George R. R. Martin has been writing A Song of Ice and Fire for a very long time now. A Game of Thrones came out in 1996, which—for the math-avoidant—is almost 20 years ago. The sixth book in the series, Winds of Winter, is widely expected to come out next year, although it’s unclear whether that expectation has any real basis in fact. After that, there’s supposedly only one book left in the series that spawned Game of Thrones. It’s going to be called A Dream of Spring. But when will that come out? Does it have a fair shot of even coming out before 2020? It’s a rough question to think about.

Dream Of Spring Release Date: This Side Of Never

Once upon a time, when nobody liked Game of Thrones yet, GRRM wrote the books very quickly. Game, Clash, and Storm all came out in relatively swift succession, considering their massive size and scope. After Storm, Feast for Crows seemed like it would come out quickly too—and at the time George said the story would start five years after Storm ended. Joke was on him; he ended up cancelling that five-year-gap, which created the Meereenese Knot—the issue of how to get everyone who needed to be in Meereen to Meereen, in the right order and at the right time. Feast took five years to come out. Dance brought the Meereenese Knot to a head, and took another five years. Ten years for two books—much longer than it took for the first three.

Since then, the Meereenese Knot has been behind us, but there have been no signs of a Winds of Winter release date, four years after Dance came out. George, once a very quick writer, has become quite a slow one, not without reason—for a long time, he wrote episodes of the show; he has a very busy convention schedule (too busy, according to some busybodies!); he has other business interests, like his movie theatre; and he has other books that he edits, from World of Ice and Fire to general fantasy collections.

So Winds of Winter has taken four years so far, and isn’t out yet, even though the story, at least in theory, is starting to condense and become more focused. And that means, even if Winds does come out in 2016, it’s probably going to be a long wait for Dream. George hasn’t written a Song of Ice and Fire book in four years or less since A Storm of Swords. And it stands to reason that the last book, even if it’s not as much of a cluster of confusion as Dance, will take some extra time. There are a lot of loose ends to tie up, after all.

So I don’t think we’ll see A Dream of Spring before 2020, sadly. Besides, it’s still quite possible that George will end up doing an eighth book, or a two-part seventh book. The series doesn’t feel like it’s close to the end yet, and there’s a lot of ground to cover, possibly too much for one single tome. And if we get that extra, last book—perhaps, I hope, bearing the once-discarded title A Time For Wolves?—then there’s no way the series will be done by 2020.

At least the television show will be long done by then.