Martinology: Graph Provides Perspective on The Winds of Winter Delay

How disappointed are we that The Winds of Winter won’t be in bookstores for the first quarter of 2016? For many fans, it was a bitter pill, though perhaps not the most unexpected one. But with Martin missing yet another deadline, those with analytic bents are sitting down and trying to do the math. If The Winds of Winter is not coming in the next 90 days, when can we reasonably expect it’s release?

With that thoughts in mind, we here at WiC came across a graph from June of 2014, on The Washington Post‘s Wonkblog. The Post’s calculations revealed a fascinating discovery. Those of us making fun of Martin for not being able to keep pace with his peers should hush our mouths. When you calculate his output, page-for-page, and match it against the few authors who can truly be considered his equal in fame, fortune and franchise, it was never reasonable to assume that would finish The Winds of Winter in 2016.

According to this graph, Martin is actually matching the pace of J.K. Rowling and the publication of her Harry Potter series. The difference is in size. Whereas the Harry Potter books top out at 600-ish pages (for the fat novels), Martin’s books are a higher order of magnitude. And when compared to some of his other fantasy peers, including J.R.R. Tolkien, he is simply working at a completely different level, and should not be compared. Only the actual Lord of the Rings series was done faster, but we should keep in mind that 17 years passed between when Tolkien conceived of the story in 1937 and when The Fellowship of the Ring was published in 1954. Tolkien wrote the entire trilogy during this time, but the publisher decided to release it in three volumes.

According to this graph, asking Martin to be done by now would have required him not only to quicken his pace, but to write at a level that no one in his current field is able to do. In fact, one might consider that those who were asking him to do so (and his own expectation that he could manage it) was unreasonable, when one measured his previous output and that of his peers. The most reasonable expectation is that The Winds of Winter should be coming out next year, if he continues at the same pace he has for his prior releases, timed with Game of Thrones Season 7.

As for A Dream of Spring, according to this graph we have at least seven years to wait for the final installment, barring a miracle. That’s the better part of a decade. That’s almost two presidential terms. In TV years, that means the HBO series will not only be over for five years by the time Martin concludes his saga, but well into whatever series they plan to replace it with. Rowling will have released an entire movie trilogy based on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by then. (Release dates: 2016, 2018 and 2020.) The DC Comic franchise, which is still desperately trying to play catch up to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, will have finally managed to release not just one movie in their “shared universe,” but ten, from Batman v Superman this year to Green Lantern in 2020. The only franchises that actually extend anywhere near this release date are those owned by Disney. The MCU has movie release dates scheduled out through 2022. Star Wars also has dates reserved through 2022, which is declared to be be the release date of “Star Wars: Anthology 4,” subject of said movie to be determined.

So for those plotting their nerd calendar through the next decade, please keep 2023 open. At this time it still is, since not even the movie franchises have plotted out that far. If number don’t lie (and they rarely do) Martin will be finally getting to scribble his own completion graffiti in just under eight years time.

Next: Game of Thrones up for a whole bunch of Visual Effects Society Awards