Westeros

Straight from HBO, the new piece we’ve been waiting for—originally scheduled to appear on On Demand on the 16th, it’ll actually be debuting on the network on the 18th at 4:30PM EST/1:30PM PST—is available online! See the embeded video below:

Screencaps with notable details can be found here.

HBO’s just come out with a Youtube video, promoting the fact that the first season of Game of Thrones will begin re-run on Thursdays at 10PM, beginning January 26th. Mark your calendars!

Sky Atlantic in the UK has just announced the fact that the second season (or series, as they say in the UK) of Game of Thrones will air just one day after the US premiere, April 2nd at 9PM.

As they note, that’s less than 24 hours from the U.S. premiere, just like last year. It’s an impressive example of Sky and HBO working together to minimize delays. And to head off arguments… airing simultaneously—which would mean airing the show at 2 AM—just isn’t economically feasible, as Sky Atlantic is partially supported by ads, and having the first airing take place at a relatively “dead” hour just doesn’t make any sense. 9PM on Mondays places the show squarely in prime time.

And will, no doubt, lead to fewer sleep-deprived zombies entering the workplace come Monday morning.

Subterranean Press has just announced that they’ll be producing a limited edition of George R.R. Martin’s first novel, Dying of the Light. A science fiction novel written at a time when Martin had made waves as one of the foremost short fiction writers in the genre, Dying of the Light is a personal favorite, in large part because of the evocative writing and the setting, the dying festival planet of Worlorn which is soon going to see its “dying of the light”. Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire may spot some characters or themes that are precursors to Martin’s bestselling fantasy series.

Pre-ordering is now available, and the pre-order page includes some samples of artist Tom Kidd‘s illustrations and paintings for the nove.

And he did it again: Peter Dinklage took home the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Tyrion Lannister , which certainly made up for any sadness over Game of Thrones losing out to the (exceptional) Homeland for Best TV Drama.

Thanking George R.R. Martin, executive producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss, and more, Dinklage finished his acceptance speech by noting he was thinking of Martin Henderson, whom he suggested viewers Google; Henderson is a dwarf in Britain who received serious injuries when he was attacked in apparent “dwarf tossing” incident.

Here’s Dinklage’s acceptance speech below:

Unless I’m misunderstanding, I believe this interview was actually recorded in the summer of 2011 during GRRM’s book tour for the release of A Dance with Dragons, but in any case, it was posted two days ago. We’ve linked it in the Citadel’s So Spake Martin collection of correspondence, interviews, and signing reports, but will embed below.

No real spoilers to speak of, and no discussion of the TV series, but some interesting reflections on his work both past and present… as well as one rather inexplicable question.

As George himself noted at “Not a Blog”, Game of Thrones scored a prestigious honor when the American Film Institute announced its list of ten film and ten television programs that had shown their excellence in the prior year, naming HBO’s hit fantasy drama among many other noteworthy programs selected by AFI’s jury. Yesterday was the AFI Awards luncheon where the various honorees received certificates ... and guess who showed up to receive them?

Jason Momoa, Emilia Clarke, and George R.R. Martin.

GRRM is indeed over in LA, and he’ll be in the audience for the Golden Globes along with David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Peter Dinklage as Game of Thrones battles for Best Television Drama and Dinklage sees if he can repeat his Emmy victory for Best Supporting Actor at the Globes. Will he manage it? Ken Tucker at EW thinks so, as does Tim Goodman at The Hollywood Reporter (who also thinks Thrones should take the television prize).

Below is the AFI’s video revealing their award honorees:

Yes, April Fool’s Day—April 1—will see the debut of season 2 of HBO’s acclaimed series adapting George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”. This is according to Variety reporter Stuart Levine, in this tweet from TCA, the regular series of press tours for the Television Critics Association. His just-filed report states the following about the show:

What to do until then?

January 16th should see a brand new behind-the-scenes on HBO On Demand (and, we devoutly hope, on line), featuring the filming in and around Dubrovnik in Croatia, and no doubt there’ll be more trailers, teasers, interviews, and so on and so forth to keep us all occupied. Oh, and there’s the complete box sets (US: Blu-ray, DVD; UK: Blu-ray, DVD) to keep us busy in March, just in time for a marathon session (or five).

Tor has launched its 2011 Reader’s Choice Awards, giving fans a chance to have their say in what their favorite works of the last year were. Voting’s easy: just sign up for a; make sure to follow the rules!

You can nominate as many titles you like in the following categories: Best Novel, Best Short Fiction, Best Cover Art, Best Graphic Novel. You all probably have notions for what to suggest as your favorite novels last year, but I’d like to recommend comic book fans consider nominating Criminal: The Last of the Innocent by Ed Brubaker (for my money, one of the best writers working in the field right now) and Sean Phillips. If you’ve read it, you know how good it is as it mixes crime fiction with a deconstruction of the classic Archie comic characters (yes, really). And if you haven’t read it yet, what are you waiting for?

Valyrian Steel, makers of officially licensed replica weapons based on “A Song of Ice and Fire”, have noted via their Facebook page that their stock of Ice—the Stark heirloom sword—has just dipped under 50% of the limited run of about 2,000 weapons.

They have also just noted that a low-numbered case of Arya’s Stark sword Needle turned up, and the next five orders will get numbers 49, 51, 52, 53, or 54. Here’s Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) with an example of Needle that George sent to her as a gift last year.

Yesterday, we shared a (very spoilery) interview with actor Tom Wlaschiha, a new addition to the series who’ll be playing the role of the mysterious Jaqen H’ghar. Well… he’s supposed to be mysterious, but Wlaschiha really does reveal quite a lot about the character, so if you’re unfamiliar with A Clash of Kings, don’t read it!

Next up, Nonso Anozie—the actor cast in the role of Xaro Xhoan Daxos, who plays a central role in Daenerys’s season 2 storyline—is caught at the red carpet for his latest film, The Grey, and speaks about his role a bit in a rather less spoilery way.

George R.R. Martin mentioned the interview with noted historical fiction author Bernard Cornwell—creator of the Sharpe series of novels, which were famously brought to television with Sean Bean in the title role (a fact that Martin mentions, in light of Bean’s role in Game of Thrones)—on his Not a Blog, but noted that Amazon could only post an extract. He’s made an update, however, noting that the full interview can now be found on his website in the News section.

As Georged noted earlier, Cornwell’s familiar with “A Song of Ice and Fire”, so there’s some references to them from him scattered across the interview—quite cool!

Last night, we spotted the fact that A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Cookbook Companion to A Game of Thrones was now available to pre-order, with a June 26th publication date.

We mentioned this last night Twitter and Facebook, but it was quite late so we saved this post for today.

BenBella Books will be publishing Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire in June of this year, as part of their Smart Pop series. Edited by James Lowder, the anthology collects critical essays from a number of writers that examine the novels from various perspectives. We’ve seen a partial list of topics, and there promises to be some very interesting material in there.

The full list of contributors or topics can’t be shared yet, but we can name a couple, at least: us.

Thanks to Focus Home Interactive, the European publisher, we have a few new screenshots from the officially licensed Game of Thrones roleplaying game, created by Cyanide. We’ve had a lot of new information of late, so check that out if you want to know a bit more about the game.

These screen shots provide a little additional mystery to the storyline, hinting at curious turns of the plot, some mysterious new figures, a bit of new heraldry, and a glimpse at what combat will look like in terms of information on display as you fight. Also, a couple of shots of Dog—ugly as sin, but he’s surprisingly cute; I think it’s because I expected some sort of direwolf-sized mastiff, and instead he’s… well, not anything that big (very pointy teeth, though).