George R.R. Martin: “The Winds of Winter is next”

A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin has a new book coming out this month: Fire and Blood, a history of the Targaryen dynasty. Although Martin doesn’t give many interviews these days, he made an exception to promote the book, speaking to The Guardian about Fire and Blood, The Winds of Winter, The Lord of the Rings and more. Now, The Guardian has released more tidbits from that interview, and they find Martin in fine, candid form.

Martin’s fans have been waiting since 2011 — as long as HBO’s Game of Thrones has been on the air — for The Winds of Winter, the sixth book in his saga. Fans have a million and one theories about why it’s taking so long, one of which is that Martin, by his own admission, is involved in a lot of side projects. Fire and Blood is one. The Wild Cards science fiction anthologies, which he edits, are another. He’s also executive producing an HBO adaptation of Nnedi Okorafor’s sci-fi novel Who Fears Death, working on “a couple of other shows for HBO that I can’t talk about yet,” and so on.

For better or worse, this is all to be expected. A Song of Ice and Fire has become very popular, which both puts pressure on Martin to complete it and puts his talents in huge demand. It’s a bit of a catch-22 situation.

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Nevertheless, Martin told The Guardian that, at the least, finishing Winds is the next mountain to climb:

"The Winds of Winter is next, then I’ll decide what comes after that – whether it’s to go on to A Dream of Spring, the last one, or whether I switch back into Fire and Blood II, do another Dunk and Egg story or two. But I’ll worry about that one thing at a time – that’s too far ahead."

I advise long-suffering Song of Ice and Fire fans not to contemplate how far ahead is “too far ahead”; we’ve been through enough.

Martin also had a few things to say about HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones prequel series. At one point, there were as many as five prequels in development, although HBO has since narrowed its focus to one set during the Age of Heroes, thousands of years before the events of Game of Thrones. The network is even making casting announcements for it.

Because HBO has been so silent about prequels other than the Age of Heroes one, I get the idea it would rather people focus on the one that’s actually going forward. But that hasn’t stopped Martin, who’s continually brought up the fact that the other shows remain “in active development.” Speaking to The Guardian, he doubled down:

"None of them are traditional spin-offs. You won’t be seeing the further adventures of Arya, Sansa or Jon Snow, you’ll be going back in time. The other four are all over the map and at least two of them are solidly based on material in Fire and Blood. Those haven’t been greenlit yet."

“[A]t least two of them are solidly based on material in Fire and Blood.” Well, that’s interesting. Fire and Blood covers events ranging from Aegon Targaryen’s conquest of Westeros all the way through the Dance of the Dragons, the Targaryen civil war that tore the realm apart. Either of those events would make for an interesting television series. There have also been rumors about a show set during the height of the Valyrian Empire, before the Targaryens hightailed it to Westeros, although that’s outside the time period covered by Fire and Blood.

Fire and Blood comes out on November 20. The Winds of Winter comes out in god-only-knows.

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