Fantasy Flight Games, who recently announced they’re reprinting the original The Art of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire with additional content, have
announced a second volume which will contain two hundred additional pages of art. FFG has a vast catalog of art assets due to their award-winning games such as the CCG, LCG, and board game. Some of the top Ice and Fire artists have produced work for the company, including Michael Komarck, Amok, Martina Pilcerova, Tomasz Jedruszek, and many more.

The original book also contained specially commissioned art by a number of artists. The press release does not suggest this will be the case for the second volume, but we are attempting to check with the company.

The company has set up a sub-site dedicated to their art books for the series.

Continuing its streak, George R.R. Martin’s and Gardner Dozois’s anthology in tribute of Jack Vance, Songs of the Dying Earth, has been nominated for a World Fantasy Award. The anthology contains excellent short stories, novelettes, and novellas from the likes of GRRM, Neil Gaiman, Tanith Lee, Glen Cook, Robert Silverberg, and many more.

Congratulations to all the nominees, particularly artists Charles Vess and John Picacio; Vess illustrated Subterranean Press’s limited edition of A Storm of Swords, while Picacio is currently working on the A Song of Ice and Fire 2011 Calendar.

The awards will be announced at the World Fantasy Convention held in Columbus, Ohio in late October.

As has become tradition, the Brotherhood without Banners—George R.R. Martin’s unofficial fan club—are going to be throwing room parties at this year’s Worldcon in Melbourne, Australia. Precise details of time and date will be arriving soon, but flyers are being prepared (date and time to be confirmed). The fans are also organizing a book raffle at the site, filled with some notable prize packages, and George and Parris seem like they’ll be contributing some goodies to the prize pool.

If you’re thinking of attending this year’s Worldcon, drop by Westeros.org’s forum, where this and other fan gatherings are planned and discussed. As is also traditional, there’s a couple of threads where fans who aren’t attending are posting questions they’d like to see answered during George’s two Q&A sessions at his HBO panel and his ADwD reading; naturally, the So Spake Martin collection will become a repository for all the interesting reports and items that come out of the convention.

Paul Goat Allen has written an insightful article at the Barnes & Noble book club blog, discussing the question of whether the Science Fiction genre is dying or not. A pair of noteworthy sections cite George R.R. Martin and his Wisconsin Public Radio interview from 2008 in which he puts forward his viewpoint as to the reasons for the decline of popularity of Science Fiction, and his personal feelings on what fantasy has to offer to readers. The interview contains Martin reading his brief essay on fantasy at around the 14:50 minute mark of the interview.

You can find much more from Martin by way of his correspondence with fans, on-line chats, and printed, audio, or video interviews at Westeros.org’s Citadel site, in the So Spake Martin collection.

George R.R. Martin has posted his schedule for this year’s Worldcon, AussieCon 4 in Melbourne, Australia. Here’s GRRM’s schedule and comments on it below:

FRIDAY SEPT 3
=============
3:00 pm A GAME OF THRONES on television - the HBO series (I do not want to disappoint anyone, so please note, this will just be me talking and answering questions, I do NOT repeat NOT have any footage, trailers, teasers, or even slides to show).

SATURDAY SEPT 4
===============
11:00 am reading from A DANCE WITH DRAGONS

12 noon signing

1:00 pm interviewing Melinda M. Snodgrass about her career in books and TV

SUNDAY SEPT 5
=============
12 noon panel: Jack Vance and the Dying Earth

1:00 pm kaffeeklatsche (advance signup required)

MONDAY SEPT 6
=============
2:00 pm panel: Zombie v. Vampire Smackdown

This just covers the official programming during the days. The real heart of any worldcon are the parties at night, so those of you attending your first con will want to keep that in mind, and plan on hanging around until the wee hours.

It seems that Pegasus Publishing has a handful of the officially licensed A Song of Ice and Fire t-shirts available, which have been hard to come by these last years. We’ve verified with Parris McBride of Mystic Spiral Traders, who holds the license to produce such branded apparel, and she states that Pegasus Publishing is her convention retailer and that they must have found some old stock. Perusing the House Stark and House Targaryen listings they have, size options and quantities are very limited.

Thanks to Russian fansite 7 Kingdoms for pointing this out.

Xavier Garcia (no relation), a professional concept and 3D artist who has worked with Electronic Arts and Hasbro in the past, is building up a portfolio of new work. Being a big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, he decided to use the series as his focus, trying his hand at visualizing the look of the characters. He shares a number of images and his thought process that leads to them at his blog, including portrait sketches of a number of characters, full body drawings of Jon and Jaime, and even a number of fanciful designs for the Stark’s heirloom sword, Ice.

Dark Sword Miniatures, official producers of miniature figures based on A Song of Ice and Fire series, have released two new figures in their George R.R. Martin Masterworks series at Gen Con, being Daenerys v2 and Shae, both figures sculpted by the incredible Tom Meier.

Tom’s Cersei figurine also received special attention at Gen Con, thanks to Marike incredible painting skills. Just look at the picture with the penny—Cersei’s about the height of two pennies set side by side! Images can also be seen at GRRM’s “Not a Blog”.

(Note: The images might be considered slightly on the Not Safe For Work side, depending on your workplace.)

Fantasy Flight Games has released a free scenario—something of a “What if?”, where Eddard Stark is able to lead an army against Tywin Lannister—for their tactical wargame, Battles of Westeros. We recently linked to an excellent review of the game, that should whet the appetite.

Fantasy Flight Game’s new tactical wargame, Battles of Westeros, has been on shelves a few weeks now, and the reviews so far seem very positive. We’ve come across a new one from Games Paradise Online which is particularly insightful. For one thing, we hadn’t realized just how well the plastic miniatures can paint up—wow!

The first expansion, Wardens of the West, will be available in the next month or so according to Amazon. FFG has also announced the second expansion in the series, Wardens of the North, focusing on the Starks.

After having posted about HIlario Abad’s orchestral score inspired by A Game of Thrones, the composer contacted us to share the exciting news that his score will be adapted to be performed by a live concert band. Musician and conductor Diego Palma will carry out the adaption.

Although the score is intended for a full orchestra, for this adaption the strings and choir passages will be adapted to woodwinds and percussion.

George R.R. Martin’s has been updated with a brand new Wild Cards sample, from the upcoming book, Fort Freak. Written by Cherie Priest, the excerpt features the first few pages of her entry, “The Rat Race”.

We’ve reported in the past on various musical acts and songs inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire—including the heavy metal band Winterfell, and songs from fellow metal bands Hammerfall and (most recently) Blind Guardian—and just yesterday came across the very first Ice and Fire hip-hop that I’m aware of. Now, there’s something else: pieces of a proposed traditional score for the first novel A Game of Thrones which is currently being adapted to series by HBO.

Aspiring Spanish composer Hilario Abad brought his work to our attention, and we have to say, we’re quite impressed. There are three extended snippets, covering a main theme, plus music for two important sequences in the novel. It’d be interesting to hear what this would sound like with a full orchestra.

George R.R. Martin has posted that his tentative plan to attend New York Comic Con has been cancelled, explaining that the chief reason is that his schedule is already busy with two international trips he’s been committed to attending for years (AussieCon4 at the start of September and then Octocon in mid-October); squeezing the trip to New York in between the two would be difficult as he continues work towards completing A Dance with Dragons.

He leaves open the possibility of visiting New York in February, perhaps in connection to the Boskone convention.

George R.R. Martin has given another update to his progress on A Dance with Dragons, noting that he’s completed the final chapter in the book for the character he dubs “Yogi” (continuing a trend of giving pseudonyms to characters). It seems this character is connected to the Mereenese Knot, which he describes as “now hanging by a thread”. This is a total of eight character perpspectives completed, not counting the prologue and epilogue, but there are a few characters remaining never the less (including Jon Snow, and the character named “Fred” that he’s mentioned previously).