The Sword and Laser discussion

George RR Martin’s The Winds of Winter: no plans for publication in 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015...

This makes me glad I chose to not continue the series when the fifth book came out :/

Yeah, after waiting five years for a half-assed book like Feast, my interest in the series plummeted significantly, and after five more years for Dance, I'd lost it completely. I don't see the point in sinking any more time into a story that will never be completed.

I have to wonder, is there anyone who started the series in the '90s who still cares?

I started it in the '90s and still care. I wish it took him less time to release each book but have found plenty of other novels to keep me busy.

Unsurprising.

Sean wrote: " is there anyone who started the series in the '90s who still cares"

I do not. I also bailed years ago. The TV series is better, because they've taken out all the repetitive crap.

Read the first book in the series a couple months back, wasn't too impressed. A friend told me the books in the later series get even more bloated (is he too famous for an editor?) so I decided I'll just learn the story from the tv show.

Brendan wrote: "Read the first book in the series a couple months back, wasn't too impressed. A friend told me the books in the later series get even more bloated (is he too famous for an editor?) so I decided I'l..."
It's exactly the same with me. The book was fine but too long and I enjoy the tv show more so I'll watch it and read other things.

I'll wait till its finished to reread 1-4 and finish the series. I'm too old to be willing to reread big tomes at the drop of a hat anymore, which is what I'd have to do to keep up with this series at this pace.

I remember reading somewhere how publishers are now more averse to signing long fantasy series after the situation with George R. R. Martin.....Not sure if it's true (didn't care enough to fact check) but I am also becoming disenchanted with the books.

urg... that's all I got. just. plain. urg... or perhaps the ugh.

David wrote: "I'll wait till its finished to reread 1-4 and finish the series. I'm too old to be willing to reread big tomes at the drop of a hat anymore, which is what I'd have to do to keep up with this series..."

Yeah I'll probably read the complete series when they're all out (if that'll ever happen...)

It just occurred to me that he started the series more than 20 years ago.

Alice wrote: "Yeah I'll probably read the complete series when they're all out (if that'll ever happen...)"

What's funny, too, is that after A Dance with Dragons came out in 2011, I made a bet with my friend, who thought Martin would write faster once he got past the weirdness that was AFFC/ADWD. Our bet was that Martin would take another five years. And I will win! Sheesh. This isn't actually a bet I wanted to win, haha.

News like this makes me glad I didn't start this series. I don't have patience for long waits between books.

I seem to recall Chronicles of Thomas Covenant being completely written before release and coming out quickly one after the other. Anne McCaffrey came out with Pern books fairly fast. Even silly stuff like Anthony's Blue Adept series came out fast enough to keep my interest. Heck, Rowling kept Harry Potter moving along even as the books grew longer and longer. If you make your fans wait too long you lose your audience.

Is anyone still waiting for the end of the War Against the Chtorr by David Gerrold? It's been 22 years since book 4 came out from what I can tell. A friend was trying to get me to read the series and I was like, No way, man.

I jumped in around the time of the third book and I'll stick around to the end. There's more than enough to read in the meantime.

Still, taste being what it is, I have no problem seeing various reasons why someone wouldn't be into the series.

I'm actually not a big fan of the show. Well, beyond the good it seems to be doing for genre TV.

This is hardly surprising. Like many others, I've essentially given up on the series and will devote my time elsewhere. ASOIAF introduced me to the fantasy genre but I've grown past it and there's so much other stuff to read.

I guess I'll be the weird one. :)

I still very much enjoy the series and the world. I'll sit quietly and wait for the next one to come out...and when it does, I'll re-read at least books 4 & 5, perhaps all of the books. We'll see...

I'll be weird with you, Terpkristin! I'm currently reading ADWD now. Slow going as I'm reading it (instead of listening) and I don't have as much reading time as I used to.

I don't think he ended on a strong note with ADWD - not bad, just not book 3. It takes time to write great books, so I am glad in that respect (assuming he is writing!) My only real gripe s that these books have so much going on, I don't want to forget the details while I wait. Remembering the lesser characters and the events of minor significance, make the later books that much more enjoyable where a character is consistent with those events or another is referenced.

I guess I am just a nerd that way.

I'm beginning to think winter is just another Lannister conspiracy.

I really wanna continue to read the series, I like the world and characters. More dragons and white walkers!
Not sure if I'll read the books as they are released or wait until they are all out. Will see what I feel like when the time comes.

John (Taloni) wrote: "News like this makes me glad I didn't start this series. I don't have patience for long waits between books.

I seem to recall Chronicles of Thomas Covenant being completely written before release ..."

True about Covenant, but it wasn't intentional. After the first book was rejected by every single publishing house in America, Donaldson had to wait for new publishers to come into existence and new editors to take over at the existing houses, so that he could submit it again. While he was waiting, he wrote the two sequels.

I started reading when there were 3 books published, just before book 4 was released. After learning about the long wait, I figured I would just wait until he was done the series before continuing. Now the show has caught up to where I left off and I'm torn about changing my mind to read 4&5 now, especially since I've heard this season departs more from the source material.

Alex wrote: "The journey was the fun, not the destination."

Sounds like somebody read The Way of Kings and had a certain message hammered into their skull repeatedly!

I'm with you actually. Yes, the series went off the rails a bit during the last two books, but a bad book in this series is still more interesting to me than 90% of whatever else is out there.

As far as GRRM's announcement, I never expected to see the book in 2015 anyway (Trike's tweet just about sums it up). I do wish he'd put these out faster, but it's not like I don't have an insurmountable mountain of other books on my TBR shelf to occupy me in the meantime.

I'm sure he's got things covered if he dies and can't complete the series himself. Daniel Abraham will probably finish it for him ala Brandon Sanderson/Robert Jordan with The Wheel of Time series. I'm very curious to see how they're going to handle it when the tv show catches up to the books though (an event that seems to be approaching rapidly).

7John (Taloni) wrote: "I seem to recall Chronicles of Thomas Covenant being completely written before release and coming out quickly one after the other. Anne McCaffrey came out with Pern books fairly fast. Even silly stuff like Anthony's Blue Adept series came out fast enough to keep my interest. Heck, Rowling kept Harry Potter moving along even as the books grew longer and longer. If you make your fans wait too long you lose your audience. "

The best example would be Erikson's Malazan series. He managed to put out ten books -- many of them over 1200 pages long -- in the same space it took Martin to write three.

Sean wrote: "I have to wonder, is there anyone who started the series in the '90s who still cares?"

[Raises hand] I bought & read the first three books as they came out in hardcover. Haven't read 4 & 5 yet; my plan at some point this year is to go back and start over from the beginning and read all five.

John (Taloni) wrote: "News like this makes me glad I didn't start this series. I don't have patience for long waits between books.

I seem to recall Chronicles of Thomas Covenant being completely written before release ..."

Actually, this is true of the first Thomas Covenant series, but not the second. I believe the 6th book (3rd of the second series) took ages to come out because of personal issues in the author's life. It's what first got me to make the rule of not finishing a fantasy series until it was completed.

So the tv series will pass the books? interesting.

Andy wrote: "I'm sure he's got things covered if he dies and can't complete the series himself."

Actually, everything I've heard indicates that if he died before finishing the series, he's told his wife to destroy his notes and to not let anyone finish his series...

Chakara wrote: "So the tv series will pass the books? interesting."

Not unusual in other countries--it happens all the time in Japan. That's why there are two different Fullmetal Alchemist anime series--one that finished before the manga did, and the latest one working off the completed manga. Two different endings, too, from what I've heard.

David wrote: "Actually, everything I've heard indicates that if he died before finishing the series, he's told his wife to destroy his notes and to not let anyone finish his series..."

Really? That's surprising, because I know he explained to the producers of the TV show how to continue the story if he dies before the end of the series. I guess he feels differently about the books.

Andy wrote: "Really? That's surprising, because I know he explained to the producers of the TV show how to continue the story if he dies before the end of the series. I guess he feels differently about the books."

Right, I've heard the same about the TV show, I've just also heard that he doesn't want anyone else to finish the books. If we're lucky, we'll get a Franz Kafka situation (his friend did NOT burn his papers, so we got all his works). But Martin might be looking at what happened with Frank Herbert's Dune property and not want something like that (the Kevin J. Anderson/Brain Herbert mess).

If he does have explicit instructions for no one finishing his works then I have increased respect for him. Works carried on after an author's death is a pet peeve of mine.

Brendan wrote: "If he does have explicit instructions for no one finishing his works then I have increased respect for him. Works carried on after an author's death is a pet peeve of mine."

I've heard that in some cases the publishers own the rights to the books for 70 years after the author's death, and I assume most contracts stipulate that means they own everything, including the characters.

Trike wrote: "I've heard that in some cases the publishers own the rights to the books for 70 years after the author's death, and I assume most contracts stipulate that means they own everything, including the characters."

Whoa, whoa, WHOA. Where have you seen that? The author's ESTATE owns the copyright on such works (lifetime + 70 years in the US), and the estate is usually the heir (wife or son or something). So the Tolkien books are under the copyright for the Tolkien estate (ignoring the complex Tolkien movie options).

As far as I know, publishers do NOT get the copyright as soon as an author passes unless it was part of a contract (like work-for-hire) or they were somehow the heirs.

In the case of Robert Jordan, for example, his wife has said that she won't allow any further books in the WoTverse (the outrigger novels that fans know of) since there are basically no notes (the opposite situation of the Memory of Light book). Tor Books has NO say over this, and unless Harriet sells the rights, the publisher will never own the actual copyright.

As I say, it's SOME cases. I think Tom Clancy's publisher co-owns the rights to his characters, for instance. Recently another author whose name I forget mentioned that her publisher gets the rights to her work after she dies.

From a brief look through Tom Clancy's novels, it really looks like he (and his estate) still have all the rights (at least for the Jack Ryan novels). For example, it looks like a lot of the books are copyrighted by "Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd." That's just an incorporated company for Tom Clancy, that's not the publisher. Robert Jordan did the same thing, and so did Brandon Sanderson (Dragonsteel Entertainment). Admittedly I don't know the benefit of copyrighting a book in your own personal company rather than yourself, but it's still not something Clancy and the other guys gave up to the publishers.

I can see maybe some of Clancy's collaborative work not being fully under his copyright, like maybe the Splinter Cell stuff since there's a lot of video game stuff and who knows who came up with what. (Just checked, the first Splinter Cell book--not even written by Clancy--is copyrighted under Rubicon, Inc. However, it looks like Dee Clancy is running Rubicon, Inc., so there's probably family control, and besides, Clancy didn't even write that book).

I would guess that it's very rare for writers (unless in a work-for-hire/ghostwriter type situation) to give up copyright to the publisher.

To bring it back slightly on topic, if George R. R. Martin dies, his wife Parris McBridge will probably be in charge of his estate, and it'll be up to her and Martin's will about what will be done with the the intellectual property. Whether to pick someone to finish the series a la Jordan/Sanderson or to destroy his notes like he seems to want to. However, things get trickier since there are limits on what dead people can control with their will, and Parris may decide to keep it going for whatever reasons.

The Brian Herbert/Kevin J. Anderson example is definitely a cash grab, though the Jordan/Sanderson thing is much less so (Jordan really wanted the series to finish).

Trike, sorry if I sounded over the top, I had just never really heard about rights going to a publisher as a "normal" thing, and I really think it's rare!

I've heard that Clancy's ex-wife has a significant stake in the character of Jack Ryan, which is why for several years after their divorce he stopped writing Ryanverse novels altogether.

Of course, an author actually has to leave an estate in good order for anything to happen. There's the sad case of John M. Ford who never bothered writing a will, which means that his estate, instead of going to his girlfriend of many decades, ended up in the hands of his crazy Christian family who (A) took everything away from the girlfriend, and (B) absolutely refuse to allow his books to be republished. His Star Trek novels, being works for hire, are thankfully outside their control, and Tor has the rights to his last couple novels as long as they keep them in print (and ISTR an editor there vowing to keep them in print even if they lose money on it), but his earlier works are locked away until his copyrights expire at the end of the century.

Wow, Sean, I didn't know that about Ford. That's unfortunate. I really wish they had married--that's a LOT of legal protection right there. :(

Might be a good time to dig through more of the Martin oeuvre. Fevre Dream was a fave, the guy actually made me feel for a riverboat. I also loved loved loved Armageddon Rag.

I really liked his "Sandkings" story; it got republished in the VanderMeers' "The Weird" a couple years ago. Apparently the basis for a Twilight Zone episode, too.

David wrote: "That's why there are two different Fullmetal Alchemist anime series--one that finished before the manga did, and the latest one working off the completed manga. Two different endings, too, from what I've heard. "

VERY different. I like both series, but having just finished Brotherhood recently, I liked that MUCH better than the original.

I'm probably enjoying the last few seasons of Game of Thrones than I am the book. I think the big difference here is HBO supposedly knows how it ends. FMA didn't spoil the manga for it's readers. They just made up an ending.

The idea of the books being spoiled by the TV show for me makes me pretty frustrated with Mr. Martin. Even if I avoid watching the show until (if?) the books come out, avoiding spoilers will be nearly impossible.

Rob wrote: "The idea of the books being spoiled by the TV show for me makes me pretty frustrated with Mr. Martin. Even if I avoid watching the show until (if?) the books come out, avoiding spoilers will be nearly impossible."

I agree. I also think the quality of both the books and the tv series will drop, since suddenly it won't be a tv series based on books, but books based on a TV-series. I don't think Martin will be able to disregard the expectations created from the tv show when writing the books...

Or, perhaps, he's having extreme writer's block and is hoping that the tv show will help direct him how to continue the series ;)

David wrote: "Trike, sorry if I sounded over the top, I had just never really heard about rights going to a publisher as a "normal" thing, and I really think it's rare!"

I didn't say it was SOP, just that it happens. I also did not say this was the case for Martin. I was just putting out a tidbit of information I had heard in response to Brendan's pet peeve.

Olivia wrote: "I feel the complete opposite. I started the books in the 90s and still care whereas the show has made some hugely egregious mistakes in making two characters (Drogo / Jaime) into rapists where they weren't in the books and I find myself not able to stomach it anymore. "

I don't recall a rape scene by Jaime, but then I'm a season behind as I don't subscribe to HBO.

As for Drogo, I don't think there's any way to reconcile his behavior in either books or show with modern sensibilities. In the book she's just a child when she's forced to marry him. In the real world, Genghis Khan may have anywhere from 15 to 18 million descendants, but it's not because of his scintillating dinner party repartee. Drogo is very much cut from that cloth, and while he may be a decent chap in his own culture, he's not exactly an enlightened metrosexual.

That's the second time in two days that I've heard the claim about Drogo being substantially different in the book versus show, and I have to say I don't see it. I read their first sex scenes as essentially forced sex in the book (Book Daenerys is WAYYYYYYYY under the age of consent; at least in the show she's of consenting age but in both cases this is not a marriage she is in any way choosing) and saw it as essentially that in the show. I actually find it creepier in the books; isn't she about 13?

Robyn wrote: "That's the second time in two days that I've heard the claim about Drogo being substantially different in the book versus show, and I have to say I don't see it. I read their first sex scenes as es..."

I agree with you there. That scene is way creepy in the book.

The main reason for publishing a books copyright under your own company versus your legal name is encase someone tries to sue you. They can not come after your personal assets such as your house etc. I've also heard its better for tax purposes once you reach a certain level of success. I've heard Brandon say he got a million for one contract and that was a while back so taxes and the IRS can get messy.