Westeros

Fans who can make it to London on August 19th, take notice: tickets for the Harper Collins Voyager and blinkbox-sponsored evening with George R.R. Martin and Robin Hobb now on sale. It’s a world exclusive event, on the eve of the publication of Hobb’s continuation of her landmark Farseer series with Fool’s Assassin, and the two authors will likely discuss their respective works, the fantasy genre in general, and much more. It’s definitely an exclusive opportunity for genre fans!

Earlier this month, we noted the upcoming fundraising drive for the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary, sponsored by none other than George R.R. Martin and Parris McBride. As promised, we’d note when it went live… and it now has. A massive amount of A Song of Ice and Fire-related books and memorabilia, as well as Wild Cards books and other works by Martin, is in the offering, with various packages available at different funding levels.

The proceeds will go to support the Westeros Pack—named after characters from the novels—by providing them a larger habitat, which sounds excellent. All funding levels include signed “adoption” certificates, showing your sponorship of a particular wolf (or wolves) in the pack.

Titancon—a convention by the fans, for the fans based in Belfast—has announced that it will be returning for 2014! Having started as a small effort to bring a convention to Belfast with Game of Thrones as a part of its theme, its expanded its scope to include a focus on SF/F literature, with many noted authors as past guests… and of course, a few actors from HBO’s hit TV show besides.

The convention will be based out of the Wellington Park Hotel, and will run from September 12th through Sept 14th. Besides the literary event on that Friday, the Game of Thrones-focused event on Saturday will be sure to feature a number of actors (guests not yet determined, as it depends on their shooting schedules), and Sunday will see the return of the ever-popular guided bus tour of key Game of Thrones locations.

For more information about the convention, visit the Titancon website!

George R.R. Martin and Parris McBride have long been supporters of the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary in New Mexico, a non-profit organization whose mission is to rescue and provide a sanctuary for captive-bred wolves, wolf-dogs, and othe related animals. The establishment of the Westeros Pack at the sanctuary—each wolf named after a character (or direwolf!) from A Song of Ice and Fire—is a natural extension of that. George and Parris have previously helped raise over $7,000 for the sanctuary by donating A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones memorabilia for a fundraising auction, and now they’re at it again—this time by supporting another charity auction on behalf of the pack.

The auction itself hasn’t launched yet, but in the interim you can learn about all the members of the pack, and even donate directly to adopt one of the wolves (or the whole pack of them).

When the auction goes live, we’ll be sharing a reminder…. but in the interim, Leyton Cougar, director of Wild Wolf Spirit Santcuary, answers a very important question:

This past weekend, George R.R. Martin was the guest of honor at Capclave 2014, an annual SF/F convention in the Washington D.C. area. Besides hanging out with fans and signing books, Martin had not one, but two reading sessions. Thanks to fans on the scene, we’ve a number of reports from the event. On the first day, Martin read from “The Princess and the Queen”, his contribution to the Dangerous Women (Preorder: Amazon US, Amazon UK) cross-genre anthology that Martin has co-edited with Gardner Dozois.

New York City’s Slattery’s Midtown Pub will be playing host to an official A Song of Ice and Fire trivia contest! On June 25th, five rounds of trivia questions based on the novels (not the TV show)—questions which we here over at Westeros.org have had a look over and some input on— will see the best teams winning some cool rewards, such as signed copies of the novels and more!

Sponsored by series publisher Random House and arranged by Trivia A.D., the full details of the trivia competition and registration for tickets to participate can be found at the event page.

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:

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!)

Though the livestream was sadly marred by a ridiculous claim of "copyright violation" that led to it being shut down—made all the more ridiculous by the fact that the Dramatic Presentation clips shown were all used with permission of the copyright holders, and were surely brief enough to merit a Fair Use argument—the Hugo Awards rolled on. Here’s the results for the fans:

It’s that time again, folks: the World Science Fiction Convention is presenting the Hugo Awards, the oldest literary award for works of science fiction and fantasy. A number of the nominees may be of particular fans of George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, and HBO’s Game of Thrones:

Thanks to the latest “Not a Blog” update from GRRM, we’ve learned that Game of Thrones actor Ron Donachie—last seen playing Ser Rodrik Cassel—will be attending Chicon 7, the 70th Worldcon, as a representative of the show for HBO. Donachie also happens to be the audio book reader for the new audiobook of Fevre Dream—Martin’s award-winning horror novel set on the Mississippi in the Antebellum—which Martin announced back in June.

Martin has also shared his Worldcon schedule, which we’ll repost below, with an interesting possible caveat: in comments he mentions that instead of reading one of the chapters from The Winds of Winter that he’s read on previous occasions, he might instead read from The World of Ice and Fire (the book we’re co-authoring with him) as he did at Bubonicon (a report from which can be found here). GRRM asked for opinions. Personally, the chapters he’s read have generally been read several times, and there are extensive reports available on the “A Song of Ice and Fire” forum… whereas he’s only read once from TWoIaF, and there’s plenty of details from that reading that haven’t been shared with fans.

Here’s his schedule:

This was just announced today: the World Fantasy Convention has announced that this year’s World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievementwill go to George R.R. Martin and (the very excellent) Alan Garner. It’s an award that’s been given to a number of notable writers in the past, including Terry Pratchett, Jane Yolen, Peter Beagle, Urusula K. LeGuin, and more.

More information about the recipients can be found at the World Fantasy Awards site.

Garner is one of the writers Martin has admired, so it’s particularly nice that they are receiving the award in the same year. In fact, Martin has a noble house named after the British author, with the arms referencing his enigmatic, unforgettable novel The Owl Service (Order: Amazon US, Amazon UK).

(Thanks to @olafkeith for noting this to us.)

June 26th will see the release of Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: US, UK), a collection of essays from a wide range of writers (including Linda and I!) on all sorts of aspects of the series.

Some really great essays from Alyssa Rosenberg, Gary Westfahl, Jesse Scoble, Adam Whitehead, Myke Cole, and more, and there’s also a foreword from R.A. Salvatore.

The first couple of paragraphs from all the contributors essays are available at the official site for the book. If you want more of an excerpt, a free PDF excerpt will be made available if you sign up for the Smart Pop Newsletter via the above site. The editor, James Lowder, also has an read on >>