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).

Another day, another update from George regarding A Dance with Dragons. A very good day of writing, he notes, for a character who was never intended to be a POV but who has proved his “sharpest sword” for cutting through the Meereenese Knot (the term he’s given to an especially knotty plot structure issue.)

Alyssa Rosenberg, a blogger for the venerable editorial magazine The Atlantic, takes the time to make a post about A Song of Ice and Fire. She remarks about how impressive she finds the world building and the fact that Martin leaves so much choice for the readers in their viewpoints on both characters and the setting, and there’s quite a lot of interesting commentary on this facet of the series from readers of the magazine and blog.

At “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin continues his somewhat mysterious posts about progress on A Dance with Dragons. Having written that he had finished a chapter for a POV he dubbed “Fred”, he now notes he’s left off finishing “Fred’s” last chapter and has switched to writing ... “Barney”, and has finished their final chapter for the book. Can we expect Bamm-Bamm or Wilma next?

Based on the lack of nominations for July, no Story Point (SP) has been awarded this month; we hope to give out two SP next month, however. Experience Points (XP) were awarded to Luthor, Reyna, Dagur, Farin, and Joleta.

For more information concerning the Advancement system (how to use SP and XP, how to nominate, etc), see +HELP ADVANCEMENT and SYSTEM ADVANCEMENT.

Tor’s reissuing of the original Wild Cards anthology, which kicked off the shared-world superhero setting that’s still going strong after 25 years, now has its cover by acclaimed artist Michael Komarck. Komarck provided the covers for the three latest Wild Cards books from Tor, and it looks like he’ll be providing art chores on the rest of the reprints.

George R.R. Martin provided more details on the reissue, which is officially set for a November 23 publication date. As previously announced, the reissue will include three brand new stories: Michael Cassut‘s 50’s-era “Captain Cathode v. the Secret Ace”, David Levine’s 1960-set “Powers”, and Carrie Vaughn 80’s-era “Ghost Girl Takes Manhattan”. In comments, GRRM adds that Aces High and Jokers Wild are tentatively scheduled for late 2011 and mid-2012 releases, but that only Wild Cards will feature new stories.

In November, another Martin-edited anthology (co-edited with the esteemed editor Gardner Dozois) will also see publication, Songs of Love and Death, whose table of contents we’ve previously shared.

George has followed up his previous “Not a Blog” post with another providing some insight into progress on A Dance with Dragons. He reveals that he’s removed a character—who had only one chapter—from the novel, having decided that their chapter would work better early in The Winds of Winter than late in A Dance with Dragons. He states that he now has 100 pages set for the next novel.

He names the removed POV in the post, but as it might imply certain spoilers, you’ll have to click through to read it.

After having been out of commission due to a nasty computer virus that was making a mess of his Windows machine, GRRM posts an update on “Not a Blog”. He touches on a number of topics, from the recent news that Charles Dance has joined the cast of HBO’s Game of Thrones in the role of Tywin Lannister to the availability of the amazing 2011 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar with art by the renowned Ted Nasmith. He also makes note of the novelette of his that Lightspeed Magazine has reprinted.

At the end, he touches on progress on A Dance with Dragons, stating that he’s finished a chapter for a character that he dubs “Fred” (suggesting giving his identity may be semi-spoilerish). As he writes:

“Finally, might mention that I finished a chapter of the DANCE today. I had one last chapter about this particular character—I will call him Fred—to finish, and then I am done with him for the book. Of course, in the writing, it turned into three chapters. So I finished a Fred chapter a week ago, and a Fred chapter an hour ago, and yet I STILL have one Fred chapter to finish. Sigh. The horizon recedes continuously before me.”

Lightspeed magazine, edited by John Joseph Adams, has reprinted online George R.R. Martin’s science fiction novelette, “... For a Single Yesterday”. First published in 1975, at the time when some critics say GRRM was entering the height of his short form prowess, it features the melancholic and bittersweet atmosphere that was a hallmark of much of his writing at that time.

Tom Maringer of the Shire Post—official license holder for creating coins based on the coinage of A Song of Ice and Fire—has posted a comment on our post earlier in the month noting that the shop doors have reopened after a long hiatus.

He informs us that he’s struck new examples of the Dothraki puli and denga coins—a great decision in light of the interest in learning Dothraki—and is, interestingly, working on conceptualizing the Bravossi iron coin given to Arya. Beyond that, he’s moved into creating buttons and trinkets, which could come to include ornamental pins or tacks featuring small replicas of weapons. Last but not least, Tom’s kicking around the idea of producing links for a maester’s chains, some of the metals of which would be quite straighforward to get and work with, others ... rather less so.

If you find any of the above interesting, check out the Shire Post’s online store.

George has updated “Not a Blog”, remarking on how half the editors he knows were in sunny San Diego for Comic-Con while he was still “shovelling Snow”. Clearly, writing continues on a Jon Snow chapter (or chapters) ... and there’s a bit of spoiler about just who doesn’t like all the snow (which may be literal snow, and not just Jon Snow). If you don’t mind (or eare eager) for the spoiler, read GRRM’s post.

George R.R. Martin has followed up on IDW’s announcement at Comic-Con with a detailed post about the comic, noting that it’ll be based on his revised script for the pilot rather than on the pilot itself, so character likenesses and the like will not be based on the rarely-seen pilot. Stefano Martino, an Italian artist who has worked with IDW previously on such things as their licensed Doctor Who comics, was hand-picked by Martin to handle visual chores, while Martin himself will adapt the teleplay to comic book form.

GRRM adds that if the series is a success, there could be more Doorways comics, beginning with his first draft of the pilot script (substantially different from what was produced, due to a setting which was so bleak that the studio asked it to be changed to something more hopeful) and then on through the six unproduced scripts (one of which was written by him), and then possibly on to original stories ... from other writers, handpicked by GRRM, of course, as he reiterates that his primary writing focus remains with A Song of Ice and Fire.

The prospective publication date for their adaption of George R.R. Martin’s pilot of Doorways has been announced by IDW during their big press panel at San Diego Comic-Con. According to Editor-in-Chief, Chris Ryall, the comic book is set to begin publishing in November of this year. GRRM previously revealed that the agreement had been reached during the C2E2 convention in Chicago. The plan for the initial miniseries is to adapt GRRM’s script for the produced pilot, and that if the series is a success it could lead to adaptions of a number of unproduced scripts he had for the proposed series, as well as original stories from other writers within the Doorways setting.

Doorways is a science fiction series, about fugitives on the run from an enemy from another version of Earth. The protagonists are able to travel through doorways which take them to new timelines or realities where history has been subtly—and, often as not, massively—different. If this sounds a bit familiar, yes, Sliders came into development not so long after GRRM sent around his Doorways proposal.

Via GRRM, we learn that Green Ronin—producers of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying—have had an adventure for the system, Peril in King’s Landing, nominated for an eNnie Award. The award, one of the more prestigious in the RPG community, has an open ballot and anyone may vote.

Green Ronin also reports that the pocket version of the SOIF RPG is at the printers, so it should debut in time for GenCon.

Valyrian Steel, official producers of replica weapons based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, have a lengthy update regarding one particular product, the “live steel”, Damascus version of Longclaw. Unfortunately, the manufacturer that they are using has bitten off more than they could chew, according to Valyrian Steel, and have been unable to meet the production schedule. In fact, the manufacturer is swearing off taking any more Damascus steel orders from Valyrian Steel, although it’s suggested this may be nothing more than a negotiating tactic.

The result of all this? The delays for fulfilling Damascus steel Longclaw orders will be partially rectified by a partial order fulfillment for those with the earliest pre-orders, with the rest of the orders filled when they finally receive the rest of the ordered blades. It also means that their plan—to release their replica of Ice in both standard and Damascus versions simultaneously—likely will have to be scrapped, but they are looking into alternatives. Preorders for the regular production run of Ice (and photos of the weapon) should be available in late August, while they also report that they’ve sent their design for their next weapon—King Robert’s famous warhammer—on to GRRM for approval.

With an entry titled, “Snowbound”, GRRM hints that he’s on a writing roll with A Dance with Dragons, writing what seems to be a Jon Snow-centered chapter. He mentions that “Pat” has died a brief but gruesome death, a reference to a character named after blog reviewer, Patrick St-Denis, who won the opportunity to have a character named after him (and promptly die a horrible death) over a football wager.

It looks like some blood will be spilled, late in Jon Snow’s ADwD chapters.