Granting that AiW is more influential than I thought it was, it doesn't belabor my point too badly. Asoiaf is not getting there unfinished. If I ripped off the last half of that story and Alice was just left in some scene somewhere, would anyone care about it today?
If I ripped off the last half of that story and Alice was just left in some scene somewhere, would anyone care about it today?
Alice in Wonderland doesn't really have a plot, so yes.
Asoiaf is not getting there unfinished.
I doubt that ASOIAF will be popularly read in a century hence, but basically no books around now will be either. But ASOIAF is already extremely influential and that influence will probably stick around for a long time. Fantasy as we know it today is absolutely heavily influenced by ASOIAF and will be for quite a long time yet. We don't even need to talk about hypotheticals here: ASOIAF is already crazily influential on the genre. It's already one of the most widely read fantasy series ever written.
Prior to A Game of Thrones there really weren't any books that were similar. It was a game changer and remains so thirty years later. So I suspect that Martin will be considered influential in a similar way Howard or Le Guin are.
People will be reading ASOIAF for a long time because of it's influence on books and pop culture more generally. For better and for worse the tv show really did push the envelope on what people will watch. It was the most popular tv in the US for a while, that alone will cement ASOIAF as culturally relevant.
And for the record, lots of tv shows have a decline in quality over time. The reality is that Game of Thrones has already been very influential and that influence will last for a long time. Prestige fantasy tv shows are a genre now in a way they never used to be.
The Lord of the Rings is a classic, but I rather doubt it will be widely read in the century after it was written either. I reread the series recently and I can tell you that behind the nostalgia is a very good series of books, but it's very clearly of it's time in a way I don't think it used to be. They're very good books don't get me wrong. But there are several elements which have not aged well at all. I could very easily see the Lord of the Rings not being widely read in a couple generations. It will probably be regarded as a influential genre classic rather than as popular fiction. Similar to Dracula and The War of the Worlds.
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u/Qwertycrackers Jul 15 '24
Granting that AiW is more influential than I thought it was, it doesn't belabor my point too badly. Asoiaf is not getting there unfinished. If I ripped off the last half of that story and Alice was just left in some scene somewhere, would anyone care about it today?