Remark on Geo RR Martin
A friend sent me this remark, and I pass it along without comment:
The issue Martin ran into with ASOIAF [A Song of Ice and Fire] is, ironically, one of this own hand… he spent five books subverting expectations, killing key characters, torturing and scattering the survivors to the ends of creation… and only now realized that there’s no way in hell he can actually bring them all back in one place and piece together a story that makes sense in just two books. The problem with endless deconstruction is that, eventually, you have nothing left to build with.
That legacy is why Martin will never write the book – the old hippie has made his life’s work a refutation of classic fantasy like Tolkien, and admitting that maybe he was wrong? That would sting worse than even declining sales. Better an unfinished book with a ton of questions than a badly ended one that disproves its own central thesis.