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Issue 14
April 2011
FANTASY, INTERRUPTED

 One man’s frustration over the long wait between installments of his favorite book series: A Song of Ice and Fire is only the beginning...

by K. Burtt

 So, HBO’s TV adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones premiered on April 17. And the next book in the series upon which it is based, A Song of Ice and Fire, seems to finally have a release date. One might think that I, an avowed Martin fan, would be excited about both of these developments, but as it turns out? Meh. What is has done, though, is made me think about the long gap of time between this upcoming book, A Dance of Dragons, and the previous in the series -- and what that means for my interest in the series as a whole. Which then led me to think about other series and the long gaps therein. So in the grand tradition of past Geek Speak rants (it's been more than a year...we can have traditions by now!), I present my rambling thoughts on various book series with really, really long delays, the reasons behind them, and the extent that I still care.

We've spent some time here at the magazine looking at the issues with delays (or regularly scheduled hiatuses) in TV shows, with some great suggestions as to how to spend the time. But those hiati are (usually) a matter of weeks or months, or up to a year in rare cases. With book series, however, you can regularly deal with gaps lasting years -- and in a few cases, decades. At what point in time does one say that enough is enough and one just doesn't particularly care anymore? And then at what point in time does one really stop caring as opposed to just saying one doesn't care, which in and of itself only shows how much one still cares? And does it make a difference at all for the reason why there are such delays?

Since it triggered this entire rant, let's take a look at Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. A Game of Thrones was released in 1996. The next book, A Clash of Kings, was out two years later, and the third book, A Storm of Swords, two years after that. Two year gaps are not short, but when looking at the length, complexity, and sheer epic-ness of the books, two years seems reasonable. Perhaps annoying, but reasonable. The fourth book, however? A Feast for Crows came out more than five years later.

The circumstances behind the book and that long gap, though, were simultaneously understandable and frustrating. The behind-the-scenes story goes that Martin had much of Book 4 written within a year or so of the third book’s release (i.e. he was seemingly on schedule) when he decided to scrap it all and start over. Apparently his original thought was to have Book 4 take place five years in the future (which, looking back, seems rather prophetic, considering it took five years for the book to be released), but kept realizing how hard it was trying to fill in the necessary gaps of those five years. So, he felt like he had to start over. Okay, fine... I think fans can buy that as a reason for a longer-than-usual wait for a book. We fans want the best book possible and we can respect (to an extent) reasons for delays that would lead to a better book.

The next behind-the-scenes story to come out about Book 4 was that it was getting so long that the publisher literally couldn't publish it as one novel, and it had to be split into two. Martin then decided to split the book into two via character instead of chronologically, meaning the first volume (i.e. Book 4) would follow certain characters through all the events he had envisioned for that book, and then the next book would be all the other characters during the same timeframe. Kind of odd, but to us fans, not too big of a deal, since the overall complete book was essentially already done, it just needed to be split into two, right? (Right?!). We can deal with a long gap of time for Book 4 much better with knowing that Book 5 wouldn't be far behind.

Gosh, were we wrong.

After many different purported release dates over the course of the past few years, a firm release date finally seems to be set. Book 5, A Dance with Dragons, supposedly comes out this July. Six years after Book 4 -- a longer delay than that between Books 3 and 4. And the reason for the long delay this time? Um... well... no one really knows. As far as anyone can really tell, Martin just didn't get around to finishing it. Was he hard at work but just being a perfectionist? Was he too busy writing/editing the five Wild Cards anthologies that have been released (well, four released, one forthcoming) since A Feast for Crows? Was he spending all his time preparing for the HBO TV series and couldn't find the time to work on the book series upon which it was based? Did he construct a large vault for all his money and has been spending all his time swimming in the money, a la Scrooge McDuck? Who knows.

So not only is the six year wait, particularly with no obvious reason, highly annoying, but when considering that the whole point for Books 4 and 5 was that each were to focus on half of the overall characters, that means that we, the readers, have had to wait eleven years to continue the story for some characters. That's pretty insane, and not in the good spending-all-free-time-scouring-the-web-for-new-tidbits-and-dressing-up-as-a-favorite-character-every-day-of-the-week type of insane fandom.

Compounding these issues, at least for me, is that with such long waits between the last few books... I don't really remember the specifics of what had happened anymore. Were I to pick up the new book (assuming it does, in fact, come out as currently scheduled. I really ought to look up what the line in Vegas is for that likelihood), I would be just about as lost as someone who has never read the series at all. There is discussion among the staff here that this is actually part of a large Martin-guided conspiracy. Long enough gaps between books mean people will get rid of the copies they have, donating a set to the Red Cross to ease the suffering of the poor and the downtrodden, or raffling a set off to a favorite charity, perhaps. Eventually, the next addition comes out, and all the books are re-released with shiny new covers, thus warranting purchase again in order for the necessary re-read. We think Martin wants to buy himself a planet or something. But the series is large, complex, and epic enough that rereading the four previous books at this point is kind of a daunting task, and one that I'm not convinced that I wish to go through.

Hence my apathy about the new book.

Really, eleven years to wait for some characters?! Do I really want to invest the time necessary into getting caught up, with knowing that it'll be most assuredly be years before the next book comes out? Why bother?

For perspective (and fun), let’s take a look at various things that have happened in the world since the last ASOIAF book, A Feast for Crows, came out in October 2005. We elected our first black president here in the US (who would have guessed that in 2005?). The iPhone (and then the iPad) came out, solidifying Steve Jobs’ takeover of the world. And no one in 2005 knew what an “app” was. Nor did anyone know what it was to “tweet”, other than perhaps in singing “Rockin’ Robin”. Lindsay Lohan went from talented up-and-comer to…um…whatever it is that she is now. Our esteemed Editor-in-Chief has lived on four different continents (that she’ll admit to). Americans actually cared about soccer. Twice! And, horror of horrors, since A Feast for Crows came out, the entire Twilight saga has been foisted upon the masses, bringing new understanding to the phrase “Ah, those were the good ol’ days!” (though, to be fair, the first book Twilight did come out weeks before A Feast for Crows, but they were close enough that the psychic damage had yet to be inflicted).

Of course, A Song of Ice and Fire is hardly the only series for which fans have had to endure long waits between books. Heck, six years between books isn't even close to the wait I personally have endured for a series. My personal record is nineteen years (and counting), belonging to The War Against the Chtorr series by David Gerrold. Not familiar with the series or the author? Well, as it has been such a long time, I'm not surprised about the series, but I can almost guarantee that you know of the author (though perhaps not knowing his name). Gerrold is the writer behind the best original Star Trek episode evar, "The Trouble with Tribbles"!

Yes, indeed, Tribble-man is also an author, and one who started a series quite a long time ago and... um... well... started the series quite a long time ago. The War Against the Chtorr, a series about an alien ecology attempting to Terraform (well, Chtorraform) Earth, first started with A Matter for Men back in 1983. The second book, A Day for Damnation, came out a year later, but then came a five year wait before A Rage for Revenge came out in 1989. The "final" book, A Season for Slaughter came out in 1992. And after that? Nothing. There are reportedly three more books left to come in the series, but it's been nearly two decades! How many people still even know about the series at all (besides me)?! The author updates his website every few years with claims that he is still working on the series and that it will be done when it will be done. But in the meantime, he has had several novels published -- a couple in his Star Wolf series (though long gaps of time exist between all those books as well. Are we sensing a trend with Mr. Gerrold, perhaps?), a complete trilogy known as The Dingilliad, and a few random standalone novels as well.

So a question becomes... do I really care about the next book in the Chtorr series? Well, once it finally comes out, assuming that it ever does, yeah, I would read it. But I have also definitely moved beyond frustration about the delay into acceptance that it probably never will be released. It's a point of amusement now.

But how much do long delays really hurt a series, if at all? Let's take a look again at Martin's Song of Ice and Fire. How many people will outright refuse to buy and/or read the next book in the series once it comes out just because of the long delay? Well... me, for one (though I'm sure I'll get around to reading it eventually), but on average? I'm guessing not that many. The hype and popularity for the series is still going strong. Heck, as of this writing, the forthcoming Book 5 is in the Top 100 for all book sales on Amazon, as a pre-order, several months away from publication. What will happen with that number as it gets closer to time of publication? And with the HBO series coming out, I'm sure the series will gain more fans than it has potentially lost.

Another recent series that was known for delays is none other than J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. First, it must be said that the delays here weren't nearly as extreme as they are for Martin's series. But on the flip side, as a series that (supposedly) catered to kids/young adults, it could be argued (which, after all, I am doing) that delays are more significant for YA books: wait too long and perhaps your initial audience outgrows the series whilst the now-the-correct-age audience might have moved on already to the next big thing. That wasn't the case with Harry Potter, but I bet it's a concern for publishers of YA material. But for the delays in question... for the few of you reading this who don't know everything there is to know about Harry Potter, the first book came out in 1997, followed by the sequel in 1998, Book 3 in 1999, and Book 4 in 2000. But then things really slowed down. Book 5 (<Shakes fist at Book 5>) didn't come out for three more years, finally reaching shelves in 2003. Three years to wait?! For a kid, that's a lifetime! Ouch! And Books 6 and 7 each took 2 years, coming out in 2005 and 2007 respectively.

The reasons behind the delays, as far as I can tell, are basically twofold. One, it was after Book 3 that the Harry Potter hype machine really got going, but since that took a little time, Rowling was probably able to get much of Book 4 done without much distraction, but after that I'm sure it got much more difficult with a much larger microscope on her to finish each book and the series. And two, the movies -- with the first movie coming out in 2001 and the second movie a year later, Rowling was busy and distracted from the next book. Now, there could easily be a third reason, that being the latter books were substantially longer than the first three, and thus took longer to write, but then I could (and would) respond that that is partly a function of her just not being a very good writer and thus she probably took much longer to write the books because she had no clue how to do so (also resulting in the massively inflated book sizes), but then my issues with Harry Potter are well documented. But that doesn't really matter in the long run, as it is also obvious that the delays in the latter half of the series hurt it not at all (except, perhaps, in quality). The lines to buy Book 7 at midnight were just as long, if not longer, than they were for earlier books. And had the delays been even longer, I'm sure it would have mattered not at all. It might have irritated fans more, but not enough to make people lose interest in the series.

So can a long delay really hurt a series? I'm not sure how good an example the David Gerrold series mentioned above is, as it has been so long since the first half of that series came out that it's hard to gauge its popularity both then and now. But there is one series we can look at that is quite comparable to Martin's Song of Ice and Fire -- that being Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (ah, the Wheel of Time). For many, this is the series that defined "overly-epic", and it has become a fear that Martin's series will end up the same. The Wheel of Time is known for a great many frustrating things, such as a heck of a lot more books than originally planned (thirteen have been released with one more to come, when the series was originally planned to be six), freakin' long individual books (anywhere from 600-1000 closely-typed pages. Each.), way too many characters (particularly in the latter books), and long delays. Of course, there are a great many good things about the series as well:meticulously thought out plot points; an incredibly robust world; an intriguing magic system; and core characters -- both good and evil -- that the reader can get behind. (And in my opinion, there are certain scenes in books that are exceptionally written -- I occasionally pick the books up just to reread those scenes).

Now here comes an interesting realization. When putting together a list of series that had long delays and/or hiatuses, Martin's series was first on the list, but second on the list was the Wheel of Time. When asking around to others to see which series I may have missed, the Wheel of Time was mentioned more than once. But when actually doing a little research (what?! I actually did some work beforehand?! What's this world coming to?!) I found out that the Wheel of Time didn't have nearly the delays between books that I had thought it did. It just seemed like it did. How very odd. But the background: the series started with The Eye of the World, released in early 1990. The next 5 books all came out about a year after each other before the series started to slow down a bit. Book 7 (A Crown of Swords) came out a year and a half later, then 2.5 years passed before Books 8, 9, 10 and 11. Compared to other series, two and a half years between each isn't all that bad, particularly considering the length of each book and sheer epicness of the story. There is, then, a four-year gap before Book 12 (The Gathering Storm) came out, but there is quite the understandable reason for it. Robert Jordan died.

He had been working on what he hoped would be the final book (Book 12), but was unable to finish it before his illness took over (and eventually just took) his life. It was decided that relatively new author Brandon Sanderson (a personal favorite, actually - see a review of one of his works here) would finish the series based upon Jordan's meticulous notes. There was too much material, so the final book was split into three, with the new Book 12 released in 2009, Book 13 (Towers of Midnight) a year later, and the actual, real, no-kidding, final book of the Wheel of Time series is expected to come out later this year.

But back to the issue at hand: did the delays between books harm the series at all? Well, my first reaction is yes, because, as mentioned, that's what the series was known for. People such as myself continually got frustrated and stopped caring. But looking at the fact that the gaps of time weren't necessarily all that long between individual books, I kind of think that the frustration was due more to the fact that the series just dragged on, adding more and more characters without seemingly getting anywhere close to an end. This just made it seem like there were longer delays between books. I personally stuck with the series longer than most I know, pretty much giving up as of Book 10 (in which effectively nothing happens the entire book). But I do have copies of Jordan's final book (#11), and the first of Sanderson's books, and will eventually give them a try. But others I know stopped after Book 6 (when the first long-ish delay happened), or Book 8 (which effectively took place at the same time as Book 7, just with different characters -- highly annoying, George R.R. Martin should have taken note!). So I feel comfortable saying that the series has definitely lost fans. And a lot of them.

But I would be wrong in saying that. Or at least, the lost fans don't make a huge difference, as the past 5 Wheel of Time books (including both Sanderson books) have all reached #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list. The series still has fans, to be sure.

An example of a more recent, much less known series that appears to be in the process of becoming a good test series for how much a long delay can hurt would be the Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch. The first book, The Lies of Locke Lamora came out in 2006, followed rather quickly by the sequel Red Seas Under Red Skies in 2007. But Book 3 is yet to come out, currently scheduled for this November (2011). It is not clear why there is such a long delay for the third book when there was only a year between the first two. While it seems, though, that the one-year-between-books precedent was, indeed, set, that might be misleading, as the first book was written and sold back in 2004, but just not released until 2006. Perhaps the 2nd book had been worked on that entire time, so a multi-year gap between books really is "normal" for Lynch. But a four year gap is still quite the long time, particularly as this series is really the only thing the author is known for. There hasn't really been enough time for fans to get particularly invested in the series. So will people who read the first two books years ago still remember them and notice when the third book is released? Will there be interest? Or has the window passed in which the author could have continued to build on what he had? Time will tell.

So I'd like to contrast all of the above-discussed series with a popular series that has been a model of reliability: The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (a personal favorite). There have been 12 books released thus far, with the longest gap of time between books being a year and 6 days. To be fair, the Dresden books are not as long (read: bloated) nor as epic as other series (though they're not short, either... the last book was 400+ pages), so one could argue that it's easier to write them on a faster schedule. Quite possible. But on the flip side, Butcher was involved with a short-lived TV show, taking up time, and for the past several years, he also had a second series running simultaneously (the Codex Alera series: 6 books, with the final book released late 2009). So why do I bring up this series? Two reasons, actually: 1) Each author is different. Each series is different. So it's hard to really compare delays experienced by one series to another, and perhaps they all shouldn't be held to the same standards. And 2) The whole "longest delay being slightly over a year" for the Dresden Files has been interrupted. The last book was released in April a year ago (as the several before that had been), but the new book... doesn't come out until late July. I have to wait three freakin' months longer than normal, and I am one unhappy Dresden fan. The thought then hit me how silly that is considering the years waiting for other series.

So what does this all lead me to conclude? That I can't easily compare authors and series, but what we can compare is how we fans deal with delays in our favorite series. With thanks to fellow Geek Speaker, Sara Paige for the idea (we here at Geek Speak are all quite supportive of each other. Except during the biweekly dodgeball games...those get vicious [or Vishous, I suppose, if Geek Speaker Kate Nagy is there, currently reading one in a particular book series -- she has a tendency to fly into a Rhage causing much Payne while trying to Xcor]!), here now are the 5 Stages Of Dealing With A Delay (SODWAD... we so need to come up with a better acronym!)


1. Hope: in the first stage, the faithful reader happily looks forward to the next book of a favorite series, with all the confidence in the world that said book will come out as scheduled (usually on some kind of reasonably set schedule). Perhaps this stage could also be referred to as "delusion."

2. Irritation: a delay is announced. Amidst some grumbling, muttering-under-the-breath, and possibly some fist-shaking, there is still the underlying thought that "Oh, well, I'm this will just be a short delay, so that the powers that be can ensure the book will be the best addition to the series yet!" The faithful reader is irritated, but mostly understanding.

3. Anger: the book is delayed again. The not-quite-so-faithful-anymore reader starts to wonder "WTF?!" and begins to question why the once-revered author seems to hate his/her fans now. Thoughts start to percolate of writing a strongly-worded letter, perhaps attempting to make claims that the author in question effectively works for the fans, so he/she better get going on writing! It should be noted that the first two stages could be skipped and readers could find themselves going straight to this stage if a) a book has an announced release date, then gets delayed and Amazon (or your book store of choice) removes the page completely rather than just posting a later date, or b) there is no announced date at all for the next book in a series upon completion of the current book.

4. Despair: this stage could also be called "Disbelief", as by this point, having-lost-all-faith readers have given up hope trying to understand why yet more delays keep occurring. Questions about new books start to shift from "when" to the much-feared-and-dreaded "if". Tears are possibly shed. Some readers may even be forced to find solace with other lost and forlorn fans, perhaps even giving in and joining that point-of-no-return, the internet posting board. Other readers may even start to question their own self-worth, wondering how they could ever have been taken in by a series that may never end, and how can their lives ever be complete without knowing how things end.

5. Apathy: and finally, if delays have reached a certain length, readers realize that life goes on. Their entire identity doesn't revolve around the continuing escapades of one or more fictional characters. There are other book series out there in existence, just waiting to be read. And many of those series are already completed! Generations in the past have had to deal with any delays that may or may not have happened! So when the new book in a series finally comes out, it is no longer a foregone conclusion that the book will be bought and read. Perhaps the book will be borrowed from a friend, perhaps it will be obtained via the library, or perhaps it just won't be read at all. At least not for a while.

-- K. Burtt




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