First off, I should note that I have not read any of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series, nor do I ever intend to. I’m not going to invest that kind of time, particularly if books are perpetually delayed. I’m kinda anti-series to begin with. If you get suckered into caring about an unfinished series, you really don’t have anyone to blame but yourself.
And frankly, I know very little about the controversy
either. I’m just spouting my uninformed opinion off to rile people up. It’s one of those days where I’m feeling a little bit cranky.
To start with (wait, how can this be starting, when First
was two paragraphs ago?), I was sympathetic to the argument that George R. R. Martin is not your bitch
as Neil Gaiman put it. Get on with your life! Read another book! George R. R. Martin did not enter into a contract to do anything beyond letting you read the book you purchased. Don’t you have better things to do? I know I certainly do. I have a stack of unread books larger than most people’s entire collection.
And then Joe Sherry criticized Steven Erikson’s long Malazan Book of the Fallen series immediately before criticizing the George R. R. Martin criticism. And then I got to thinking… what’s the difference between criticizing Steven Erikson for not meeting expectations and criticizing George R. R. Martin for not meeting expectations? Not anything that amounts to a hill of beans. Where does Joe Sherry get off thinking himself entitled to have a series that makes sense? He must have entitlement issues.
Contrary to what Neil Gaiman wrote, George R. R. Martin does work for me. Well, not me individually since I haven’t paid a dime for his books. But he does work for his fan base. He works for the people who buy his crap. (It probably isn’t crap. I’m just cranky.) They are entitled to expect whatever the hell they want to expect out of their author. They aren’t wrong for wanting to read his book. Hell, I would think George R. R. Martin would be thrilled he has such a large number of people clamoring for his next book. God knows I’d be thrilled if that many people were clamoring for my next book review. I’m nowhere near so talented. On the scale of things authors have to put up with, fans wanting more of their work sooner isn’t near the top.
If he doesn’t give his fan base what they feel they are entitled to, they are entitled to not buy his writings. There’s no contract that says they have to buy all the Wild Card books he’s putting out in the meantime. There’s no contract that says I have to like whatever authors put out and/or when they put it out. There’s no contract that says I have to shut up about when I don’t like what an author does. Stephenie Meyer took it on the chin when her fan base didn’t like the last book in the Twilight series and en masse threw it out of the Twilight canon.
Then again, if George R. R. Martin doesn’t want people to buy what he writes, he can do whatever he wants. Kind of like this blog, where it’s mostly mental masturbation. That’s the beauty of the libertarian philosophy that made this country the Ayn Rand utopia it is today! All of us can do whatever we want, and we can criticize all the other people however much we want, and god laughs at all of us. (I really have no idea if this is the true Ayn Rand philosophy either. Information would make this whole rant so much less entertaining to me.)
The whole deal seems like a lot of pointless griping by everyone, readers and George R. R. Martin alike. Can’t we all just get along? Neil Gaiman gets a pass because his smackdown was entertaining. I’m a big fan of all of you entertaining me, and until his little outburst this little teastorm wasn’t doing the job.
Image Teapots in a Tempest by Seb Roberts used under a Creative Commons By-Nc-Nd 2.0 license.
Hi.
I really think those are two different conversations. My criticism of Erikson has nothing to do with not meeting expectations (except in that I no longer think he is putting out an overall quality product), and more to do with the fact that I have no clue what the hell his series is about. That’s not an expectation thing, it’s a confusion thing. I honestly don’t know where he is going with, and moreover, I am confused as to what is going on. After eight volumes I don’t know what the hell the story is. Maybe there is no story. I don’t think Erikson is doing a very good job in telling the story. That’s a criticism on a completed product (the book, not the series).
But then again – maybe I do have entitlement issues. :)
Seriously, though, I don’t think it is a sense of entitlement. Readers aren’t entitled to anything except the belief that the writer put out the best book they could under whatever circumstances they were in at the time. (but we can talk about what we don’t like – be it RaceFail or the fact that Erikson’s series doesn’t make a lick of sense to me)
The GRRM issue is a very different one, and I honestly can care less about the people criticizing GRRM in the sense that all I want is a quality product whenever GRRM is ready to put it out. I understand the frustration of the fans (of which I am one, because there is very little GRRM I don’t like – Dying of the Light is probably the one, so far), and I do think GRRM initially handled expectations poorly, but I firmly believe nobody wants the book to be done sooner than GRRM. For a variety of reasons, including financial – the man doesn’t get fully paid until he turns the book in.
The difference between the two crits, though, is that one is about what is on the page. That’s reviewing and criticism (or whatever it is that I do). The other is about an unfinished book that hasn’t been delivered to the publisher. That’s…I don’t know. That’s about something else. I don’t believe writers are or should be clockwork monkeys delivering books on some predetermined schedule. Oh, yes, deadlines are essential in publishing, but sometimes and for some reasons, a book gets off schedule. NOBODY wanted that. Not the writer, not the publisher, not the fans. Shit happens. The writer isn’t getting paid, and the publisher isn’t publishing, which means they aren’t getting paid.
Gaiman got linked because, as you said, he was entertaining. Actually, he got linked solely because of “George R. R. Martin is not your bitch”. That’s just brilliant.
How is criticism over what’s actually written any more legitimate if the author ? (as Neil put it)
It’s not, but, I don’t think the two things are at all relatable. One doesn’t have anything to do with the other.
You’re entitled to your crankiness. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. :-)
i just want to read grrm’s freakin book its been like 2 years waiting