Refreshing a genre

lovecraft68 said:

I think when they say that its based on the fact he's up there in years and ll joking aside he's heavy and a heart attack waiting to happen at his age. Also a very slow writer. This series started back in the 80's if I'm not mistaken. Granted the books are very lengthy, but its obvious he hasn't been focused on them since the show started.

HBO has to finish this because if they wait for him there would be too long of a period between seasons and people would lose interest. I doubt anyone has actually said directly to him, can you do this before you croak? But there are people who have voiced the concern, but more as a dig of how long he's taking.

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I haven't read Martin's books and I rarely watch TV, so I only know about him through his public persona. He did a book promotion a couple years ago with Stephen King at a local theater where they interviewed each other. My wife went and won something, but I can't remember what.

I have a vague second-hand recollection that King actually did ask him about finishing GoT before he croaked.

EDIT: My wife finally got out of bed, so I asked her. King didn't ask the question. Martin brought it up himself when he was was contrasting his writing style with King's. He doesn't know if he'll live long enough to finish GoT, but it doesn't make a difference to the TV series. The series has already gone beyond what Martin wrote.

As a person what is "going to die soon" - that's not an excuse to do crappier than usual, is a reason to do best can do. "Oh, she was such - a mediocre person - only did as little as she could get away with. Ya know - she was dying, so of course she slacked off ..." is NOT how I want to be remembered!
GRRM is just sucking in moneys and making excuses not to do what he said just sos he can suck in more moneys.
Yeah, being big and older can impact health lots. Being little and high BP impacts health lots. Being poor impacts health lots. Being fucking rich counters a LOT of those impacts.
I'd cry crocodile tears for him but my crocodile went off someplace while I was babbling.
*whistles softly* nope, crocodile is busy ........

NotWise said:

I haven't read Martin's books and I rarely watch TV, so I only know about him through his public persona. He did a book promotion a couple years ago with Stephen King at a local theater where they interviewed each other. My wife went and won something, but I can't remember what.

I have a vague second-hand recollection that King actually did ask him about finishing GoT before he croaked.

EDIT: My wife finally got out of bed, so I asked her. King didn't ask the question. Martin brought it up himself when he was was contrasting his writing style with King's. He doesn't know if he'll live long enough to finish GoT, but it doesn't make a difference to the TV series. The series has already gone beyond what Martin wrote.

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As for contrasting Martin who is a turtle when it comes to writing to King....well there is something to be said for taking your time and not spewing out book after book. King is a legend most likely the best selling author of our time and the first 10-15 years of his career are full of fantastic books

But not so much after that and he's King, if he wiped his ass, they'd publish the toilet paper. His son (Joe Hill) is far better than him now and could give a good argument some of his work is better than King's prime.

I wonder if HBO thought he could write past them or if maybe they never saw the show being this big?

Something I wonder is if they are asking him, 'so how do you think you're going to end it to have his feedback' or not bothering.

Other thing is if they end it in whatever manner they do, does that now fuck with however he saw it ending?

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lovecraft68 said:

I wonder if HBO thought he could write past them or if maybe they never saw the show being this big?

Something I wonder is if they are asking him, 'so how do you think you're going to end it to have his feedback' or not bothering.

Other thing is if they end it in whatever manner they do, does that now fuck with however he saw it ending?

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No matter what they thought would happen at first, they've had enough time since then to change plans and contracts.

It would surprise me if there was anything that contractually obligated the writers/creators of the series to work with or around Martin's concept going forward, but Martin is credited as co-executive producer as well as writer, so maybe?

NotWise said:

Martin lives near here. He owns an art cinema, is active in the community, philanthropic, and sympathetic toward other arts. He's pretty often on public discussion panels and involved in local social/political issues. He does have a face for radio, though.

If you do need to judge him then there's more to go on than his writing.

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I'm aware of that work, and it's commendable, but I'm not sure it sheds much light on what LC was suggesting. By now I think we've all seen enough to teach us that public philanthropy is a poor guide to personal character.

(Aside: I used to work for a major philanthropist; not one you'd have heard of, but big enough to have a registered charity named after him. From what I saw, he did a lot of good for some types of disadvantaged people; he was also a bully and a crook who should've been drummed out of his job for fraud, and who eventually forced me out of mine when I balked at orders to commit a major professional ethics violation. I don't know whether he really cared about the charity work for his own sake, or if he was just a narcissist who saw it as the best way to get in the news. It may be that he genuinely did care, but if so, it didn't stop him from being an asshole in so many other ways.)

Where I break from LC - I also don't think his books or his looks shed much light on that issue. Sexual violence in fiction is such a pervasive trope that even lovely guys who genuinely respect women are capable of writing creepy rape-y stories without realising it. And, yes, some physically unattractive men invoke that as a reason for misogyny, but there are also plenty of good-looking abusers out there.

So my position on Martin is simply that I don't care for the way he treats women in fiction, and past that I don't feel qualified to make positive or negative judgements about him as a person.

lovecraft68 said:

HBO has to finish this because if they wait for him there would be too long of a period between seasons and people would lose interest. I doubt anyone has actually said directly to him, can you do this before you croak?

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Knowing what the lunatic fringe of SF/F fandom is like (cf. that Seanan McGuire post), I would bet good money that at least a few people have said that directly. Fandom gets pretty toxic :-/ I do also think that fans tend to over-analyse stuff (you should hear some of the GoT fan podcasts my partner follows) and sometimes they are too eager to draw conclusions about why the next book is so late. The TV series is the obvious, visible explanation, but there could be any number of other things going on.

I have some sympathy for Martin here because I've been stalled on a series for months, because of assorted crap that is not visible to my readers, and I'd hate to be judged for the delay by people who have no idea what's going on. Thankfully, my readers seem to be patient people, or maybe I just don't have enough of a following to get the obnoxious minority.

TarnishedPenny said:

There had certainly been fantasy before Tolkien and - perhaps - one could say that direct interest in Tolkien has dropped of late. Yet the Don's hand can be seen almost everywhere. Consider online RPGs - any of them in the fantasy genre almost require reading LOTR for background. One could make a claim that the entire Harry Potter world owes something to Tolkien. Game of Thrones has already been mentioned. There are any number of others. One could go so far as to link the hugely-popular Discworld to Tolkien's lead.

No, I think his influence remains very strong today.

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Everything you've mentioned is part of the 'run its course' pattern, to me. WoW is Tolkien's world in terrible graphics, and you're right, the influence is everywhere; you could say, Harry Potter owes more to the Discworld, than directly to Tolkien, and I'd say Prachett created his own genre. 'Fantasy that isn't immensely boring, and that has a sense of humour'.

But now, there's an entire world of writers out there who haven't read, or seen, Tolkien's work, only other work in the fantasy genre. Are they derivative of Tolkien now? Does he have complete ownership of weaving mythology into fantasy? I'd argue, no, and the way he did it was, as mentioned, immensely boring. I enjoy fantasy derived from cultural mythology, but it existed long before Tolkien. Attributing everything to him, simply because he made it big, is... arrogant on his behalf, imo.

lovecraft68 said:

LOL. Yes, we'll let it go. I'll offer Jason my leg and make it all better.

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Is that all I am to you? A cheap whore? Brilliant.

.................

JasonClearwater said:

Is that all I am to you? A cheap whore? Brilliant.

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I just use you when my leg gets itchy.

lovecraft68 said:

I just use you when my leg gets itchy.

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Well, you'd best learn to cuddle afterwards. *sniff* One has one's dignity.

Oh piss off. One does, so.

JasonClearwater said:

Well, you'd best learn to cuddle afterwards. *sniff* One has one's dignity.

Oh piss off. One does, so.

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Next you'll say you have virtue...snort.

KindofHere said:

I thinks it's fair that when someone has paid for something, invested their time in something, and given another person a living, that expecting completion of a series is reasonable. If you've bought his first five books, that's an advance on seeing his work to the end and you've also agreed to the 'buyer beware' clause when reading book 1 for the first time. You've given the person a signing bonus till they reach the end.

Now, how a person expresses their expectations is a completely different matter entirely. That's where you can get into the nitty-gritty of who is going too far with their expectations and if the author/whoever is abusing the trust they've built with the people who have elevated their station in life.

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I'm not sure that's a fair statement. We all publish books with the best of intentions. I have a seven-book series in the work, of which the first five are plotted, and the first 3.25 are written. That's my intention. But I have no idea what life will throw my way that'll prevent me finishing that series.

Right now, it doesn't matter, as no one's aware they exist. But if I suddenly blew up, and people wanted to make those books into a TV series, it doesn't alter my ability to finish that series. And while we all hope for money and adulation, it's not something most of us expect. As to 'gifting' him, as a writer, a living... really? This is art, not writing software, or building a house.

Regardless of what I might think of his work, I don't think you can hold that against him. Those novels are dense, they're full of multiple converging plot lines, they've been sent off course by his rabid fan base raging at him to finish them the way they want them, and the guy's old. He's involved with making the series, which must be exhausting, given internal, external and artistic pressures. He's probably very, very tired.

Apart from the money, which he can't take with him when he goes, maybe he doesn't want to spend his last few years pushing himself to the brink (as he would have to, in order to write novels like his). I think he owes more to himself and his family, than to his fans. It's his life.

(I also won't be sad if he never finishes them. He killed off Oberyn, he can go fuck himself).

lovecraft68 said:

Next you'll say you have virtue...snort.

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What is... virtue?

JasonClearwater said:

What is... virtue?

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No idea, but I heard its nice.

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JasonClearwater said:

Is that all I am to you? A cheap whore? Brilliant.

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Classy and expensive mate. A Big Mac ain't cheap .

JasonClearwater said:

But now, there's an entire world of writers out there who haven't read, or seen, Tolkien's work, only other work in the fantasy genre. Are they derivative of Tolkien now? Does he have complete ownership of weaving mythology into fantasy? I'd argue, no, and the way he did it was, as mentioned, immensely boring. I enjoy fantasy derived from cultural mythology, but it existed long before Tolkien. Attributing everything to him, simply because he made it big, is... arrogant on his behalf, imo.

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To be fair, I never said 'everything'. A great revival, perhaps even a rebirth of the fantasy genre, on the other hand...

And there are biologists today who have never actually read Darwin or Pasteur's works, yet their influence remains.

As to boring, that's a question of taste, isn't it? I find some of Dickens' works, shall we say, ponderous. Yet far be it from me to deny his influence.

KindofHere said:

I thinks it's fair that when someone has paid for something, invested their time in something, and given another person a living, that expecting completion of a series is reasonable. If you've bought his first five books, that's an advance on seeing his work to the end and you've also agreed to the 'buyer beware' clause when reading book 1 for the first time. You've given the person a signing bonus till they reach the end.

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"Expect" is an ambiguous word. It can mean either "believe that X is likely to happen" or "feel entitled to X". I'd agree with you under the first meaning here, but I'm not sure about the second.

When I buy the first few books in a series, I'm not making any commitment to keep buying the sequels. I can think of several times where I bailed out of a series because I lost interest, or I needed the money for something else. (And several more, not gonna name names, where I should have bailed much earlier than I did...)

If I haven't made any binding commitment to buy the author's next book, I'm not sure they have an obligation to me to write that book. When I see the words "Part 1 of a trilogy!" I take it as a statement of aspiration, not a promise.

Writing is an incredibly poor career plan. Even the few successes like Martin and Rowling usually had to spend years working some other job to pay the bills and squeezing in the writing around that. I tend to assume that anybody who made it far enough to get Book 1 published is really, really passionate about it. If they don't complete something it's probably because they couldn't complete it, and probably they're much more disappointed about it than I am.

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KindofHere said:

I have my way of looking at it, that's why I only buy novels when the series are completed... I feel there is an obligation for an author to finish their series in a timely fashion unless it becomes unprofitable for them.

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Well, it's not going to be very profitable for them if everybody's waiting until the series is completed before they start buying!

Seriously, this is a major reason for unfinished series. No publisher in the world is going to keep on printing a series if the first books don't sell.

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Bramblethorn said:

Well, it's not going to be very profitable for them if everybody's waiting until the series is completed before they start buying!

Seriously, this is a major reason for unfinished series. No publisher in the world is going to keep on printing a series if the first books don't sell.

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And from everything I've read regarding self publishing, if you don't write a series, good luck selling anything at all.

JasonClearwater said:

I'm not sure that's a fair statement. We all publish books with the best of intentions. I have a seven-book series in the work, of which the first five are plotted, and the first 3.25 are written. That's my intention. But I have no idea what life will throw my way that'll prevent me finishing that series.

Right now, it doesn't matter, as no one's aware they exist. But if I suddenly blew up, and people wanted to make those books into a TV series, it doesn't alter my ability to finish that series. And while we all hope for money and adulation, it's not something most of us expect. As to 'gifting' him, as a writer, a living... really? This is art, not writing software, or building a house.

Regardless of what I might think of his work, I don't think you can hold that against him. Those novels are dense, they're full of multiple converging plot lines, they've been sent off course by his rabid fan base raging at him to finish them the way they want them, and the guy's old. He's involved with making the series, which must be exhausting, given internal, external and artistic pressures. He's probably very, very tired.

Apart from the money, which he can't take with him when he goes, maybe he doesn't want to spend his last few years pushing himself to the brink (as he would have to, in order to write novels like his). I think he owes more to himself and his family, than to his fans. It's his life.

(I also won't be sad if he never finishes them. He killed off Oberyn, he can go fuck himself).

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From what I gather from chatter its coming down to Dani and Cerci(not spelling that right, I'm sure) for the thrown and i"m sure Dani takes it.

After Cerci is raped and sexually humiliated at least once more of not twice.

Or, hey at this point maybe they strip naked and roll around in mud and pinch each other's tits and finger each other to death to entertain the incel virgins who have cheered for every rape scene in the series.

The LW version of fantasy readers are Martin's fan base.

lovecraft68 said:

The LW version of fantasy readers are Martin's fan base.

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Come on. You're making the same kind of silly generalization you (correctly) castigate incest story critics for making.

Martin's fan base is huge. Most are just people who like a rollicking, intrigue-packed epic fantasy with lots of adventure and memorable, well-developed characters. And dragons. Everybody likes dragons.

I've watched the series through to the most recent episode and a couple of the books, but not all of them. So far I like the TV show more.