The fantasy author is still working on The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth book in his A Song of Ice and Fire series, which was adapted for TV as Game of Thrones.

In a blog post last year, Mr Martin said he was giving fans “my formal written permission to imprison me in a small cabin” if it wasn’t completed by 29 July 2020.

That was the day he was supposed to attend the 78th World Science Fiction Convention, also known as Worldcon, in New Zealand, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The convention is going ahead virtually, but Mr Martin failed to keep his promise to have the finished book “in hand” when it began.

But perhaps fans would do well to remember the words of the late Lord Baelish: “It doesn’t matter what we want. Once we get it, then we want something else.”