We’re pleased to announce that Westeros.org is co-sponsoring a Game of Thrones pub quiz / trivia night produced by Geeks Who Drink. The event is called Fire Cannot Kill a Quizmaster and will be in twelve major cities on Saturday, June 8th.

Teams of up to six will play together during this eight round event that’ll cover everything on the HBO series up to that point (a small portion of material will cover the books, but with no spoilers past season 3). It costs $5 per player, so expect team prizes of between $200 and $500. Some locations will have costume contests, but feel free to dress up either way.

Find the schedule, times and event FAQs at their Facebook event page, and good luck!

According to George R.R. Martin at “Not a Blog”, he and co-editor Gardner Dozois have finalized and delivered Rogues, a cross-genre anthology featuring quite the list of contributors. The anthology, tied together by the titular concept, will be published by Bantam Spectra.

Martin provides a list of contributors and their stories, which include Joe Abercrombie, Daniel Abraham, Garth Nix, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, Scott Lynch, Carrie Vaughn, and many, many more. A full listing can be found below the cut.

Another late, late night and we’ve just managed to put the finishing touches on our review of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, written by George R.R. Martin himself. You can find it at out episode guide. for the episode.

And if that’s not enough, feel free to check out the lively conversations about the episode over at our forum, as fellow fans dissect and discuss the episode.

The BAFTA Television Awards—as prestigious in the UK as the American Emmy Awards—have named their various winners, and in the special publicly-voted Radio Times Audience Award, a certain show by the name of Game of Thrones proved the winner over such competition as Homeland and the opening ceremonies of last year’s Olympics.

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin shares the news and his reaction.

Week after week, Game of Thrones‘s third season has been beating ratings expectations. It hurdled over the 5 million initial airing viewership mark with last week’s excellent episode, “Kissed by Fire”, hitting 5.3 million viewers… and this week? According to TV by the Number, it looks like “The Climb” wins the night with an unprecedented 5.5 million viewers. At this rate, I think it quite likely that the season finale could well clear 6 million viewers.

The second showing also added 1.27 million viewers, bringing the total who watched it on TV to 6.77 million.

We’ve worked feverishly through the night to get fans some of our usual content for the latest episode of Game of Thrones, and are pleased to share our detailed episode recap as well as our views on the episode at the episode guide for “The Climb”. Our book-to-screen breakdown—one of our favorite and most frequently cited parts of our guides— is now also available!

Unfortunately, despite this being a propitious day—my birthday—I have fallen ill, so our video review will be delayed a couple of days, in all likelihood. Apologies!

Also of note, HBO released the preview for episode 7, “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, written by George R.R. Martin himself; we’ve embedded the video in the guide page.

Some rather unclear news came out of a HarperCollins show case, in which it was revealed that George R.R. Martin has licensed to them the publication of a small gift book collecting some of Tyrion Lannister’s more insightful and amusing quotes from the A Song of Ice and Fire series. As some might note, HarperCollins is not the publisher of the series in the US… but as it happens, they are in the UK, and it appears that the idea may have originated there. Now Thanks to HarperCollins UK, we now have the official press release:

It’s always a pleasure to interview writer and story editor Bryan Cogman, who has so far written an episode of each season, including what are amounting to two of our personal favorites of the series: “What is Dead May Never Die” and his season three episode, “Kissed by Fire”.

Below, I talk with Bryan about the episode, the introduction of new characters, his proudest moments, and much more. It’s a lengthy one but, we hope, a good one. Enjoy!

Interview

All right, thanks so much for taking the time, first off!

Now, often episodes seem to have their titles decided at the last minute—George’s episode went through a couple of different names before it was settled. Was “Kissed by Fire” always the title you preferred for your episode?

To read the rest, go to the full interview.

With this update we hope to clarify how The World of Ice and Fire will affect Blood of Dragons MUSH.

To start with the basics, The World of Ice and Fire, or the “Worldbook” as it often ends up being called, is a project that we have been working on together with George R.R. Martin and which is now nearing its completion after a very busy autumn and an only slightly less busy spring. The book is a companion volume to A Song of Ice and Fire which gathers previously established information about the Seven Kingdoms (and beyond) as well as fills out many of the gaps in our current knowledge with new information. There is, for example, a lot of new information about the history of Westeros, not the least about the reigns of the various Targaryen kings.

When we started Blood of Dragons MUSH, we based out storyline and our family trees on the existing canon information for our chosen time period as well as on some unpublished information from GRRM. We always knew that this unpublished information was subject to change and as such we have always maintained that if conflicting information was ever published, we would try to alter matters on the game to fit the new canon. However, we have also always said that some information may not be possible to work in as it would disrupt the game too much.

As you can guess, The World of Ice and Fire does contain new canon information that conflicts with some of our established game history and, in particular, our family trees. We will be able to work in much of this information quite smoothly—and the game will be enrichened by it as it fleshes out areas we have been hesitant to speculate on—but it is not the case for all the new details. Some will require compromises between the new canon information and what we have established as true for the game. What we have said so far is that we will be able to avoid invalidating any current PCs (this was very much a key priority for us), though some may require tweaks to their backgrounds.

However, for the time being we are left in a slightly problematic situation when it comes to new PCs. We cannot make all the necessary changes to family trees and game history at the moment; not only are we swamped with work during the airing of Game of Thrones, but naturally we are also unable to release formation from The World of Ice and Fire prior to its publication.

What this means is that the situation may be somewhat confusing for prospective players at the moment. Characters that are listed as Open may, unfortunately, be turned down because they belong to a House that will undergo extensive changes. Given this, prospective players are encouraged to check with myself (Nymeria) or Balerion before requesting a character; we are then able to provide guidance on whether their chosen character will be affected or not.

We understand that it is an added inconvenience for prospective players, but we think that everyone who is interested in this particular time period will agree that it would be a shame to not be able to work in some of the fascinating new history when the book comes out.

UPDATE: We’ve now posted the recap and analysis of “Kissed by Fire”.

As HBO only provided us the first four episodes of the new season, from here on out our Game of Thrones episode guides will get update only after the initial airing. We hope to be able to get at least the analysis and book-to-screen up by the time the west coast airing is completed, but the extensive recap tends to take rather longer than that, and will probably not appear until later on Monday.

Until then, however, we’ve now posted our book to screen information on the episode guide for “Kissed by Fire”.

Thanks to Bleeding Cool, we’ve learned that Avatar Press executive Jim Kuhoric spoke at a panel at C2E2 about various Avatar Press projects, and in the course of it he discussed some of what’s coming from George R.R. Martin. First and foremost, of course, is the comic book adaptation of GRRM’s World Fantasy Award-winning novella The Skin Trade, to go along with their earlier adaptation of Fevre Dream. Thanks to that, Kuhoric revealed that GRRM will be at San Diego’s Comic-Con (which GRRM has previously announced), where he’ll make an appearance at Avatar’s booth and sign books.

The most intersting item, however, was Kuhoric revealing that there’s a “George R.R. Martin original” in the works, which “may” be superhero related. Kuhoric suggests this is a departure, as previously the works they’ve published have simply been adaptations. They’ll reveal more later, but what I suspect this is is a brand new Wild Cards original comic book story, which will almost certainly be scripted by someone other than GRRM (possibly Daniel Abraham, responsible for the adaptation of Fevre Dream and the Dynamic Entertainment comic Wild Cards: Hard Call?).

To see Kuhoric’s sremarks, watch below beginning at the 2:50 mark:

Last week, we announced a contest—courtesy of the HBO Store—to win a Game of Thrones beanie. That one’s done, and we even threw in an additional prize of a matching scarf to the winner…

... but in their generosity, HBO has also given us another contest item: a House Stark blanket, to keep you extra-warm when winter is coming. To enter, all you have to do is follow Westeros.org and tweet #GoTBlanket!

Alas, yes, contest is US only. But we’ll have some international contests quite soon!

Kansas City’s annual, venerable ConQuest convention is about to have its 44th(!) con from May 24th through the 26th, and as it happens, George R.R. Martin will be a guest there. He and Parris have long been supporters of this convention, which we’ve been told is one of the best fandom-organized conventions around. Many other guests will be on hand, including guests of honor Patrick Rothfuss and John Picacio (award-winning illustrator of the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar.

Here’s the press release from the convention itself:

“Dracarys!”

A great and long-awaited ending to an excellent episode. For our full recap, review, and book-to-screen breakdown, just go ahead to our episode guide for “And Now His Watch is Ended”.

HBO and the HBO Store have teamed up to offer up a special sweepstakes (US Only). in which you can win some pretty amazing props from the set:

More details, and how to enter, at the HBO Store!

Australian comedy band The Axis of Awesome have decided to share their views on Game of Thrones, and we suspect it gives voice to feelings some fans of the novels have occasionally had well up in some deep, dark corner of their soul:

“Hollywood cannot live up to the power of imagination!”—so full of rage, and yet so very true!

It was only a matter of time before comedy icon Alfred E. Neuman sat on the Iron Throne on the cover of MAD Magazine. And that time has now come.

The humor magazine is at last tackling Game of Thrones, with a cover that homages the season one image of Eddard Stark on the throne. Neuman has a rather different throne, indeed…

The issue goes on sails on April 30th. For those interested in a subscription, you can try here.

We’ve now updated our episode guide for “Walk of Punishment” with HBO’s “Inside the Episode” regular feature, as well as their own recap video… plus our own Youtube video discussing the episode in terms of some historical details of interest, as well as a quick commentary on our personal highs and lows of the episode. We’re finally starting to catch up with getting the videos done in good time, and hopefully from here on out they’ll be available soon after the end of the US airing!

You can find the video below:

Courtesy of the HBO store, we’ve a couple of brief contests for interested fans. Before we go any further, though: this is US only; sorry folks, but keep an eye out, we’ve some international contests coming up soon!

So, first contest: you can win this most excellent Targaryen beanie! Good way to show your Fire and Blood pride, isn’t it? Especially as things heat up for Daenerys in Slaver’s Bay…

How to enter? Just follow us on Twitter and tweet #GoTBeanie! Only one entry per person will be counted, so no need to keep RTing… well, unless you really want to!

This long video from HBO provides a good overview of the many new characters introduced this season, along with interview excerpts with the actors, the producers, and George R.R. Martin:

Poor Edmure gets such a hiding in this video! Can’t catch a break, it seems…

Conan O’Brien had an interesting guest last night, when Nikolaj Coster-Waldau appeared to talk about Game of Thrones and related matters. This initial segment reveals some details about an upcoming scene in the series, so it’s something of a mild spoiler ...

... while this anecdote featuring a bathroom stall and George Clooney is just plain funny:

Via James Hibberd at EW, it looks like “Dark Wings, Dark Words” has managed the feat of becoming the second most-viewed episode of the series to date, with its ratings dropping very little from last week’s highly-rated opening. Really steady numbers such as these are a pretty good sign for the show, it goes without saying.

Well, this is a bit earlier than usual: Amazon.com is already listing the Bluray and DVD sets for season 3. No release date as yet, though as usual we suppose that’ll be for next year rather than the holiday season.

In the UK, this year’s nominees for the prestigious BAFTA Television awards have been announced, and Game of Thrones actually has two separate nominations. One of them is a BAFTA-proper—it’s nominated in the International Award category, alongside The Bridge, Homeland, and fellow HBO show Girls—and the other is the Radio Times Audience Award, which is decided by the voting public.

The awards will be handed out on May 12th.

(Thanks to @TataniaRose for bring it to our attention.)

Finished the latest episode of Game of Thrones? We’ve posted our recap, review and analysis, and book-to-screen breakdown over at our episode guide! We’ll have additional content—our video review, and perhaps a few other tidbits—appearing tomorrow and the day after, as they become available.

Access Hollywood have again been at it with some excellent Game of Thrones coverage this year, and we’d thought we should share two recent interviews we’ve particularly enjoyed. First, Mackenzie Crook—who plays Orell, a wildling skinchanger (which, for mysterious reasons, has been simplified to just being a warg—those of you with a bit of knowledge of Germanic or Scandinavian languages, past or present, may understand why this is an inaccuracy)—is finally interviewed at length about his experience of the production and just a bit about his character.

Second, one of the most entertaining actors in the production is Liam Cunningham, who plays Ser Davos Seaworth, who discusses his character’s miraculous survival in this video interview:

We previously reported that Texas A&M’s Cushing Memorial Library had arranged for “Deeper than Swords”, an exhibition of material from their collection of material from GRRM that they have been archiving for many years. Martin himself was present for a couple of days of the event, and now those who missed out on the opportunity to attend can get a taste thanks to the university recording and placing on Youtube’s Martin’s speech and interview which was a centerpiece of the whole event:

For more from the event, see this post from author Martha Wells, who attended the events and took many photos of the exhibit and events.

Very recently, Linda and I were interviewed by Andrew Burns for the UK’s The Big Issue, a widely-circulated magazine that will likely be familiar to many in the UK.

Not sold on newstands, it’s only sold by homeless men and women who are given a means to work and an opportunity to improve their lives. You’ll find it being sold in many of the UK’s cities.

We’d been told that they needed a picture of us for the feature they’re writing on Game of Thrones... ... but it was quite the surprise to discover that we’re on the cover! The magazine will be on sale this week, and besides our interview, it also features a broader look at the series and show, and an editorial piece on fantasy literature and its appeal in the current economic climate.

If you’re in a UK, definitely give it a look if you’ve the opportunity. And if you see it, let us know what you think!

Subject says it all! This is earlier than I expected—after the initial first season of a show, it often seems like HBO prefers to wait out renewal news—but it’s pretty much exactly what I expected: a full on renewal for season 4.

Read the press release below:

James Hibberd has the scoop that the premiere episode of season 3 of Game of Thrones, “Valar Dohaeris”, is the most watched episode ever of the series. The initial 9PM showing pulled 4.4 million viewers, while with repeats the show reached 6.7 million viewers. That’s an increase of 13 percent over last year’s premiere. And that’s with the Easter holiday and the finale of AMC’s smash hit The Walking Dead scheduled at the same time. Hibberd notes that the 10PM reairing in particular had strong numbers for a repeat, and he suggests that’s because some viewers switched to the show after Dead was done.

By way of comparison, last year fellow HBO show True Blood scored 5.2 million viewers on the initial airing of their premiere… but just 6.3 million with repeats.