My position is primarily one of "who fucking knows?". If he dies before he finishes it will be a tragedy, but there won't be anything to stop it so that'll be that. We can only take these things as they come; we cannot outright assume an untimely death to be an inevitability.Exterminas said:I can't understand how you concile your optimism with the data at hand. I just checked his bibliography again:
The second and thrid book took him two years to write. The fourth took him five years, the fith six years.
Now, If I am being optimistic and assume that the next two books will only take him six years, I get the following time table:
Next book: 2017
Last book: 2023.
So by the time the last book releases Martin will be 75. How many overweight 70-year-old americans do you know that don't have any serious health conditions that slow down their productivy? Like cancer or diabetis?
And that is not even accounting for the fact that Martin will very likely take longer for the last two books than six years, because he is who he is and has been taking increasingly longer for each book in the past.
EDIT: Out of curiosity I looked around and found a scientific study that concluded overweight people over age 70 in particular have a slightly higher survival index than their thin counterparts:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1532-5415.2009.02677.x/abstract;jsessionid=B7DFE101940C2EA47D494433A741DA23.f02t01
Now I'm not treating this as full-blown proof that he won't kick the bucket, but it's a point in his favor at least.