I think we have to face it. I’m the best candidate to finish A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE:
Over the last year and a half the excuses for A Song of Ice And Fire being incomplete and George R.R. Martin’s inability to finish The Winds of Winter have become more than absurd. The author has gone from blaming toxic fandom, to talking about Trump and fascism in 2024, to a 2025 where he made it clear he’s definitely not even working on the project.
This year alone he’s started a bar in Santa Fe New Mexico and taken on a new project for an animated Hercules movie, leaving fans who started in A Game Of Thrones with the obvious fact that he’s not going to be finishing the series before he dies. In fact, he’s already given interviews stating he’s probably not going to finish it in his lifetime.
It’s become beyond a joke to fans at this juncture, as most people just want him to be honest about the situation, which for whatever reason, Martin refuses to do.
At Worldcon, one fan was bold enough to ask George R.R. Martin the question, one that now has been condemned as “rude” or “inappropriate” despite it being anything but in the context of a panel on the future of epic fantasy.
A bold female fan asked in a hostile room, “George, you’re not gonna be around for much longer. And this is a tough question. This is more directed at Brandon. I was wondering, like, how would you feel about someone else taking over and finishing the books?”
The crowd immediately starts booing as if the question didn’t make any sense, though it is a poignant one especially since Brandon Sanderson was brought in to take over A Wheel Of Time from Robert Jordan upon his passing.
Sanderson can be heard saying “not me,” during the uproar, confirming he wouldn’t be the one to do the job.
George R.R. Martin is so panicked about the question that he immediately gets up to leave the panel.
That’s not quite as crazy as it sounds. I’m one of the very few authors who has successfully written epic fantasy, as I’ll be finishing A GRAVE OF GODS in the next two years. ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT is one of the few that generally receives better reviews than A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE and furthermore, they look pretty great in leather.
The only problem is that I am almost certainly the very last person on the planet whom George R.R. Martin would select to finish the series. Would I do it if I was asked? Certainly. I already have a pretty good idea how I would fix the structural problem that prevented Martin from finishing it and provide a much better end to the series than Martin and the HBO producers did.
But I have enough to do in making sure that I bring my own series to an end with a satisfying conclusion. Considering how few epic fantasy authors manage to do that, I think it’s a sufficiently difficult challenge that I need not lament the fact that Martin’s is unlikely to end well. Anyhow, my theory is that it’s actually been completed, but Martin prefers to have it published postmortem since he’s still feeling abused by the public reaction to the HBO series and he doesn’t want to risk going through all that again.
Speaking of books, I should mention that tomorrow is the last day to acquire the backer editions of THE ILIAD and THE ODYSSEY. I further note that later this week, we’ll announce the three Signed First Editions that will be produced in very limited runs and will be available for just one month starting later this week. The related and very good news is that we’ve worked out a deal with multiple parties to a) acquire the new machines and b) sell the old ones for the price we paid for them, so assuming that we sell a few of the special editions we’ll be announcing, everything should work out at least as well as we’d planned.