The first novel in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones, was released in 1996. Less than three years later, fans were treated to A Clash of Kings, and a year-plus after that, A Storm of Swords. Martin was never exactly Stephen F*cking King in the first place, but his pace has dramatically slowed down ever since: A Feast for Crows, the slimmest book in the series, debuted in 2005, five years after Storm, but that’s nothing compared to the six years it took for readers to devour 1,056 pages of A Dance with Dragons. Since July 2011, there’s been silence from Camp Martin, outside of his appearing at every science-fiction convention, and writing multiple episodes of HBO’s Game of Thrones, and responding to controversies, and hating the New England Patriots, and updating his blog to let people know he’s, yup, still alive. So, he’s actually been super busy and living the good life, but still no The Winds of Winter. That’s a tough pill to swallow when paired with Game of Thrones not returning for seven season for awhile.
No wonder people are making up rumors about when book six is coming out.
According to The Independent, “Speculation is rife that the sixth installment in Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series could be released at the World Science Convention in August, where Martin will be taking part in panels, doing a reading, and signing books.” That’s a neat idea and all except, as Winter Is Coming points out, “The chances of that are next to nil, of course, as that would not only cause minor riots, but prevent pre-orders from such outlets like Amazon and Barnes and Noble, who depend on such things for their quarterly profits.” A Dance with Dragons sold a staggering 298,000 copies on its first day alone, and that’s before Game of Thrones was arguably the biggest show on television — Amazon’s going to want a piece of that. Also:
Some fans on Reddit have suggested that the wait for The Winds of Winter might have been longer than anticipated because Martin plans to surprise us all by dropping A Dream of Spring simultaneously. (Via)
Well, that would be one way to catch up to the HBO series, but it’s not going to happen. Martin, who’s pretty upfront when it comes to these things, has given no indication that he’s even thinking about A Dream of Spring yet, let alone readying it for release. Let the man finish The Winds of Winter first, then his 1,000 monkeys working on 1,000 typewriters can wrap up the series for him. “It was the best of Tyrion, it was the blurst of Tyrion?!?”
(Via Winter Is Coming)
