LOL. The only good thing that can be said is - at least there will be no more of them! Now, hopefully the rumor about the TV series being canceled is also true.
Although to be completely fair, he was, uniquely for SF writers, engaged in full-time first-person research for a book (The Martian Child).
You may be onto something here! So each time he uses the auryn for inspiration into the Fantastic, it takes away the memory that he was supposed to finish the freakin’ series!?
This could also explain why many readers now refer to him as a deceased and decaying luckdragon:
Rotten Falkor! 
In the intervening time between the first novel and the publication of the second (March 2010 is the official drop date, BTW), he’s gotten married and had a baby and done a lot of book touring. I can be a wee bit understanding because of all of that, but I really don’t care that much if he never publishes it. Why? It’s something pretty insignificant to get worked up over in the grand scheme of things. 
Haven’t managed to read any George R. R. Martin, so I haven’t had the frustration of him never finishing a novel series.
Martian Adult, now. A Season For Slaughter came out 17 years ago.
George R.R. Martin is a hack, a gifted hack.
He has created my favourite fantasy world: the Wall, the andals, King City, Bran the Builder and a thousand more places, ideas or characters makes him a true visionary.
Unfortunately his editor sucks.
So let’s forgive our lovely author and instead kill his editor´s first son and while we are at it, let’s kill them all: multi volume fantasy and sci fi is a disgrace.
I have lost all hope in the book series. Long live HBO.
One of the big problems too is that he supposedly doesn’t keep notes or details about his plans for the series anywhere but his head and his drafts. So if he does kick the bucket before he finishes (and he’s not exactly the fittest fellow in the world), you could probably get a Salmon of Doubt from where he’s currently at, but that’s it.
I don’t have much of a problem with that, to be honest. I’m not one who thinks that the original vision survives the author’s death. I don’t read the new Amber books, for instance, nor do I think that Spider Robinson’s messing around with Heinlein’s 60-year-old notes produces a work worth putting on my bookshelf.
What I do mind is that he has created a world in which many people have invested themselves, in time, in interest, and in money, and he has decided, “Well, y’know, fuck them. I’m a lot more interested in writing editor’s notes for the Wild Card Series, or possibly working on the casting couch for who plays Cersei on HBO.” Had he been serious about the series, he’d be on the last book by now. I’m fairly amazed that his publisher hasn’t put the screws to him; perhaps I just don’t know enough about publishing.
Estilicon, I hope you enjoy the HBO series. I hope you’re not expecting it to have an ending. Without an ending to the written series, I can’t picture HBO going on with the series.
Especially true in this case. Heinlein wrote the outline for Variable Star in 1955. He died in 1988. So if Heinlein had thought it was a book that needed to be written he had the opportunity.
People who are angry with Martin for not finishing his series should keep in mind that if he committed himself to finishing the series he started, he might have written the sequels to Windhaven and The Skin Trade and Fevre Dream and Songs the Dead Men Sing - and he never would have written A Game of Thrones.
Yes, quite right and perfectly comparable, as all of those were over 4000 published pages with vast popular and commercial acclaim when he quit on them.
If he is truly working in the casting couch for who plays Cersei, I forgive him.
HBO will do what his editor seems incapable of doing: coherence and ending.
Oh, I think the series (as published so far) is quite coherent. But if HBO wants an ending, I suspect they’ll have to write it themselves.
Just expect to spend half the books (apart from Two, Three, and Four) really having no idea what the hell is going on until some ways into the book. Even then, in book four, it’s like, “Okay, neat story, but this seems to have nothing to do with anything that’s happened before. None of the same continents are even being mentioned!”.
I just hope Erikson isn’t dropping a (seemingly minor) side plot involving the retired marines in Darujistan. Maybe it’s because it’s the most easily understood plot, but I’m really looking forward to seeing how that ends.
-Joe
I think you’re totally wrong there. It’ll make a mint (as much as HBO stuff can), and they have four good seasons to work it before they catch up - and that’s assuming a season per book.
Have any of HBO’s big arc series actually made it to a fourth season? I know Carnivale and Rome certainly didn’t.
-Joe
I suspect the HBO series, if its successful enough to get more then one season, will just tack use one of the victories for the “good-guys” during the war and alter the story enough to make it a good ending for the series in general.
Jon’s victory stopping the invasion from beyond the wall would be the obvious point
At least he’s not mailing it in like Ray Feist.
When he was working on those earlier projects, the Song of Fire and Ice series consisted of zero pages.
Which is my larger point. Martin doesn’t exist to write one series. He’s worked on a couple of dozen different projects in his career. To insist he abandon everything else and concentrate solely on the one project of his you happen to be a fan of is a little self-centered.
While we’re on “annoying fantasy authors and series that neither end nor die”, can I nominate Donaldson’s restarting of the Thomas Covenant series over a decade after the perfectly valid ending in “White Gold Wielder”?
I mean, seriously. Not only do you re-open a finished series, but you take three years for each novel and you make it a quadrology just to piss me off further while I wait for you to get your shit together, supposedly in 2013.
I think I need to resolve to only read novels from series that are completed. Wait, I did that, that’s why I read the Covenant stories in the first place.
I think that if the HBO series takes off, GRRM will start writing again. He’ll have to. Because I guarantee you that somewhere in the 300 page contract between HBO and Martin is a clause stating that if the series goes past the end of the written books, HBO can just start making shit up to complete the series however they see fit. And Martin is too much of a control freak over his creations to ever let that happen.
Was Windhaven a series? I just thought it was the one 300 page book. It wrapped up at the end and that was that.