For our third and final preview image from the Lands of Ice and Fire poster map collection (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), we’ve placed over on our official Google+ page a glimpse of a slice of Essos never before seen, nor ever even hinted at in the novels:

I know enough about the new lands that Martin created in the course of making these expanded maps to say that the choice of this area for this image was very deliberate on my part. There’s a couple of neat things hinted at herein that expand the world-building for Essos quite a bit. But as to what that is… well, maybe The World of Ice and Fire will reveal more, or perhaps GRRM will in some interview or Q&A down the road. We shall see!

The Lands of Ice and Fire is due out at the end of the month in the US, and soon after in the UK.

UPDATE: Io9 also has a preview with a number of small slices. A bit more of Braavos, a glimpse at Asshai and the Shadow, and a snippet of the journey map that Linda and I helped with are among the items. And Tor.com has a few more.

Awhile back, George R.R. Martin reported that his publishers were preparing brand new audiobooks of some of his earlier novels, and of special interest to Game of Thrones fans would be the fact that actors from the hit HBO series—Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont), Ron Donachie (Ser Rodrik Cassel), and Michelle Fairley (Catelyn Stark)—would provide the reading.

Those books are now out… but somewhere along the way, it seems Michelle Fairley didn’t actually read (guessing a scheduling conflict came up), and so Windhaven (a science fiction novel co-written with Lisa Tuttle) has been read by British actress Harriet Walter instead.

Links to the books at Audible.com and samples can be found below:

• Dying of the Light (read by Iain Glen)
  
  
  
• Fevre Dream (read by Ron Donachie)
  
  
  
• Windhaven (read by Harriet Walter)

Following up from last week’s first preview of The Lands of Ice and Fire, the collection of a dozen poster maps featuring all-new maps of Westeros and Essos (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), here is our second preview: a key slice of the Free City of Braavos!

I call this a “key” section because, if you look at it, it features a number of locations mentioned in the course of A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons, all of them based both on Martin’s own map of Braavos checked against the published texts for any changes or inconsistencies that Bantam, the artist Jonathan Roberts (FantasticMaps on Twitter, and yours truly could find. Looks nice, right?

NY Mag’s Vulture website has a “Number 1: Game of Thrones (and A Song of Ice and Fire) fans!

Is it true? I can’t speak for all the other very worthy fandoms, but ASoIaF certainly has a terrific fanbase. There’s shout-outs to Westeros.org, the Brotherhwood without Banners, Winter is Coming, and more—they’ve done their research, to say the least.

(Thanks to levifilm for pointing this list out!)

Courtesy of Bantam, we have a very first glimpse of The Lands of Ice and Fire, a collection of poster maps that we know many fans are anticipating.

The posters are due October 30th in the US (Amazon US)  and November 8th in the UK (Amazon UK).

With art by freelance cartographer Jonathan Roberts, this map collection doesn’t just feature places we have all seen mapped before, though for our first (yes, first) preview we figured a familiar image was the best start. These poster maps also include the first, almost-complete series of maps featuring the eastern continent of Essos, maps of Braavos and King’s Landing, a map focused on the Wall, and more.

We’ve placed that new image as our Twitter cover image, for everyone to see when they wander by, but a higher resolution version can be found in our Gallery.

Keep an eye out next Tuesday when we release another snippet of the map, this one featuring something quite new…

World Fantasy Award, Chesley Award, Locus Award, and now (finally) Hugo Award-winning artist John Picacio has set up an online shop to sell prints of his work. There’s a nice range of prints, but of particular interest to fans of George R.R. Martin’s are his 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar artwork. Prints are limited to 100 for each image, and come signed by the artist.

There’s a mass of beautiful work to consider, so do give it a look.

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has posted about the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which helps comic book artists, retailers, and more in defending against attempts to restrain their rights to free speech. It’s a good cause, as he writes:

And in support of it, he’s donated 100 signed hardcovers of Inside Straight, the first in the “new generation” Wild Cards series of superhero fiction, to the CBLDF. Signatures come from all contributors (including GRRM), excepting the “elusive” S.L. Farrell. It’s a worthy cause, and a good read to boot.

While he sets the dragons to dancing and stokes the winds of winter (and gets ready to sit in the audience at the Emmys), it should be noted that today is George R.R. Martin‘s nameday

birthday. He’s a jolly good fellow, and may he have many more! And what better way to celebrate a birthday, than with a song? Shared by Gigamesh, the Spanish publishers of A Song of Ice and Fire, is this terrific Spanish-language version of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, titled “El Oso y la Doncella”

May there be many more songs to come!

Amin, Mimi, and Ashley of the Podcast of Ice and Fire have once again been kind enough to invite Linda and I back to talk shop with them. Not only do we join them in discussing a particularly interesting Tyrion chapter from A Clash of Kings, but we also chat about Game of Thrones, the fandom, The World of Ice and Fire, the climate of Essos, and quite a lot more.

Check out the podcast!

(Note: There are spoilers discussing all novels in the series, and occasionally adult language and topics are mentioned, so… maybe not for the workplace.)

Thanks to Peter Sagal’s co-interviewing of George R.R. Martin at Worldcon, Sagal managed to invite GRRM to take part in the popular quiz show he hosts for NPR,  Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me. The quiz has now aired, and is available online… and GRRM’s segment can be found at the official NPR page. It’s just ten minutes, and opens up with a few interview questions with Martin before moving on to the quiz portion.

We recently posted about the fact that Locus Magazine posted a date for the publication of Dangerous Women—containing the fourth Dunk & Egg novella—for May 2013, and that Amazon.de was listing the Dunk & Egg collection for May 2014 following. Alas, that may (may) be jumping the gun. After digging further, I’ve learned that the date is not yet fixed for either of these publications by the publishers; where Locus got its updated date, we do not know, but it may be the sort of prospective date publishers often put on books. That said, May 2013 and May 2014 respectively is entirely possible—I’ve confirmed this—but the final decision lies with the publishers (Tor and Bantam, respectively) who will be making them down the road.

Still, the next Dunk & Egg story is about the “She-Wolves of Winterfell”, we can say that much for certain. Once we get a solid date on the book, we’ll be sure to share it here.

Thanks to some academically-minded fans, we’ve learned that Wiley—the publishers of Game of Thrones and Philosophy, which we provided the foreword for (Order:  US Paperback, US Kindle, UK)—is tackling A Game of Thrones once more as part of its Pop Culture and History series with a book aptly named A Game of Thrones and History.

On an academic mailing list, a call for papers from academics in history and related fields has gone out, with the book to be edited by Professor Janice Liedl of Laurentian University. You’ll find the full details of the call for papers below; there are some very interesting suggested topics.

See the correction here.

Yesterday, we posted about a pin-up calendar for charity that GRRM and a number of other authors had provided their support for, and mentioned in passing the 2013 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (Order: US, UK) calendar by Marc Simonetti. This morning, we saw Sweden’s SF Bokhandeln tweet about the fact that Random House has put up a video to promote the calendar, produced by Simonetti. It’s a fine speed-painting video, depicting the painting of a scene from A Dance with Dragons that graces the cover of the calendar. Particularly interesting is the significant change to the composition part way through, and how smoothly Simonetti was able to work it in:

Patrick Rothfuss, whose debut with The Name of the Wind made quite a splash both within and outside the fantasy genre, has organized the Worldbuilders charity drive on an annual basis. Last year, he helped mastermind a unique literary calendar, sales of which directly benefited Worldbuilders: it was a pin-up calendar, featuring photos inspired by works such as Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Tom Sawyer.

Now Rothfuss has announced a 2013 pin-up calendar, but this one’s done with the support and permission of a number of contemporary authors… and, specifically, genre authors. So why is this here? Besides the fact that it’s a good cause, one of the authors who has given his support and permission is George R.R. Martin.