Game of Thrones ending on TV first: Dear George RR Martin, the reader is not your b*tch

Neil Gaiman defended George RR Martin vociferously when a reader on his blog asked him whether the Game of Thrones (or, as the purists call it — A Song of Ice and Fire) writer was letting readers down by not releasing the next book in the series. In fact, Gaiman launched a 1,041 word-long defence — whose essence comes down to one sentence: “George RR Martin is not your b*tch.” Okay Mr Gaiman, understood. Fair enough — he has the right to do other things (like take a year off to just watch movies) rather than satiate the appetite of his readers. [caption id=“attachment_2170677” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  AFP[/caption] The other worry that seems to stem from Martin’s ultra-patient approach to his books is that he will die before he finishes them. Wow, that’s offensive isn’t it? Therefore, it is also totally understandable when Martin reacted to the death speculation by showing the middle finger to those people and saying: “I find that question pretty offensive, frankly, when people start speculating about my death and my health, so f*ck you to those people.” But — what is certainly NOT understandable is the fact that the HBO series will end before the books are launched — hence making the series bigger than the books — which is quite ridiculous. A report in The Guardian confirms Martin’s publisher as saying that Winds of Winter — the next book in the series — will not be launched in 2015. For those who don’t know, Winds of Winter will be followed by A Dream of Spring (which is literally a dream considering Martin’s writing speed). To top that, creators of the show Dan Weiss and David Banioff said that the fantasy drama — which is going in a different direction plotwise to the books — will, wait for it, finish first. “Luckily, we’ve been talking about this with George for a long time, ever since we saw this could happen, and we know where things are heading. I kind of wish that there were some things we didn’t have to spoil, but we’re kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. The show must go on,” Banioff is quoted as saying by Metro. Yea, thanks for the ‘show must go on sweetener’ — but it’s just not enough for the readers — who will now be considered general public when watching the series. See now — there’s a lot of people who take pride in reading the books — and consider themselves above those who just watch the series. You see — reading the books is real committment to the Targaryen or Stark or Lannister cause (whichever side you support). This is the breed that shoots videos of how people react to twists and turns in the story — and don’t you lie, you love those videos of people screaming during the Red Wedding episode or the recent head-busting fight (if you’ve seen season four). Martin himself should feel slightly ashamed at his planning. A bestselling author has the right to write when he wants. But readers have the right to know the story from the book first rather than the series. They’ve not just invested on HBO subscriptions or internet bandwidth behind downloading episodes — they’ve invested time, money and their patience for years since the book first came out in 1996. And that patience is running out.