Will we ever get another series like ASOIAF?

[unJon]

10 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

How does this “shield” work? What kind of model of the world do you have in mind for “magic” to do that? I’m genuinely and constantly puzzled by such claims. (And we do have textual evidence for the sun setting earlier. It’s not something I make up. GRRM does.) 

Except if, as you say, there is constant, planetary-size magic at work right now (not magic that slows down the orbit, but that changes the rotation axis, of course.) This magic must be of such awesome power that Malazan or Moorcock stand in bafflement before the scope, ambition, and grandeur of the author’s willingness to employ magic as an explanatory device. And this magic must work at this very moment (there is no earlier event that can have put “wobble” into the spin axis for it to display the effects that we see.) Yet all this god-like might and agency required for this phenomenon is used for – what? 

Some source of magic has levelled up to level 800, yet the only spell it commands is “Change the rotational axis of the planet at will”? 

Compare the cost of accepting these implausibilities (and utter breaches of narrative frame, scope, atmosphere in routinely yet obliquely including such a strange magical phenomenon) with the rather mundane assumption of “GRRM screwed up, doesn’t really care (nor should he), and just tries to hand-wave it away by calling it magic.” The latter I believe (for its parsimony), the former baffles me, as does the readiness of the fanbase to rationalise it (still without building even the most basic of coherent models). 

Why does it have to be based on planetary dynamics? Could be that the heart of winter that Bran sees in that one dream has Power of Winter within X mile radius. And every so often the heart of winter travels south closer to the wall so that swaths of Westeros fall within the radius?

I mean at some level of the onion it has to become hand wavy magic. Even for real life physics (e.g., why is the Standard Model correct? For some handwavy reason). 

[Corvinus85]

This thread is proof that people who haven't ventured in the upper part of the forum for a long time do miss that occasionally.

[jurble]

Has GRRM ever confirmed Planetos orbits its sun?  Or is even a planet?

[Darth Richard II]

Maybe physics work different in that universe.

[Larry of the Lawn]

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa!  Slow down!  The debate over the wonky seasons of asoiaf is clearly an allegory for climate change in our own world.  I'm pretty sure this was a central plank of the 2016 republican party platform in the US.

[Corvinus85]

I would say that physics works very much the same in the ASOIAF world as it does in ours, but there's magic that can influence things on a large scale. After all, you had a bunch of non-human people who used some kind of magic to literally destroy what was once a wide isthmus, and then nearly succeed again at the Neck. From a physics perspective, that probably meant massive earthquakes and the sea level rising. But the cause of it was magic, not some cyclical tectonic plate instability or whatever. Valyria was build on volcanoes that were kept dormant by magic, until they weren't. So yes, it's magic that fucked up the weather, and how that magic works doesn't need to be explained.

[Darth Richard II]

18 minutes ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I'll fully admit I don't know nearly enough about orbit mechanics, seasons, or celestial bodies to engage in this argument.

But why does magic have to abide by the laws of physics?

EDIT: did not notice that DRII literally said the exact same thing right above me. Carry on.

Right? If a wizard casts a spell that makes the sun set early, then a wizard casts the spell that maks the sun set early.

[The Marquis de Leech]

49 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Right? If a wizard casts a spell that makes the sun set early, then a wizard casts the spell that maks the sun set early.

I think what Happy Ent is getting at is what, exactly, does the wizard do to make the sun set early?*

*The conclusion being: nothing. Martin-world's seasons are entirely due to the whim of the author.

[Darth Richard II]

3 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

I think what Happy Ent is getting at is what, exactly, does the wizard do to make the sun set early?*

*The conclusion being: nothing. Martin-world's seasons are entirely due to the whim of the author.

He casts Make The Sun Set Early. It's in the players handbook.

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

How does this “shield” work? What kind of model of the world do you have in mind for “magic” to do that? I’m genuinely and constantly puzzled by such claims. (And we do have textual evidence for the sun setting earlier. It’s not something I make up. GRRM does.) 

Except if, as you say, there is constant, planetary-size magic at work right now (not magic that slows down the orbit, but that changes the rotation axis, of course.) This magic must be of such awesome power that Malazan or Moorcock stand in bafflement before the scope, ambition, and grandeur of the author’s willingness to employ magic as an explanatory device. And this magic must work at this very moment (there is no earlier event that can have put “wobble” into the spin axis for it to display the effects that we see.) Yet all this god-like might and agency required for this phenomenon is used for – what? 

Some source of magic has levelled up to level 800, yet the only spell it commands is “Change the rotational axis of the planet at will”? 

Compare the cost of accepting these implausibilities (and utter breaches of narrative frame, scope, atmosphere in routinely yet obliquely including such a strange magical phenomenon) with the rather mundane assumption of “GRRM screwed up, doesn’t really care (nor should he), and just tries to hand-wave it away by calling it magic.” The latter I believe (for its parsimony), the former baffles me, as does the readiness of the fanbase to rationalise it (still without building even the most basic of coherent models). 

The other point is that if there has been a massive change in the rotational axis of the planet, then the Southern Hemisphere of Martin-world has just gone through a nine year winter, and is about to enter summer.

(Again, Martin presumably doesn't care about that implication either). 

[The Marquis de Leech]

6 hours ago, unJon said:

Why does it have to be based on planetary dynamics? Could be that the heart of winter that Bran sees in that one dream has Power of Winter within X mile radius. And every so often the heart of winter travels south closer to the wall so that swaths of Westeros fall within the radius?

Except that the winters are associated with the days getting shorter (sun rises later and sets earlier).

I mean, it is possible that the Heart of Winter not only has Power of Winter within X radius, but induces a mass solar hallucination among the population, but that way lies insanity.

Incidentally there is this:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2017/07/game-of-thrones-westeros-winter-climate-science

The first two explanations ignore the sun problem (the seasons are easy to explain otherwise), but the third one resorts to axial wobble.

The article also quotes Martin himself:

‘Nice try, guys, but you’re thinking in the wrong direction.’ This is a fantasy series. I am going to explain it all eventually, but it’s going to be a fantasy explanation. It’s not going to be a science-fiction explanation.”

The question is what this explanation is.

[Darth Richard II]

A Wizard did it.

[Happy Ent]

1 hour ago, Let's Get Kraken said:

I'm sure there will be an explanation, but the actual mechanics of how the magic works is almost certainly going to be immaterial.

OK, maybe that’s a good inspiration to help me make my point clear.

—
“How the magic works” is indeed immaterial. I don’t need to know, nor can I. It’s magic after all.

But “what the magic does” would be very interesting. Does the magic move the Sun? Is the Sun a star at all? Does the magic change the rotational axis of Planetos? Is Planetos a planet at all? Does the magic produce an atmospheric phenomenon that distorts the observed position of the Sun for the people on the Northern hemisphere, while simultaneously reducing the temperature? Does the magic induce a mass hallucination on all sentient creatures that makes them believe the sun already set (while in reality it’s still in the sky), including (say) nocturnal animals? (Or would an wolf still see the sun in its right position? Would a warg who wargs into a wolf be subject to the hallucination?) — This exhausts the magical explanations I can think of. All seem ludicrous to me, but in Fantasy, your leagueage may vary. 

So: I don’t need GRRM to explain to me how the magic moves the Sun. I want him to tell me if the magic moved the Sun.

[mormont]

'What the magic does' is 'make the seasons work differently'. If you're asking 'what are the physical mechanics by which it does this' you're asking the wrong question.

Case in point: Elizabeth Bear's 'Eternal Sky' setting. In that setting, when you travel from one country to the next, the sky changes. Constellations, the number of moons, even the sun. When one country conquers the next, the sky over that country changes to the conqueror's sky. How does that work? Magic. What it does is not make some alteration to the laws of physics that creates a set of environmental conditions that make it possible for the sky to change naturally. What it does is what it does.

However: that said, we should return to the topic, which is not 'how do the seasons work in Westeros' (wrong forum for that) but 'Will we ever get another series like ASOIAF?'

[unJon]

2 hours ago, mormont said:

 

However: that said, we should return to the topic, which is not 'how do the seasons work in Westeros' (wrong forum for that) but 'Will we ever get another series like ASOIAF?'

Or more pointedly, 'Will we ever get another series where the seasons work like they do in Westeros?'

[Werthead]

Quote

 

Or more pointedly, 'Will we ever get another series where the seasons work like they do in Westeros?'

 

I think George quite clearly borrowed the idea from Brian Aldiss's Helliconia Trilogy (although that is science fiction, there are strong similarities), so you can always check that out for another take on the same idea, including a highly complex orbital map explaining how the centuries-long seasons work.

[Happy Ent]

I assume that publishing houses are looking very much at anything that they could sell as the next Song of Ice and Fire.

The situation mimics the end of the Harry Potter series, where just at the right time some publishing house found another, reasonably well-written fantasy series involving a card-board main character and a school for wizardry: Name of the Wind. They marketed the Hell out of that in order to cash in on the HP fanbase looking for a new series.

It kinda worked.

For this reason alone I am currently putting the finishing touches on a largely plant-based epic fantasy, A Song of Rice and Spire. (Humans do appear in the ecosystem, but as decoration and fauna.) There will be the usual machiavellian shenanigans, epic forest-on-forest battles, Japanese schoolgirls curious about vines, preachy monologues on biodiversity, diacritics, and proper orbital mechanics.

[Werthead]

Going back to the original point:

A Game of Thrones was published in 1996, which was 19 years after the modern(ish) epic fantasy explosion began in 1977 with Lord Foul's Bane and The Sword of Shannara. Remarkably (and slightly distressingly) more time has passed now since AGoT came out than the start of that period and AGoT coming out. AGoT came out early enough that it's mix of traditional fantasy elements and its embracing of a more adult, grittier sensibility felt fresh and transformative in the genre: it wasn't the first book to do this, but it was the first well-written and characterised enough to reach a larger audience and crossover with historical fiction fans as well, and the book was quite accessible (something almost every modern fantasy novel seems to forget about, with the exception of Abercrombie, Sanderson, Rothfuss and maybe a few others).

The chances of another book doing the same thing are slim, because there's really not much else you can introduce into epic fantasy to shake it up. I think it will come down to a book coming out that is well-written, strikes a chord with readers and works across the board (plus is noticed for its adaptability). Some fantasy fans would argue that many better books than AGoT have been written and published already, but none of them have resonated across the board in the same way. Many of the works currently being championed in the genre (such as Kameron Hurley and N.J. Jemisin's works) are probably never going to achieve that breakthrough because they are not rooted in accessibility like AGoT is (the same problem has done for Erikson and Bakker, for that matter).

[Astromech]

3 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

I assume that publishing houses are looking very much at anything that they could sell as the next Song of Ice and Fire.

The situation mimics the end of the Harry Potter series, where just at the right time some publishing house found another, reasonably well-written fantasy series involving a card-board main character and a school for wizardry: Name of the Wind. They marketed the Hell out of that in order to cash in on the HP fanbase looking for a new series.

It kinda worked.

For this reason alone I am currently putting the finishing touches on a largely plant-based epic fantasy, A Song of Rice and Spire. (Humans do appear in the ecosystem, but as decoration and fauna.) There will be the usual machiavellian shenanigans, epic forest-on-forest battles, Japanese schoolgirls curious about vines, preachy monologues on biodiversity, diacritics, and proper orbital mechanics.

Will lichen be analogous to the Others?

[The Marquis de Leech]

9 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

For this reason alone I am currently putting the finishing touches on a largely plant-based epic fantasy, A Song of Rice and Spire. (Humans do appear in the ecosystem, but as decoration and fauna.) There will be the usual machiavellian shenanigans, epic forest-on-forest battles, Japanese schoolgirls curious about vines, preachy monologues on biodiversity, diacritics, and proper orbital mechanics.

Will there be fertiliser porn?