How the Song of Ice and Fire Fails - It’s Unfinishable

Like many successful authors, Martin needed a wise, ruthless editor.

When the sun rises in the west, sets in the east, when the seas go dry and the mountains blow in the wind like leaves, then ASoIaF will be finished

Hard to call him a gardener, when you consider that gardening consists to a large degree of cutting, trimming and removing stuff.

The Witcher series is even more pessimistic, but it is kind of Gilgamesh-like in its answer of "Oh well, life is shit and then you die, but do try to live as well and as kindly as you can while you still can."

GRRM subverted himself out of existence.

Earlier today I came across this video by a YouTuber called Jess of the Shire about "The Lord of the Rings" sequel that JRR Tolkien attempted to write in the late 60s/early 70s. It was tentatively titled "The New Shadow" and he had completed 3 drafts of the opening chapter. It was set over a century after the end of The War of the Ring. I won't go into plot details you can hear in the video, but Tolkien finally gave up writing this because it is hypothesized that going into an re-emergence of Evil in a Human world without Elves and Dwarves was very depressing to him. Hobbits were not even mentioned so they may not have been central characters in this book either. Since "The New Shadow" book's proposed theme mirrored other cynical books that already dealt with this topic during his lifetime he lost his enthusiasm to proceed. Plus, he was still trying to complete what became "The Silmarillion" that was finished by his son, Christopher, after his death. Instead of extending his story into the 4th Age, he seems to have decided what he had finished in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" was enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8FJ50cFXmk

The beauty of Martin’s failure is that it’s created a huge void for fantasy consumers that previously unrecognized/new writers can now potentially fill.

This. This has always been both his curse and blessing. GRRM's problem as a writer is that he doesn't see himself as a problem solver but a problem finder. I think it was Orwell commenting on Kipling. Some people remain ever in the mental space that it's them you tell you what's wrong and why. In simple terms a more modern expression would be "speak truth to power." They enjoy it because there's no responsibility in it. They don't really want to be in charge, they want to tell people in charge what to do. That way nothing is their fault. GRRM does this exactly in short works. He can zero in on something specific. ASOIAF is full of every example he can find of how a way of ruling can be or go wrong, or be undermined. But I don't think GRRM can actually find a way to write anything working. He can't take a position and say "this is better or best." Because someone (including himself) will always see a potential flaw. Played out in a short story focused on one side of a coin it's simple and straightforward. You don't expect an answer, just a critique. In these novels he's not flipping a coin or two, he's rolling dice. Worse, all his coins are tails and all his dice are loaded. He's too terrified of presenting anything as "the right way to do it." He famously critiques JRRT's Aragorn ending with "he ruled well and just." The problem now is, how do you end the story with Bran as a king? When people ask how Bran ruled what does he say? How does he tell us how Bran ruled well if GRRM can only criticize how it's gone wrong or will go wrong? He can put all the pieces in the place he imagines them going, but he can never tell you why they're the right places.

I always figured he was being a punk by doing one last subversion of just not finishing the story.

I don't think Martin helped himself by agreeing to his series being turned into a tv series before he'd finished it - particularly knowing how long he's taken to write each book towards the end. He gave D&D an outline for how he THOUGHT it would end (bearing in mind he's a 'gardener' writer at heart,) and they seriously dropped the ball with it, leaving legions of fans with a sour taste in their mouths that provoked a backlash about how much they hated the way it ended. So now he's stuck; does he risk continuing with his 'original' outline, hoping he can make it a better version than D&D's hated one? Or does he go in another direction entirely, to appease his disgruntled fans - but risk creating something they hate even more?

The Distributist did a very similar video essay on this topic several years ago, before the end of the tv series and was down voted to heck for pointing out that both book and TV show have no good way to end the same reasons you seem to be describing.

I remember when George RR Martin would critique Tolkien and thought to myself, “at least Tolkien finished his work. George’s legacy will be that he had written great books but could never finish his masterpiece and left it hanging with no answers to problems he created and no ending.”.. there will only be the HBO series as an ending and boy what a stinker that was. I’d hate for my legacy to stand on the last season of Game Of Thrones. I also remember that when the media asked him how he felt about fans being worried that he might die before finishing the story of A Song Of Ice And Fire, his answer to his fans was, “fuck’em!”. I think those fans have a very real worry since Martin is getting older each day and certainly isn’t the picture of a healthy man. I lost all respect for him at that point.

I don’t see how he can satisfactorily wrap up the story in just two books

This in general is the issue you get with trying to rely solely on deconstruction and postmodernism from a philosophical standpoint. If there is no reference point to base you ideas on, you lose the ability to actually stand for anything which makes thematic clarity extremely hard to pull off. Deconstruction needs a constraint to turn it into a useful tool and not just a hammer of destruction.

There's a good side for the unfinishness of his work: we give it our own non-cynical ending.

I laughed hard when you said Martin wants to be gardener in the Amazon

Ironically, the theme of failure runs as much through Tolkien's works as does Martin's. The Trees fail. The Noldor fail. Numenor fails. Isildur, the Wizards, Frodo, all fail. It is a given that if Sauron falls, tyat much will be.lost or diminished. Ellesar's dynasty, however long it will last, is a fading reflection of Numenor's glory. Still, despite all that, there is still hope and joy; still trust that eucatastrophe will occur again; that Manwe still sees and will send an Eagle from time to time; that the Song of Eru is still being sung; that above the deepest shadows, light still shines. That is what seems to be missing from Martin's wirk.

It’s a great analysis. But I fundamnetally disagree. Martin is not ultimately cynical. He’s a disappointed idealist. You seem to read it as nonstop grimdark with no hope or ideal. I don’t see that. I see that it is deeply about hope in a dark world. Belief and religion is not always bad. Brienne is religious and her love of mythology is central to her goal to pursue honour and goodness. Her goodness prompts the change to Jaime, whose redemption is also tied up with a reignition of mythic thought - naming the sword - oathkeeper- naming his horse - honour. They even literally embody myths within the universe- they are forced to reenact the bear and the maiden fair , beauty and the beast (roles reversed) and even Galladon and the Maiden (the maiden gave a sword to Galladon, as Jaime gives a sword to Brienne). It oozes hope amongst darkness. Sansa never has given up her sensitivity and love of songs. Arya is not giving up her identity because she hid needle. Theon recovered his self and chose to help save Jayne. I feel that perhaps you have been more influenced by the show than you think. The show also took your view and thought GoT was grimdark. They made Brienne a callous murderer (fuck honour), made Sansa into ‘dark Sansa’ to show she was a strong girl boss. They made Jon’s destiny and parentage mean nothing, and made Dany evil for no reason. And made Jaime revert his personality.

This is why you need to know how you end a series before you begin and do everything you can to make every action a brushstroke in that final piece.

In Dreamsongs GRRM wrote "My career is littered with the corpses of dead series." He was talking about his short stories, which he spent his early career on. He switched to novels later, and they were all standalone until A Game of Thrones. He talks about his Tuf stories as breaking his curse, but he only wrote enough of those to compile into one "fix-up" novel, rather than a series of novels. His failure to finish ASOIAF may be less specific to ASOIAF and more to Martin just never being a person who has pulled off a series of novels. Contrast that with one of his inspirations for the series, Tad Williams. I haven't read Williams, but after he finished his trilogy of deconstructive fantasy novels he was able to write more series, finish them, and then go back to the world he created earlier. Benioff & Weiss had decided on seven seasons LONG before Star Wars became a possibility.