Larry Correia has planted a flag on the mouldering corpse of George R.R. Martin’s literary career.

There’s a fisking in the linked article, which involves MSN.com relitigating the whole Sad Puppies/Hugos drama from ten years ago, because they want to sell the narrative that Correia and Martin are rivals, explaining this mockery. Correia fisks the MSN article, because it’s an MSN article, and so deserves it.

But what’s more important is that mocking Martin is now fully mainstream. It’s no longer disgruntled fanboys, but fellow authors, in books dedications. The inability of Martin to deliver Winds of Winter is now a bigger story than the book itself. And with each year that the end of Game of Thrones passes further into memory, that failure looms larger and larger.

And the explanation for said failure is a known secret, and it is a warning.

HBO gave him the greatest marketing campaign in the history of books. George made like a billion dollars. But the thing about George’s entire career, and this is common knowledge in the publishing business, he only works when he’s hungry. And HBO made it so he’ll never be hungry again.

“Fisking MSN’s goofy take on my book dedication to George RR Martin”, Monsterhunternation.com

And the best part is, HBO doesn’t care. They’ve got a prequel series mining the published backstory. They’ve got plans to do another. They’re going to feast on this piggie until he’s dry. Video killed the fantasy star.

Well, it is kind of hard not to notice after watching George’s lazy hubris burn a significant part of the epic fantasy market so badly that those customers have given up trying new series until they are done. Thus fucking over an entire generation of new authors, because if nobody will try their first books, they can’t afford to finish the series. Guys like George are fine. He’s got his. Guys like me were fine because we were already established, but don’t kid yourself, George (and a few notable others) fucked over a whole bunch of careers.

ibid

And that’s the real reason Correia did this, to demonstrate that Martin is not every fantasy author; that some of them will reliably get books in the hands of readers. Correia’s Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series is quite good: creative, fast-paced, action-packed, sharp characters. I haven’t finished it yet, but I recommend it based on what I’ve read.

I would no longer say that about A Song of Ice and Fire. Nothing has ever began with such a bang and ended with such a whimper.