On George R. R. Martin Addressing the Fans

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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.

PSG Wins the Champions League

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Congratulations to PSG on winning the Champions League. They fully deserved the title after defeating a strong Inter in the final, a red-hot Arsenal team in the semi-finals, and – perhaps most impressively – overcoming Liverpool, arguably the best team in Europe this season, in the round of 16.

PSG had a rough start to the season, playing poor football and only scraping through to the knockout stage with a bit of luck. But in the second half of the campaign, they looked unstoppable.

Luis Enrique managed to shape a formidable team, blending talented young French players with experienced professionals from around the world – especially from Portugal and Brazil. He has proven himself to be a world-class coach.

That said, it still feels like a bittersweet moment for European football.

More than a decade ago, the oil sheikhs bought the club with one goal in mind: to win this trophy, no matter the cost. It was always somewhat satisfying to see Qatar fall short despite spending what seemed like limitless amounts of money. As a football romantic, I took a certain joy in watching them fail to buy success.

But now it’s done. PSG and Qatar have shown that, with unlimited resources, you can eventually buy anything in football – even the Champions League.

Congratulations to PSG, but Rest In Peace football romanticism.

Write Better Books | A Lesson from The Menu

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One of the best movies of the past few years is The Menu. Its opening scene delivers a great lesson for storytellers:

It perfectly captures the essence of show, don’t tell.

You could explain everything about the exclusive restaurant the characters are visiting via having the characters talk about it. You could have a narrator describe the incredible menu awaiting the guests in the intro. But the film doesn’t do that—it shows it to us instead.

The scene begins with Hoult’s character being visibly upset when the female protagonist lights a cigarette. He tells her that smoking will dull her sense of taste—just before they experience a highly refined meal. That single moment tells us everything about both characters: he is the passionate food connoisseur, deeply invested in the experience; she’s the indifferent plus-one, just along for the ride.

Moments later, Hoult’s character spots a famous food critic and is instantly impressed. Most people wouldn’t recognize a food critic on sight—even if he’s the most renowned critic in the industry. This tells us that Hoult’s character is not just interested in fine food—he’s obsessive about it.

In just 90 seconds, the film establishes the setting and the dynamic between the two main characters. And it does so without a single line of direct narration—it shows us everything we need to know instead.

This is excellent writing to learn from.

The Real Lessons of Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (Video Essay #2 Transcript)

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Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein.
A fantastic novel in the genre of military sci-fi, written in 1959.
And also a movie by Paul Verhoeven from 1997. And if you only know the movie, well… we seriously need to talk.

First off: I like Heinlein.
He’s one of those foundational sci-fi authors—smart, provocative, and unafraid to take unpopular political stances. He’s one of my all-time favorites and many of his ideas have shaped my current beliefs.

And Starship Troopers is one of his most important stories. It follows a young man, Johnny Rico, who joins the Mobile Infantry to fight a war against alien bugs.

When you read the blurb, it’s a simple military space adventure. But that’s not all you get from the book. Inside is a thought-provoking idea about how a better society could be structured. On the surface it’s a war story, but beneath that, it’s a manifesto. It delivers a serious argument for a society built on civic duty, personal sacrifice, and the idea that citizenship—true citizenship—should not be handed out freely, but earned through military service.

In Heinlein’s world, the right to vote isn’t a birthright.
It should be a reward for those who serve and sacrifice—specifically, those willing to risk their lives to protect society.
Put simply: no sweat and blood, no ballot.

It’s controversial—especially for modern societies built on universal suffrage. But it’s coherent. And it forces you to ask: Should anyone have a say in how society is run if they’ve never lifted a finger to build or maintain it through self-sacrifice?

Like many, I saw the movie first. I was a kid back then.
I remember the bugs, the explosions, the spaceships, and—yes—Dina Meyer’s shower scene – how could anyone ever forget that…

But when I finally read the book, I was stunned.
Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers doesn’t just adapt the novel—it inverts it.
It turns Heinlein’s serious political philosophy into a cartoonish dystopia, leaving us with nothing but mockery.

Gone is the argument for civic responsibility. In its place, a satire of militarism was put. The movie is a shallow story about propaganda, fascist aesthetics, and the glorification of violence.

The movie says: “Look how ridiculous a militaristic society is.”
Heinlein’s book says: “This kind of society might be the only one that actually works.”

Nowhere does the movie engage with Heinlein’s argument.
It doesn’t debate it. It doesn’t refute it. It simply inverts it.
By inverting it, the film mocks it.

Funny enough, director Verhoeven publicly stated that he never finished reading the book. Quote: “I stopped after two chapters because it was so boring. It really is quite a bad book. I asked Ed Neumeier (the screenwriter) to tell me the rest because I just couldn’t read it. It’s a very right-wing book.”

And there we have it.

Hollywood was given an idea that it categorized as right-wing – and it rejected it without even reading the full story. Unbelievable.

It would have been fine for Verhoeven to read it, disagree, and formulate a counterargument. But he didn’t. Reading two chapters was enough for him to turn a blind eye and invert the story to fit his own beliefs – without them ever being challenged.

The film adaptation is therefore a textbook example of how Hollywood can take an intellectually serious concept and distort it into parody – out of ignorance and arrogance. The movie became a transformation—from a provocative political novel into a satirical action-packed spectacle – void of any argumentation.

It makes you wonder: How many other Hollywood movie adaptations have done this… without us even noticing?

Another adaption is in the works.
This time, Neil Blomkamp is attached—and he claims he wants to stay closer to Heinlein’s original vision. That’s promising.

But will it finally give us a film that stays true to Heinlein’s ideas?
I’m cautious.
Because no matter what Blomkamp states, at the end of the day—it’s still Hollywood.
And Hollywood doesn’t promote ideologies that don’t fit the mainstream narrative.

Even if Blomkamp delivers: Read the book. And see for yourself how Hollywood perverts ideas and arguments of great thinkers like Heinlein.