Last year, Martin sat down with one of his idols, Robert Redford, who was a fellow executive producer on Dark Winds. Redford came out of acting retirement to film a brief cameo in the show with Martin. In the scene, the two are sitting at a chessboard, and Redford ad-libbed a line:
George, the whole world is waiting, make a move.It was a meta joke about how long it’s taken Martin to finish Winter. Then Redford died, too. His chess scene with Martin — like something out of The Seventh Seal — was his final performance.
Martin says he has around 1,100 manuscript pages finished. He’s also said the number for a while. He long has blamed the endless distractions that have come from shifting from a full-time author to a producer and celebrity. The success of Thrones was both the best thing that could have happened to Martin and the worst thing that could have happened to the greatest story he ever wrote.
James Hibberd
I have long surmised that Martin’s inability – or unwillingness – to finish his magnum opus was down to the fact that he was already making more than enough money off the various TV adaptations and side projects to ever bother completing a series that became overstuffed with characters and marred by the poor reception of its on-screen conclusion. But reading through this article makes me think that he doesn’t even acknowledge the issue to himself. He keeps talking about wanting to finalize it, but other projects constantly getting in the way.
The reality is that every one of us has limited time at our disposal, and eventually need to make conscious, perhaps hard, choices about what we’re spending that precious time on. Martin sounds like someone stuck in the mindset that he has all the time in the world, that he can achieve everything that ever crossed his mind, instead of putting the truly important things first. And I would assume completing what was supposed to be your masterpiece should be right there at the top of the list…
After asking Martin repeatedly about Winds — seemingly more than he’d like — the author did what he does best. He tells a story.
In 1975, Martin met Dune author Frank Herbert at a book convention and they shared a drink. The meeting was
near the end of Herbert’s life, Martin says. Herbert had written many acclaimed novels, but all fans seemed to want was more Dune. Herbert’s publisher had just offered him a modest advance for a story he wanted to write, or six times that number for another Dune novel.
He didn’t like Dune anymore and he didn’t want to write any more Dune books, Martin says.But he felt locked in by the success of Dune, so he kept writing them.Martin finishes … and waits.
Personally, I’m not invested in the least in the ultimate fate of The Song of Ice and Fire. I’ve watched the series, I was entertained for a while, and finished it more out of a sense of completion. I never picked up the books because the series wasn’t finished, and even if Martin were to release the last two books before his passing I would likely not read them anyway. I don’t feel that they have anything meaningful to say to me, especially now after all these delays and a TV adaptation.
The main reason I’ve read this article is this small story about his meeting with Frank Herbert. First of all, it feels absurd to frame a meeting with Herbert in 1975 as near the end of Herbert’s life
, considering he died a whole nine years later, and during that period he published no less than four of the six novels in the Dune series. I suspect Martin is misremembering their conversation or trying to reframe it to paint his own creative block in a positive light.
Unfortunately, however you look at this it makes Martin look even worse: Herbert not only managed to write and publish several follow-up stories in this setting he was supposedly tired of, but they were generally well received by his fandom, and on top of that each novel can constitute a natural ending to the story if you wish to stop there. Many people gripe about the last two entries in the series, Heretics and Chapterhouse, but I prefer them to the first books, and they have their share of fans. Martin should stop inventing excuses for himself and either finish his saga or have the decency to relinquish it publicly, so that fans can finally move on.
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