For awhile now, we’ve been sitting on some information regarding one of the upcoming, Ice and Fire-related things that George and we are involved in. But now, in the last days, things have been moving quite quickly, and it’s time to pull back the curtain.
Some have seen a listing for a product named Maps of Ice and Fire at Random House’s sites. But this is not, in fact, the final title. We can exclusively reveal that the final title is The Lands of Ice and Fire, which will be a boxed collection of posters featuring quite a few different maps, covering everything from the Seven Kingdoms we all know and love, to the lands Across the Narrow Sea… including the fabled Yi Ti, the lands of the Jade Sea, and the mysterious Asshai-by-the-Shadow. There’ll even be maps of a city or two.
This will be the most accurate and complete maps of the world of the setting ever published, featuring lands and places that we’ve never even heard of before—including long-dead kingdoms, half-forgotten cities, and more. I’m not presently certain as to who the artist(s) is/will be… but I’ve been looking over George’s own, hand-drawn maps (we’ve been asked to help proof them and do some of this and that for the final product—and no, don’t ask us for any details!), and suffice it to say, there’s plenty there to fire the imagination for any artist.
The poster collection is due to be released on October 30th or thereabouts, and you can pre-order it now.
To add a bit more information, the recent amazing work by Phil (aka Ser Mountain Goat) to produce an awesome speculative map (basing it on Tear’s gorgeous original depiction of the Seven Kingdoms) has won a lot of praise… and even got GRRM commenting on it. There, he revealed some details about the map collection:
This is a very handsome map. And based on the information you have, it’s quite good.
But of course there’s lots of information you don’t have, so it’s not accurate. There are certain things—the geography and location of the Summer Islands, the placement of Qarth and the Jade Gates, everything east of Slaver’s Bay and the Dothraki Sea… that you would have no way of knowing.
... I’ve been working on maps for the Bantam map book for most of the last week. Including lots of maps of places we have never seen before, and a “known world” map that goes as far east as Asshai. (Not a true world map, of course. If my world contains analogues of the Americas, Australia, Antarctica, and the like, the people of the Seven Kingdoms are unaware of them, so it did not seem right for the readers to know more than the characters.