Game Of Thrones Newbie

[Allegra]

I'm soon becoming a newbie - from this weekend to be precise. I'm also not an epic fantasy reader - the size of the books scares me. So I hope the TV series will at least make it up for me for never having read GRRM. And who knows, may be afterwards I'd pick up the books.

 

[Winters_Sorrow]

Just finished watching season one and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Loved the ending. Now I've just got to wait until season 2 comes out....hell, I might even make room for the books.

It's official. You can consider me a convert

I hesitate to say this as it feels like giving Gollum the address of a goldsmith, but series 2 of Game of Thrones is out to buy since March 2013 if you want to carry on your descent to fandom

The thing about the HBO series is that I honestly think that if it goes into season 4, 5, 6, etc it will pass the books by. George Martin is a agonizingly slow writer, I am not sure if he is a victim of constant rewrites or if he just has so much on the go that he does not have the time to spend writing as much as he would like but I honestly think that eventually the series will pass the books by and George will have to divulge to the series the directions he is taking the story before the books come out.

This would be a real shame because while I love the series, I like the books even more, and if I was to learn what happens in the story from the series first I am not sure if I would like the series as much as I do now...

I hate to say this but it's nearly 100% certain that the show will catch up to the books. Even assuming series 4 is the second part of A Storm of Swords (and it's likely to have some Feast of Crows stuff in there assuming series 3 ends where I think it will), the next two books (Feast of Crows and Dance of Dragons) will take at most 2 more series, which would put them at needing to prep series 7 at around mid-2016.

Now, most likely the Winds of Winter will be released by then (I hope!) so that buys GRRM another year but the final book is not expected till at the earliest 2018, which is the same year as the show is due out and the show will probably come before it.

That's assuming HBO carries this series on for 8 seasons of course. I'm slightly more pessimistic and can see the zeitgeist burning out by then by which time HBO might not like the numbers it's generating anymore. Something else to consider - the actors playing the Stark 'kids' will be in their late teens and early 20s by then!

 

[Rahl Windsong]

Hopefully George has it in his contract with HBO that if the series does catch up to the books that the series is then delayed until he gets his next book out...

If you surf around the web and check his interviews the man is extremely intelligent and he knows he is a slow writer so I am betting that clause is in his contract.

 

[Ursa major]

The show runners have already said that GRRM has told them the ending of the series. And GRRM has always said he knew the ending, but not necessarily the precise route to get there (using an analogy of travelling from one US city to a distant one: there are lots of ways to get there, but the eventual destination is known**).

Given that the show has diverged from the books, the show's route is going to be somewhat different (although, I hope, not too much) from the books' route.




** - I was trying to find, by Googling, the exact quote (and so the cities mentioned), but discovered something, called GRRM (Global reaction route mapping), which is

a fully-automated search for all important reaction pathways relevant to a given purpose....

I suspect that the paper's authors did not choose the name, GRRM, entirely at random.

.

 

[BetaWolf]

He's said that the two media are two different products. The TV series might veer in its own direction, but I think the end result with be the same.

 

[Allegra]

Saw the first two episodes last weekend and liked it. Since I haven't read the book I had to pay some attention to who's who and the relations between them. It is good to think there are many episodes and more seasons to follow!