George R.R. Martin Becomes a Zombie on Z NATION

At least he finished the books!

George R.R. Martin, author of the brilliant A Song of Ice and Fire series of which Game of Thrones is based off, is notorious for his writing pace. The first three books were whacked out over a four-year period, covering well over two thousand pages, but in the fifteen years since then only two books have been released. If you want to know more about that then it’s all well-documented on the interwebs, but the reason for the huge delays has been partly due the expansive nature of these books and partly because George has just become a slower writer. Or less interested in the series. Nobody’s totally sure what it is, but I would probably be bored of a story by now if I started working on it in 1992.

While this kinda pissed a lot of fans off, since A Dance With Dragons was released in 2011 it’s become a long-running joke. Comments sections will be filled with people making predictions regarding which century The Winds of Winter – the next volume in the saga – will be released, or whether Martin has actually started writing yet. It turns out that he sees the funny side of this too, since Entertainment Weekly has revealed that GRRM will be making an appearance on Syfy’s Z Nation this weekend as himself – in zombie-form, of course!

“I just want to prove to my fans that even in the Zombie Apocalypse, the Song of Ice and Fire books will still come out!,” said Martin.

I’d happily live in a zombie apocalypse if it meant I could read to the end of those books.

The book he’s nibbling on up there is A Promise of Spring, parodying the title of the unreleased seventh book, A Dream of Spring. So the guys in that universe actually get the complete saga! Not fair!

Martin appears in the eighth episode of the show, which comes back to SyFy tomorrow. He’s been imprisoned by a character called the Collector, who “captures celebrity zombies and keeps George chained to a desk for his own nefarious purposes.” It’s a common joke amongst fans that he should actually be chained to his desk so he can finish the books, so it’s funny to see that recognised here.

I do feel sorry for him. The fans can be harsh – often unnecessarily – but I’d like to think everybody means well, and we’re all really here because we love those books. The story is timeless, and while Martin is probably a little bored of the adventures of Tyrion Lannister, Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen by now, he is likely proud of himself for creating something so huge and iconic. He could easily despise his fans and give up writing the series (he probably hasn’t felt too strongly towards us in the past), but instead he’s taking it in his stride and actually laughing at the jokes too. Either way, we will still eventually own and be able to read a copy of The Winds of Winter, and George R.R. Martin can relax at the side of a pool, with the comfort of knowing that he’s still got one more book to write.