoS were originally supposed to be one novel and as he wrote it he simply broke off when the MS got too big and published that chunk by itself. When he finished ACoK, for example, he also had almost 100% of Tyrion's story from ASoS already completed, and multiple other POVs were half-done or more.

It is more correct to say that AGoT-ACoK-ASoS were one novel written and executed over a period of nine years. That's clearly still faster than he's writing now, of course, but not five or six times faster.

[DreamSongs]

I say 'George...you should have done that a long time ago!' :D

[Masamune]

All the time he's giving these interviews, TWOW isn't being written. :P

[Nictarion]

This is really unfair to the newspaper. HE WAS NOT ASKED ABOUT DYING.

"But also, some people are worried that it's not gonna be finished, from what I read on the... I mean, there is the possibility. I don't know if you want to talk about this."

"Well, I find this question pretty offensive, frankly. [...] So, 'Fuck you!' to those people."

This was the conversation. Watch the video before you write such bullshit.

Oh please, it was quite obvious from the way the interviewer was hesitant to ask the question that it was about him dying before finishing.

Fuck people that ask him that shit. It's one thing to think it, but to ask the man himself is incredibly poor taste.

[Frey Filet]

You paid in exchange for a book you enjoyed. So no not really.

Paying for a book you expect to enjoy? Who knew?? How about paying for a book(s) in a series you expect to enjoy through it's completion? Regardless, it is about the monetary value given up to better the author's career, which GRRM has benefited tremendously from. His readers are his patrons.

[Nictarion]

Paying for a book you expect to enjoy? Who knew?? How about paying for a book(s) in a series you expect to enjoy through it's completion? Regardless, it is about the monetary value given up to better the author's career, which GRRM has benefited tremendously from. His readers are his patrons.

If you want a finished series, wait until a series is done and then go and read it. Otherwise it doesn't matter if the author is 25 and in the prime of life or 90 and half-blind, no conclusion to a series can be guaranteed.