wolf_2099, on Apr 2 2009, 09:28 PM, said:
Or even that virus that was supposed to hit yesterday corrupting everything. At his computer and publishers. Bye bye ADWD.
GRRM is pretty paranoid over the MS situation ever since he nearly did lose a book to computing woes, and most people who read his blog know what precautions he takes. He prints out a full MS of the book in its 'current' form every couple of weeks both for personal use and also to send to his publishers (which is why his editorial turn-around is so short, his publishers have been editing the book pretty much as it goes along, which is bit frustrating for them if he then decides to junk the chapter). He also saves copies of the MS on his hard drive and on floppy disk (old-skool!). I think he even keeps multiple copies of the disk in different places just to be on the safe side.
The only way to 'lose' ADWD would be to nuke Santa Fe, New York and London several times over to ensure that all the copies of the book are destroyed. Even that probably won't work, as some material from ADWD has also been sent to his co-writers on The World of Ice and Fire book as well, so that's another copy floating around, and I think the writers of the HBO series have seen a plot synopsis (so they know what they are building up to in the first season).
GRRM ain't going to be suffering what SE did when his computer died and took half of Memories of Ice with it