George R. R. Martin. (Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic)
George R.R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire, is one of the cool celebrities who supports the WGA strike in Hollywood right now. When Martin tweeted his support for the striking writers, everyone made the same joke, causing The Winds of Winter to trend on Twitter.
Martin, of course, is famous for not (yet) finishing his epic fantasy saga, a master procrastinator who last released a book more than a decade ago, and has repeatedly promised that the next volume in his series, The Winds of Winter, is just around the corner.
In a blog post, Martin made it clear that the WGA had his full support, and even clarified that he would continue to write Winds of Winter, as novelists are not affected by the strike. Martin also offered an update on The Hedge Knight, which is apparently one of the many, many Game of Thrones spin-offs HBO is working on, hoping to capture the zeitgeist again.
While production on season 2 of House of the Dragon is continuing in the face of the writers strike, rewrites and tweaks to the script having already been completed, work on The Hedge Knight is stopping in solidarity with the writers, who are demanding fair wages, better working conditions and strong regulations for generative AI.
As soon as Martin voiced his support for the strike, everyone joked that Martin’s love of not writing was obvious before the members of the WGA voted to withhold their labor. Hence, Twitter passed the tweet around, cracking the same joke over and over.
Some even speculated that Martin had foreseen the punchline and deliberately leaned into it, knowing the news would trend and keep the writers strike in the headlines.
Of course, the old discourse about Martin’s perceived writer’s block or disinterest in his story reared its ugly head again, and some fans took the opportunity to bitterly complain about the author leaving his story unfinished.
This is recycled discourse, of course, that has been reheated to mush at this point; no one really had anything new to say about any of it. Some fans are really mad at Martin (at this point, maybe “fan” is the wrong word), and others expressed anger at the entitlement of the Ice and Fire fanbase.
Martin was working on The Winds of Winter when the HBO series Game of Thrones was at the height of its cultural impact, and originally aimed to finish the book before the show’s sixth season. Martin continues to work on the book, years after the final season aired.
Some have resigned themselves to the possibility that the book series might never be finished, and some don’t even expect Winds of Winter to ever see the light of day.
As the ending to HBO’s Game of Thrones was widely viewed as a creative disaster, many are keen to see how Martin will finish his story. Martin, of course, might end up writing the exact same story with a better delivery, or he might not finish at all.
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams famously quipped: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
Martin has surely felt enough deadlines whoosh past that to him, the Winds of Winter have already come and gone.
