George R.R. Martin has a shifty plan to keep HBO’s Game Of Thrones from catching up to him
Vanity Fair has an interview with George R.R. Martin in its April issue, and it sounds like the author is keenly aware of the speed with which the Game Of Thrones TV show is consuming the material in Martin’s Song Of Ice And Fire books. It’s a wide-ranging chat that touches on the epiphanic origins of the fantasy epic and the difficulty of writing unpredictability into a story. Martin handles these topics and others with aplomb. But when the subject turns to the speed of the TV show’s production—compared to the relatively unhurried pace of Martin’s written output—the author rambles a bit.
See, the show has been turning out a new season every year, adapting either half a book or a whole book at a time. Meanwhile, Martin has two more entries planned in the series, and he’s taken about half a decade between each of the last couple books. The math doesn’t work out so well for the harried scribe. You can practically see Martin dab sweat from his forehead and take large, hurried gulps of ice water as he reveals his ramshackle plan to get everything done in time: