In May of 2013, nearly three and a half years ago, I wrote a post about a most interesting reading experience: on how I found, via the unlikely medium of television, the series of fantasy books by George R.R. Martin, collectively called “A Song of Ice and Fire”. As I then described, prior to my discovery of the books, a television series was created based on them; in fact it was that show, “Game of Thrones”, (the title on the first volume of the saga) that led me to the books. At that time five volumes of a planned seven existed. The TV show based on the first volume was wildly successful and a second season based on the second volume was being planned. The show was indeed well done, but, as I said at the time, having commenced to read them, the books were far more detailed, in fact far more interesting; I continued to watch the show periodically for a while, merely as an interesting illustration of the rather unique, phantasmagorical story; and soon stopped. I read three of the existing volumes – and then I forbore reading the fourth and fifth ones, for the author by then was deeply involved in the ongoing television project and I did not trust him to finish the saga. He had been extremely slow in producing it so far; it took him from 1991 to 2011 to produce the five existing volumes. Fans had been clamoring for the final ones; one very much wanted to know how will the denouement be pulled off? But investing the time needed to read on – these are all hefty volumes – would be pointless if we were never going to come to a satisfying end. Meanwhile, it was reported that the TV show was plunging ahead: season followed season, for a while in parallel with the books: successive seasons hued closely to the successive volumes, though taking increasing liberties with them.

My lack of trust proved entirely correct.

Television overtook writing. There was no more talk of the final volumes ever appearing on the horizon: George RR Martin, too slow a writer to satisfy the TV industry, had been left behind and the final seasons, upcoming, will be on their own. While I imagine the author is probably somewhat involved with the ending of his own saga, it would likely be in a mere advisory role, while a committee of screenwriters produce the much awaited answer to the question posed in the long ago first volume: Is Winter Coming?

I had long ago stopped watching the TV series, which became ever more violent and gratuitously sexual. Until quite recently, I kept hoping for those final two volumes to somehow, miraculously, materialize. But I have now given up and accepted television’s victory over printed matter, at least in this instance.

“A Song of Ice and Fire” never was great literature, but it was a riveting story well enough written to hold one’s attention through hundreds, eventually thousands of pages. I find it extremely regrettable that it was abandoned two thirds of the way through and handed over to what eventually became an overheated TV series. Whereas I didn’t begrudge the time it took to read those first three volumes, I would most decidedly begrudge the time required to watch endless episodes of such a story on television. So I suppose I will never really know whether Winter Came.