14 DAY TRIAL // We have here a classic bad news – good news scenario: hot on the heels of the premiere of the first trailer for season 5 of HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” comes the announcement from George R.R. Martin’s publisher that the 6th book in the “Song of Ice and Fire” series, “The Winds of Winter,” won’t be released in 2015, after all.
This would be the book that fans have been waiting for since 2011, and that is followed by a 7th, called “A Dream of Spring,” thus bringing to a closure the series of novels, on which the TV series is based on.
Delayed release means TV series will end first
“These are increasingly complex books, and require immense amounts of concentration to write,” Jane Johnson of HarperCollins tells The Guardian. “Fans really ought to appreciate that the length of these monsters is equivalent to two or three novels by other writers.”
The sixth book won’t be out in 2015, as initially announced, and there is absolutely nothing that could change that. Martin said it best all those times when he addressed the question of how he “needs” to write faster: the book will be done when it is done. The same goes for the entire series, which, he once threatened, could actually expand to include more than 7 books, if he so deems it worth it.
The problem right now isn’t that fans are losing patience (even though they are), but rather that the HBO series is catching up to the existing books. As things are right now, there is no other possibility than having the TV show end before the books, so all those secrets Martin has tried so hide to keep for years will be out in the open before he gets the chance to reveal them in his own amazing way.
The clock is ticking
Martin too put it best when he spoke of the pressure on him to finish writing the “Song of Ice and Fire” series, Mashable points out: the HBO show is a freight train plowing ahead with incredible speed and he’s in front of it, trying to lay down the tracks.
Because “Winds of Winter” won’t be out in 2015, he will be run over, no doubt.
“Game of Thrones” is on a very strict schedule that affords no delays for a variety of reasons, with the financial one and the fact that actors playing teenage characters are growing too old for their roles among them.
Right now, the series shoots on several locations at once and the production costs are comparable to the budgets on studio movies. “Game of Thrones” isn’t just the biggest project over at HBO: it’s the biggest project in television ever. Delays translate into considerable losses and into further widening the age gap between certain actors and their characters.
So HBO bosses decided that they couldn’t possibly extend “GoT” past season 7 even if they wanted to: season 5 premieres in April this year, season 6 will be out in spring 2016, and season 7 the next year. Season 5 is based partly on “A Feast of Crows” and partly on book 5, “A Dance with Dragons.”
This means that, when season 6 is shot in the fall of 2015, the plot will catch up to the books at last – and then leave a gap for the second half of the season, which should be based on book 6, the one that should have come out this year but won’t.
The inevitable will happen
Then again, it’s not like Martin didn’t imagine this would happen: he is a famously slow writer and has gotten even more so as the “Song of Ice and Fire” series advanced, its universe expanded and more characters and storylines were introduced.
At the same time, Martin is not the kind of writer to do whatever others want him to do with his own work, so chances of him actually listening to those telling him to hurry up are inexistent.
This is why he made sure to let the “GoT” series creators know the general direction of the stories he’s yet to write, preparing for the day when the show would catch up to his books. There is a good possibility that GoT will become an entirely different beast than “Song of Ice and Fire,” but Martin isn’t talking about it yet.
At this point, though, if that happens, the fans won’t mind: GoT is excellent television even for those who didn’t read the books, so it stands on its own. Readers of the books will wait for as many years as it takes Martin to finish the series and still enjoy it, even if some things will be spoiled by the TV show. In the end, everybody wins – except, of course, for those characters Martin cruelly and surprisingly kills off.
