Witcher Author Reveals The Real Reason George R.R. Martin Won’t Finish The Winds of Winter

Andrzej Sapkowski popped up at the Opole book festival with a bit of news and a bit of spice: he says he is not done with The Witcher and, unlike a certain other fantasy titan, he plans to actually keep his promises. Then he did something I appreciated — he aimed a friendly elbow at George R.R. Martin and immediately followed it with empathy and a theory about why The Winds of Winter still is not here.

What Sapkowski said — and why it hit a nerve

On stage, Sapkowski said he will continue writing more Witcher books. He also sympathized with Martin over the slog of finishing a long-running saga, and offered a pretty blunt take on how an adaptation getting ahead of the books can mess with an author’s head.

I totally understand him. Because if someone had pulled a stunt like that on me, filming a series based on my books, and then getting ahead of what I intended to write, I’d also be wondering whether there’s any point in writing anymore. If it’s already been done, right? Makes no sense. It’s nice when they adapt your work, that’s the author’s bloody right, but to adapt what doesn’t exist yet, to extrapolate like that? That’s just indecent.

Strong words. And honestly, you can see where he’s coming from. That said, what happened with Game of Thrones and the books is messier than a simple cause-and-effect.

The show got ahead because the books were late — not the other way around

By the end of Season 5, HBO’s Game of Thrones had burned through most of Martin’s published material. Martin had promised to finish The Winds of Winter before Season 6 premiered, confident the show would not catch up to him. It did. He even stepped back from the series after Season 4 to focus on writing, but that did not translate into a finished book. The only time he made meaningful headway, by his own telling over the years, was during the pandemic.

Meanwhile, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss checked in with Martin on the broad contours of the ending. He reportedly gave them the overall beats, but not a full roadmap. The result: the show outran the books because the manuscript was not ready, and the endgame had to be reverse-engineered from those broad strokes. That is a very different dynamic than an adaptation casually deciding to leapfrog the author.

Martin’s own view: the show slowed him down

Martin has admitted the HBO juggernaut did not help his writing pace. As he put it to The Guardian:

I don’t think it was very good for me, because the very thing that should have speeded me up actually slowed me down.

After the series wrapped in 2019 — and absorbed a tidal wave of backlash for its final season — his progress still did not bounce back. And even with that ending in the rearview, HBO has kept the cash machine running with spin-offs. Realistically, even if Thrones had nailed the landing, Winds would likely still be late because Martin is also busy executive producing a bunch of live-action projects tied to that universe.

Where the books stand

If you are keeping score, here is the main A Song of Ice and Fire timeline to date:

• A Game of Thrones — 1996
• A Clash of Kings — 1998
• A Storm of Swords — 2000
• A Feast for Crows — 2005
• A Dance with Dragons — 2011
• The Winds of Winter — TBA
• A Dream of Spring — TBA

The takeaway

Sapkowski is pressing on with The Witcher and says he will keep his word. His read on Martin’s bind — that an adaptation jumping ahead can be demoralizing — makes emotional sense, even if the Thrones timeline tells a more complicated story. Either way, fans of both series are still waiting on big, final chapters. Your move, George.