HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

Rumor mills earlier this year indicate HBO/showrunners are thinking seven, GRRM wasn't so sure. Other rumor mills suggest telescoping books 4 and 5 into next season. In short, nobody knows anything.

so how conceivable is that that TV would catch up to the books before 5 and 6 are released?

what if GRRM kicks it before the books are finished?

This has been the subject of much, how you say, earnest talk. What's known is that GRRM has outlined the end of the story to the showrunners, but in exactly what detail nobody knows.

dont worry, brandon sanderson waits in the wings.

I believe that GRRM has said that Benioff and Weiss know generally where the books are headed, esp. the endgame, but that barring untimely death, he's going to try to get the books out before the show catches up (yeah right).

http://www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/george-r-r-martin-interview

David and Dan told me they came to see you here to talk about things because the they are getting close to you, with the show.

They are. Yes. It’s alarming.

Did you tell them where you’re headed with the story?

They know certain things. I’ve told them certain things. So they have some knowledge, but the devil is in the details. I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren’t there yet. I’m hopeful that I can not let them catch up with me. The season that’s about to debut covers the second half of the third book. The third book [A Storm of Swords] was so long that it had to be split into two. But there are two more books beyond that, A Feast for Crows and A Dance With Dragons. A Dance With Dragons is itself a book that’s as big as A Storm of Swords. So there’s potentially three more seasons there, between Feast and Dance, if they split into two the way they did [with Storms]. Now, Feast and Dance take place simultaneously. So you can’t do Feast and then Dance the way I did. You can combine them and do it chronologically. And it’s my hope that they’ll do it that way and then, long before they catch up with me, I’ll have published The Winds of Winter, which’ll give me another couple years. It might be tight on the last book, A Dream of Spring, as they juggernaut forward.

he sounds like he knows he can't do it to me, at least not at the clip it's moving at now.

he's gonna die

Well, valar morghulis.

we'll have started book 4&5 (first half of book 5 is concurrent with book 4 chronologically) by the end of this season but we've probably got 2-3 more episodes of book 3 left still.

i haven't heard any news on the status of book 6 but he seems to be taking his time with it much like the last 2

I think the next book might be imminent, like maybe mid 2015 release. That would align with end of season 5, giving Martin about a year to write and edit the final book, wrapping up an ENORMOUS amount of story, and a year for the book to go through the process if being published, if he wants to beat the end of season 7. So there is a 0% chance of Martin beating the show.

the show-runners will just have to get creative.
http://www.suprmchaos.com/great-gazoo2b_sally.jpg

well yeah he's not gonna beat the show unless he's actually motivated to, which he's shown no real signs of publicly. he wrote the first 3 books in a span of 5 years, he's certainly capable of writing the rest at a faster pace than he's currently on.

Little round of applause for Burn Gorman as Karl who chewed up all his scenes magnificently and died a brilliant gruesome death. The character was a shit to rival Joffers but was so much fun to watch. Gorman could do Iago or Edmund next, he'd be perfect.

it's pretty clear that this show could just tread water indefinitely, ie as long as its making money

xp

could turn people off though. already the Dany plotline feels like it's in a holding pattern waiting for Westeros to be ready for her to invade.

motivation is a problem, but the main issue with 4&5 is that originally they were supposed to be one book. then it got huge, so it became two. 4 came out in 2005, and he promised 5 was going to be out the following year. however, he got stuck getting all the people in Dany's plotline to where they were supposed to be and basically ripped it up and started again. since people were (obviously) annoyed that 5 took 6 years to come out, he's sworn to not give information on completion until the thing is actually with the publishers.

the key thing is that he knows where everyone is supposed to end up. 4 & 5 are essentially tying up loose ends from the first three and setting things up for the ending. I would imagine that whatever he's working on now is going to be both of the last two. he also has that encyclopaedia thing coming out late this year, so I would assume a release date sooner rather than later as that's meant to be pretty spoilery.

xp tbh that's exactly how it feels in the books too. my first time reading the first 3 books i barely paid attention to her storyline since i was uninterested by how disconnected it was from everything else

my understanding is the MUTHA OF DWAGONS storyline was originally an unpublished short story that he integrated into the first book to add heft

like, to make the book actually weigh more?

cuz you know what this series really needs is filler

Oh man, the whole point of Cersei's scenes with Oberyn Martell and Margaery Tyrell (that she was trying to make nice with them in order to influence Tyrion's trial) initially went completely over my head. I had somehow forgotten that Mace Tyrell was the third judge. I should have known Cersei would never do anything to make her seem sympathetic without an ulterior motive!

Martin's situation sounds quite unpleasant (aside from being a good and successful author);he has been writing and editing quite a lot of other books and I'm sure a lot of people want him to drop everything else so he can finish the two last books as fast as possible; but you could easily lose enthusiasm if you're stuck to that story and spoil the ending if you rushed it. I wonder if he wants all his other Ice and Fire books out before he finishes the core series?

the ending to this seems really obvious (dragons vs zombies, basically) is it really that hard to wrap shit up

yeah I worry it's going to be like when stephen king wrapped up the dark tower series because he was afraid of dying, and it ended up being clumsily written bullshit.

I feel like I'm going to see this series' final editions written by a Reddit sub-board or something

Martin's situation sounds quite unpleasant (aside from being a good and successful author);he has been writing and editing quite a lot of other books and I'm sure a lot of people want him to drop everything else so he can finish the two last books as fast as possible; but you could easily lose enthusiasm if you're stuck to that story and spoil the ending if you rushed it. I wonder if he wants all his other Ice and Fire books out before he finishes the core series?

wait there's ~other~ books? "Core series?" what?

there's a whole series of novellas about two characters called The Dunk and Egg tales that takes place like 100 years or so before the ice and fire novels. and then there's a massive encyclopedia/history volume coming out soon. and i think there's some other novella-length history sorta thing out there?

I wonder how many other long running epics in are this situation?
For me the comic Berserk by Miura(beginning 1989) is a classic example. It has really bad padding and overlong subplots but the main plot thread is total gold and it might be another decade before it finishes.

Other Ice And Fire books are Princess And The Queen, Rogue Prince, Tales Of Dunk And Egg (3 books so far with quite a lot more planned, possibly as many as 12). All of these are novellas though.

despite his total insanity, the thought of bringing such a huge, complex project to completion makes me appreciate dave sim more

Did you ever finish Cerebus?

i'm still working on it

Tales of Dunk and Egg everybody

I've finished Cerebus. The last couple of volumes are absolutely mad.

Oh man, the whole point of Cersei's scenes with Oberyn Martell and Margaery Tyrell (that she was trying to make nice with them in order to influence Tyrion's trial) initially went completely over my head. I had somehow forgotten that Mace Tyrell was the third judge. I should have known Cersei would never do anything to make her seem sympathetic without an ulterior motive!

― Dan I., Tuesday, May 6, 2014 5:02 AM (16 hours ago) Bookmark

At first I thought she was trying to bait Margaery into admitting that the Tyrells were behind Joffrey's murder

Kind of hoping that the TV show just devolves into a collection of comedic duos on the road - Hound and Arya, Brienne and Pod

Also I know I bring this up every episode but I just can't anymore

http://i.imgur.com/TrYvXLa.gif

http://i.imgur.com/kPWK2IE.jpg

I thought this was a good episode, with a few juicy developments. The fact that Dany's past 'liberations' are coming undone is interesting, and begins to put something of a new spin on the image of her as the great white liberator of dark-skinned people.

Great Arya and Hound stuff this week as well.

I read that as a metaphor for US foreign policy and the aftermath of "liberations"/revolutions. It all seems so cut and dried when you get rid of the hated rulers but then there's the unexpected blowback and dangerous new forces rushing into the power vacuum. This thread is too big to load now so sorry if this has already been said.

Or it might just be that those silly brown people need a firm hand to rule them.

I dunno I have zero faith in this series' politics, gender, racial or otherwise

good to know

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYBAMxJecLI

I'm sort of hoping that the unravelling of Dany's liberation tour is a critique of that scene — "See! It was meant to be a parody of the White Messiah Complex all along!" — but that might be giving them too much credit.

I think he is trying to do something more interesting with this series. This quote from his Rolling Stone interview is pretty salient:

Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

Good quotation, though he still has blind spots with regards to race and colonialism, among other things.

But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy?

let's ask George Lucas

quote is ludicrous, he seems to intentionally elide things Tolkien's explicit about (there are no orc babies, orcs are MADE)

lol shakey

(there are no orc babies, orcs are MADE)

this isn't completely true. Tolkien was pretty hazy about their origins but their are a couple of mentions of Orc children and Bolg and Azog are father and son