Surprise! Winds of Winter is Delayed Again

Hey guys, guess what? Winds of Winter is delayed.  What’s that sound? It’s the sound of nobody being at all surprised.

Remember a couple of weeks ago when Jamie reported that Amazon France accidentally made a release date public and then took it back?  Had this been any other series, that might have been a big leak, but the release dates for ASOIAF are constantly in flux.  It’s become somewhat of a running gag in the fandom that we just won’t know when the next book will be released until it’s actually on the shelves.  So basically the fact that Winds of Winter is delayed is hardly news.  At yet we all keep reporting on every little thing because we’re so desperate for the next installment.

I’m not going to claim to speak on behalf of all fans, but myself and many others respect that George RR Martin’s process takes time. Sure, it’s frustrating.  All these chapters are tantalizing teasers for the full book that’s heading our way and the fact that the show has had to go rogue because it ran out of material is the cause of a lot of fandom feuds.  But our appreciation of his work does eclipse our annoyance with the delay (sometimes barely, but we still respect it).

Author Neil Gaiman famously wrote a rather curt, but still spot on response to fans who get frustrated with George RR Martin’s slow writing pace:

People are not machines. Writers and artists aren’t machines.

You’re complaining about George doing other things than writing the books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series was a contract with him: that you would pay over your ten dollars, and George for his part would spend every waking hour until the series was done, writing the rest of the books for you.

No such contract existed.

While his tone isn’t exactly the best (and his blog post could definitely do without the slurs), he has a point.  We just need to wait.  George RR Martin is the Great Bearded Glacier.  His process takes time.  And I would predict we’ll have many more false reports of release dates like this one before Winds of Winter actually hits the shelves.

So Winds of Winter is delayed.  What else is new?

Author: Angel Wilson

Angel is the admin of The Geekiary and a geek culture commentator. They earned a BA in Film & Digital Media from UC Santa Cruz. They have contributed to various podcasts and webcasts including An Englishman in San Diego, Free to Be Radio, and Genre TV for All. They identify as queer.

Help support independent journalism. Subscribe to our Patreon.

Copyright © The Geekiary