So, the master decided to address his fanbase recently. Once again, he had to comment on Game of Thrones. His post quickly turned into a rant about fans ranting about him not finishing the series (source).
I get it. An author can write whatever he wants. And if Martin doesn’t feel like writing the next book in the series, nobody has the right to troll him into doing it.
At the same time, I also understand the fans. They’ve invested their time, emotions, and a significant amount of money into the series. Reading an unfinished series can feel like a wasted effort when there’s no conclusion in sight.
The show on HBO was great — fantastic, even genius — until they ran out of source material and had to “invent” the last two seasons. Was it the showrunners who rushed it all into that strange ending? Or was it actually Martin himself who gave them that ending?
Maybe Martin had already outlined the finale, which the show then used, and after seeing how fans reacted, he became unsure about publishing it in book form. Maybe he even lost interest, because at this point it feels like trying to reanimate a dead horse.
Whatever the reason behind the delay, I believe that an author carries a certain responsibility to bring a series to an end — especially when readers have invested so much and when the story depends on multiple character arcs and major cliffhangers.
You can end James Bond, Reacher, or even Batman mid-series, because most of their adventures are episodic by nature. But ending Game of Thrones halfway through is like ending The Lord of the Rings before Frodo reaches Mordor — or Harry Potter before the final confrontation with Voldemort.
Or to put it differently: It’s like Robert Kraft going to a massage parlor and only getting… a massage.
By not writing the next book, the master is leaving us all with collective blue balls. And that’s the reason he is receiving ridicule under every single one of his posts. The only way to end that would be to sit down and write the damn ending.