Dance with Dragons release date?

[The Imp]

The Imp, congratulations on the great reports on your health! At age 42, I guess I still view life as eternal. I am still immature enough to be this foolish. Yeah, I know I'm not immortal, but the end does not seem to be in sight. Mayhaps, I'm in denial. I view others fairly realistically, I think. My mother passed away ten years ago and I have concern for my father's health... but I still view myself as seventeen.

Mayhaps I need to change my perspective and get with the program and do stuff. Mayhaps I need to take the Tim McGraw songs My Next Thirty Years and Live Like You Were Dying to heart. Mayhaps I should create a bucket list.

So, would you describe ASOIAF as being on your bucket list? Before the Freedman/Nicholson movie, I'd never heard of a bucket list. My impression is that one does things that are doable, i.e. events that one has a high probability of controlling. Can we actually put ASOIAF on our bucket lists, if the completion of it is beyond our power?

ASOIAF is absolutely on that list when I make it. There have been 3 or 4 book series that I've had this kind of emotional attachment to, the other 3 being LOTR, Harry Potter (although not in the same way) and Steven king's Dark Tower series. Waiting for the books in ASOIAF to arrive is very much like waiting for the DT updates. I actually swore that after that series I'd never again start something unfinished. I lied

 

[the smiling weirwood]

Luckily I'm 19, so I can reasonably assume I'll live to see the end. Hopefully barring any sort of horrific accident!

I think I've enjoyed the series in progress...I would never read them so carefully or deeply without the ongoing interaction here with other fans. I think I have enjoyed them more than I would have been able to had it already been complete years ago.

 

[The Imp]

Luckily I'm 19, so I can reasonably assume I'll live to see the end. Hopefully barring any sort of horrific accident!

I think I've enjoyed the series in progress...I would never read them so carefully or deeply without the ongoing interaction here with other fans. I think I have enjoyed them more than I would have been able to had it already been complete years ago.

The more important questions is, will GRRM live long enough to finish the series. I'm not going to speculate about his health because I don't know ANYTHING about it, but I'll use someone as an example. This past July my oldest and dearest friend of 51 (yes fifty-one) years called to tell me he was about to have emergency triple bypass surgery. The ironic thing is he had taken a 20 mile ride on his bike just 3 days before and that was nothing during or after that ride to indicate he was in crisis. The problem was discovered during a routine physical the next day. My friend is weight-height appropriate, exercises, eats disgustingly well, and quit smoking a number of years ago. He is doing fine btw, having made a full recovery.

My point? GRRM needs to write s if he's not 30 years old anymore. None of us know what tomorrow might bring, but as we get older the chances of us not being here when the sun rises increases. I wish him a long life and good health, but he doesn't have unlimited time to finish this series, and IMO, there's no one else in the world that can do it for him, even from a good outline.

Again, I hope this topic isn't overly morbid for some of you, and it's not just about age. Steven king fans will remember what happened to him in the middle of his opus, The Dark Tower series. If I was religious GRMM would be one of the people I'd be praying for.

 

[Raven]

The more important questions is, will GRRM live long enough to finish the series. I'm not going to speculate about his health because I don't know ANYTHING about it

Well, I'm glad of that much. I've seen plenty of people who've never met the man and feel free to speculate about his health... crass, at best.

Anyway, to the best of my knowledge GRRM's health is pretty normal for a man of his age. Certainly, last time I saw him he could drink me under the table , but that was 2006.

My point? GRRM needs to write s if he's not 30 years old anymore.

I'm not sure what this means, really. GRRM is working on ADWD daily, so far as I know. Nobody, and I mean this most sincerely, wants these books finished more than he does. On the other hand, he is not making good progress. This is the kind of thing that can happen to any author, at any age - in fact, it happened to GRRM on occasion when he was 30. There's not much that can be done about it. What should he do differently because he is older?

The underlying assumption seems to be that there is something GRRM can do to finish the series that he is not already doing. I'm afraid there isn't.

Again, I hope this topic isn't overly morbid for some of you, and it's not just about age. Steven king fans will remember what happened to him in the middle of his opus, The Dark Tower series. If I was religious GRMM would be one of the people I'd be praying for.

Indeed. But the sad truth is, it's inevitable that one day we'll all die and we'll probably leave something unfinished in our lives when we do. It would be terrible if, in GRRM's case, it was the series that so many of his fans love and that has brought him so much success... but there's nothing to be done about it, I'm afraid. We'll just have to hope.

 

[The Imp]

Well, I'm glad of that much. I've seen plenty of people who've never met the man and feel free to speculate about his health... crass, at best.

Anyway, to the best of my knowledge GRRM's health is pretty normal for a man of his age. Certainly, last time I saw him he could drink me under the table , but that was 2006.



I'm not sure what this means, really. GRRM is working on ADWD daily, so far as I know. Nobody, and I mean this most sincerely, wants these books finished more than he does. On the other hand, he is not making good progress. This is the kind of thing that can happen to any author, at any age - in fact, it happened to GRRM on occasion when he was 30. There's not much that can be done about it. What should he do differently because he is older?

The underlying assumption seems to be that there is something GRRM can do to finish the series that he is not already doing. I'm afraid there isn't.



Indeed. But the sad truth is, it's inevitable that one day we'll all die and we'll probably leave something unfinished in our lives when we do. It would be terrible if, in GRRM's case, it was the series that so many of his fans love and that has brought him so much success... but there's nothing to be done about it, I'm afraid. We'll just have to hope.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. i suppose part of what bothers me is that there was a decsion made to rewrite/add to ADWD. COrrect me if I'm wrong-

The fourth book was to be published but wasn't becuase of it's size

GRRM decided to split the book in half, gathering the POVs we find in AFFC into one and having the remainder in the nexr (ADWD)

GRRM decided to mess with ADWD. ther's no other way to put it. I wish he had just left the other half alone and let it be published. i can't imagine that it wouldn't have been worthy of him.

ADWD was set to be published last year, indicating that it just needed some minor touching up, closure, whatever, and then it wasn't being published.

The capper for me is no updates. I'd feel better having him post once a month saying whatever he needed to say. If that means no progress, or little progress so be it. As things are now we have no idea of what is happening. I'd like to hear from the man himself that he's working on it regularly, even if he has to say he's no further along than 6 months ago. I think he owes it to his loyal fan base to at least do that much.

 

[Boaz]

I hate this laptop I'm using. I just lost an eight paragraph response and a half an hour of my time... of course, you guys are cheering about that, I suppose. (I'd insert a smilie, if I was not so mad.)

Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up...

I think there is mayhaps a social contract, if you will, that exists between the author of an unfinished series and his readers. Yet I do not believe that Martin is in any way obligated to update his readers on the story's progress nor to even finish the story. I know that sounds harsh. Lord knows I'd love an update, but I don't think it's any of my business.

 

[The Imp]

I hate this laptop I'm using. I just lost an eight paragraph response and a half an hour of my time... of course, you guys are cheering about that, I suppose. (I'd insert a smiley, if I was not so mad.)

Let me explain... No, there is too much. Let me sum up...

I think there is mayhaps a social contract, if you will, that exists between the author of an unfinished series and his readers. Yet I do not believe that Martin is in any way obligated to update his readers on the story's progress nor to even finish the story. I know that sounds harsh. Lord knows I'd love an update, but I don't think it's any of my business.

He doesn't HAVE to update his readers, but IMO he SHOULD. It's the right thing to do from a business perspective and the right thing to do as well from a human perspective. I guarantee he's lost readers because people have just gotten tired of waiting and given up. Dropping a monthly update on his website would take 5 minutes of his time and go a long way to at least make people a little happier. Again, he doesn't HAVE to do that but it would be smart to.

 

[Gambit]

Luckily I'm 19, so I can reasonably assume I'll live to see the end. Hopefully barring any sort of horrific accident!

I think I've enjoyed the series in progress...I would never read them so carefully or deeply without the ongoing interaction here with other fans. I think I have enjoyed them more than I would have been able to had it already been complete years ago.

Amen to that, I guess being younger somewhat changes a readers perspective (I'm 19 as well). And if all of GRRM's books had been out I would have read them all over the summer or during a winter break. As painful as the wait is it has made the books far more enjoyable when they do come out. Good point TSW

 

[Raven]

Thanks for the thoughtful response. i suppose part of what bothers me is that there was a decsion made to rewrite/add to ADWD. COrrect me if I'm wrong-

The fourth book was to be published but wasn't becuase of it's size

GRRM decided to split the book in half, gathering the POVs we find in AFFC into one and having the remainder in the nexr (ADWD)

GRRM decided to mess with ADWD. ther's no other way to put it. I wish he had just left the other half alone and let it be published. i can't imagine that it wouldn't have been worthy of him.

Unfortunately, there's only one person qualified to judge that - and I guess we all know what his initials are.

My impression is that the 'remainder' after AFFC was published was not, in fact, complete or even nearly so. The delay in completing the fourth book was partly down to GRRM's struggles in finishing these POVs.

After AFFC was published, he went back to these incomplete sections, expanded some, rewrote pretty much all of them, decided to expand the fifth book to finish some time after the end of AFFC, added another POV... and, well, yeah, messed with it. But he did so because he just wasn't happy with it as it was. He didn't feel it was worthy of him - or worthy of his fans.

The capper for me is no updates. I'd feel better having him post once a month saying whatever he needed to say. If that means no progress, or little progress so be it. As things are now we have no idea of what is happening. I'd like to hear from the man himself that he's working on it regularly, even if he has to say he's no further along than 6 months ago. I think he owes it to his loyal fan base to at least do that much.

This is another controversial area. Basically, the reason GRRM stopped doing updates on his blog is the incredible level of interest - which for some people, went over the line. Even if he himself didn't put a 'deadline' in such updates, other people went ahead and extrapolated one from the slightest hint. 'I've rewritten another Dany chapter' became 'oh, he must be nearly done' and that became 'the book will probably be out in October'. Expectations were being formed, and people were being disappointed.

Worse, every time he wrote 'I am struggling with this' or even 'I am not done yet' he got a bunch of comments from people calling him lazy, accusing him of making excuses or telling outright lies, demanding that he stop attending conventions or taking holidays, even descending into personal abuse about his weight.

And ultimately, the updates didn't tell us anything useful anyway. They didn't tell us anything about when the book would be finished, certainly. I understand wanting to feel reassured about the fact that GRRM is still working on the book - but many people, as I say, refused to accept such reassurances anyway. And ultimately you either believe that GRRM wants to finish the book, or you don't. If the former, you don't need him to constantly reassure you. If the latter: what exactly can you do about it? (Apart from sending him personal abuse, which ain't exactly classy or helpful, is it?)

ETA - as to whether he has lost readers, well, AFFC was (to the best of my knowledge) the top selling book in the series so far despite the lengthy delay... I don't doubt that some people have lost interest. The question is whether they'll rekindle that interest when the book comes out. The evidence suggests this happened with AFFC, but it might not with ADWD.

 

[Rahl Windsong]

Yeah, the only thing I hated about AFFC was the fact that all my favorite characters were missing in that book, I still hate the way they divided it up and I suspect I will feel the same way about A Dance with Dragons because once again half, or nearly half is missing.

Would have much rathered all the characters in AFFC and a "to be continued" at the end. Much much better then what we got in my oppinion. That more then anything else has got me off this series a bit, not enough that I won't read it when it does come out though.

 

[Ursa major]

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the middle books of a series (or the middle sections of a complex book) tend to be the most difficult to pull off: the various threads that have been spun off are at their most diverse and an author can have trouble keeping the readers' interest in so many parallel events, let alone getting the threads on track for the end.

With a series as complicated as ASoIaF, GRRM must be having a real struggle with this. If he succeeds, it will be a crowning achievement (so to speak), but there must be a risk of failure.

I suspect that the massive parallelism in the middle of this series is the reson why Martin divided the original book in the way he did; otherwise, in what would have to be an enormous tome, one's favourite POVs might vanish for hundreds of pages; not an ideal situation.


All in all, I'm prepared to let GRRM get on with it. ADWD will arrive, if at all, when it arrives.

 

[Bazza]

Another thing you have to realize is that each of his books is 2 to 3 times as long as standard mainstream novels. I've been looking for a new series and stumbled onto Jim Butcher's The Codex Alera . While very good, it was no GRRM, I quickly got to the last book and found I had to pay almost 30 bucks for it (hard cover). I flipped through the pages to see how many pages it had. Lo and behold 395 pages! Are you kidding me? If I were buying a GRRM book it'd have 1395! Well not quite that much, but at least 1000. None of this is fluff either, it's all well planned out with controversial tidbits here and there all of which highly relevant to the plot once it's all put together. This could easily be taught in an English literature class if it weren't "fantasy". You tend to forget that his books are really 2 to 3 books in one. Be thankful that it doesn't take him as long as these other authors "per book"!

That being said, I have been very thankful for the quality of literature that GRRM brings to the table. Like Boaz says, it has supplied us with endless conversation debating this theory or that theory. But...we've kind of hit a wall. Everything's been discussed, I haven't seen many new theories lately, and the only real active thread is the "Who said that" which in itself is starting to repeat . At the risk of sounding spoiled...we need a new book stat! Imagine what this forum will be like when ADWD finally comes out! New theories flying all over the place!

 

[Culhwch]

It was certainly pretty frantic when Feast arrived!

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Will there be a race to see who finishes it first?

I won't compete, I want to take my time with it.

 

[TK-421]

Fairweather always has a tendency to bring out some "fans".

 

[Werthead]

The fourth book was to be published but wasn't becuase of it's size

Sort of true. The fourth book wasn't finished when the split happened though, which is where part of the problem comes from.

GRRM decided to split the book in half, gathering the POVs we find in AFFC into one and having the remainder in the next (ADWD)

Again, that was the original plan. He had 1600 manuscript pages for AFFC when he split the book. 1100 went into the published book (1100 MS pages = 800 normal hardcover pages at the size and font the publishers were using) and 500 were kept back for ADWD.

GRRM decided to mess with ADWD. ther's no other way to put it. I wish he had just left the other half alone and let it be published. i can't imagine that it wouldn't have been worthy of him.

You are definitely wrong here. First off, ADWD wasn't complete at that point. To make the book the same size as AFFC, he needed to write another 600 MS pages, otherwise Book 5 of ASoIaF would have been only about 350-400 pages long and not much would have happened in it. It would have been covering the other half of the 'gap' in the narrative that AFFC was introduced to fill in but with characters who weren't really doing much during that time. Simply releasing what he had was not an option. As he wrote those new pages (and ADWD is apparently somewhat longer than the 1100 MS pages originally planned, maybe 1300 pages - about the same size as ACoK - or maybe even longer) he needed to go back and change the 500 MS pages he already had ready to bring them in line with the new material he was writing. In the end, it appears that the majority of these pages have now been substantially rewritten, meaning the value of having them in hand when the AFFC was published disappeared. In essence he has had to write a whole new book from scratch, and taking 3.5 years to do that is in line with the writing time of the rest of the series, ASoS excepted.

In addition, we have now had the benefit of seeing (or hearing) some of those chapters at the time and the new, rewritten versions more recently. The rewritten versions are considerably better.

ADWD was set to be published last year, indicating that it just needed some minor touching up, closure, whatever, and then it wasn't being published.

Like I said before, this wasn't the case. The book needed substantially more work than that, and GRRM said so at the time (he still needed to write more than half a book, and it had just taken hime 3.5 years to write the last one). As for the getting it out in a year thing, as he has said himself many times, he is prone to over-optimism. This is an additional reason why the updates on the progress of the book have dried up.

Shawn Speakman on Suvudu has a great article on the situation here, and, apologies if this is bad form, but I have addressed the same point here and examine here in depth exactly what the writing difficulties have been in completing ADWD, a book that has existed in, at last count, at least three different variations over the years.

 

[Clansman]

Thanks for the very concise history, Werthead. As much as we love this series, we would all be disappointed (we might even feel betrayed!) if GRRM rushed the process and came out with something beneath the quality of the other books.

I have been as impatient as anyone, but, in an effort to apologize for my impatience, let me say that there are lots of good books to read from other authors in the meantime. I'll never have the time I need to read everything I want. I know I will set aside just about anything when ADWD is released, with only one notable exception (Initiate's Trial, by Janny Wurts).

So let us not bother tickling this thread until there is a real update from GRRM himself. If his muse is being difficult, give the man a break and let him find it. I am not interested in getting a half-baked piece of junk in the place of the great piece of literature I have come to expect from GRRM.