Show me a plan that has not worked when plotted with sticks and mud. I worry for the lives of our adventurers. I truly do.  But enough about that. If you’ll excuse me . . . there’s something I need to take care of.

Dear Mr. George RR Martin,

Hey.  It’s me, Christian.  I’m one of the millions of people who read your books and is now sitting in agony waiting for A Dance with Dragons, the next installment of A Song of Ice and Fire.

I’m sure you’ve received plenty of letters pleading with you to finish the series, either by threatening physical harm or claiming terminal illness with only a few months left to escape to Westeros.  And I sympathize. I cannot wait to find out what happens to that guy after he did that one thing?  Or to that girl after that other thing happened to her?  (Fans of the series will totally know what I’m talking about).

But this isn’t one of those letters.  I appreciate your position.  You want to make the next installment as good as possible, and I’m totally on your side.

There’s just one problem. It’s the Wheel of Time Syndrome.

We’re walking a rickety fence here, my friend. On the one hand, I want the next installment of the monumental tragi-epic to be as savory and dream-shattering as the first four installments. On the other hand, I don’t want you to die, preventing millions from feeling Spring come to the Stark family, or worse yet have the bugle blown by a complete hack who thinks he’s ethereal enough to fill the shoes of the thousand-faced god of Westeros.  I see fans of The Wheel of Time reeling after Jordan’s “untimely death.”  (I myself put down because it seemed to have the consistency of styrofoam next to the oak armoire that is A Song of Ice and Fire . . . yeah, I’m sticking to my metaphor).  That whole universe is going to shrivel up with Jordan (or from what I hear, might as well), and that hurts.

So what do we do here? You’re smart enough to take the appropriate time to let an entire universe grow, and not let your characters walk until they’re fully developed. But, like Jordan, you’re feeling the wheel.  Maybe it’s the fate of fantasy writers to live shorter lives because they spent their time walking through the fantasy worlds of their heads, without taking many steps in this one.

So I guess the solution is this:

Take your time, Mr. Martin.  Do justice to your world and the characters we’ve come to love.

Also, buy a bicycle.

Sincerely,

Christian McKay Heidicker

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 15th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under All Comics, Incompletes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.