I know a lot of people were bummed out when author George R.R. Martin finally confessed that the much-anticipated fifth in his A Song of Ice and Fire series wouldn’t be out before the sixth season of Game of Thrones. But it turns out the long-delayed book may actually be right on time.
The Washington Post assembled the above graph of famous book series, and how often their authors published new volumes comparative to page-count. As you can see, even if The Winds of Winter doesn’t come out until next year, GRRM is pretty much right on track with J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter books. Yes, the Potter books were released more quickly, but given how much longer the ASoIaF novels are, the two author’s publishing rates are basically the same.
More impressively, Martin is also effectively writing faster than J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, as well as C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles or Narnia series. Think about it: Would we all really be as excited for the series if they were all only 225 pages or so?
Given how much grief GRRM gets on a pretty much daily basis for The Winds of Winter, I figured he deserves to have this information disseminated as widely as possible. Honestly, if I were him I’d buy a few billboards in major metropolitan areas and put this thing on them.
Photo: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP.
Contact the author at rob@io9.com.