Posted 10 July 2008 - 08:38 PM
I think GRRM's attitude to ASoIaF versus his other works is that it's come at the tail end of what would be a highly successful career in different genres and mediums. He published A Game of Thrones thirty years after his first short story, won a truckload of awards inbetween and worked on two successful TV shows as well as the most popular non-tie-in 'shared word' series in history. So for him ASoIaF is an evolution and culmination of everything that came before and is best seen or appreciated in that light.
The idea of people reading ASoIaF and not caring about anything else he's written probably seems weird to him (as it does to me) as someone who has mainly been an SF and horror author. It's possibly a sign of the conservative nature of fantasy fans versus SF and horror ones. Series are much rarer in SF and horror, so if you like an author you get used to reading lots of different settings, worlds, characters and universes, whilst fantasy authors tend to have one signature setting and that's it, and if an author goes off to do something else readers seem to have this kneejerk reaction of, "Oh it's not another Deathsword novel? Fuck it, why would I read anything else?"
The irony here is that GRRM's best work is, IMO, Fevre Dream, A Song for Lya, his Tuf stories, Meathouse Man and The Skin Trade. My favourite part of ASoIaF is The Hedge Knight, which isn't even part of the main series. Investigating his other work is very worthwhile.
And a correction: if he 'falls under a bus' before completing the series, we are "Shit out of luck," as he put it.
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