Westeros

The storming success of the GRRM Box limited edition collection—Random House reports that only 4 of the initial 200 Ultra Limited boxes remain—has led to the publisher and HBO offering fans in the United States (and the U.S. only, alas!) to enter a sweepstakes with the chance to win limited-edition and collectible Game of Thrones prize packs! Three winners will be selected on Tuesday, November 15th. All you have to do to enter—besides live in the U.S. and meet the other rules and requirements—is enter your email address.

What’s in the prize pack? Some amazing stuff, we have to say:

Tomorrow is the official release date for A Game of Thrones: The Illustrated Edition, which is being released to mark the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first novel in the A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Of course, the book has hit shelves in some stores—check your local bookshops!—and there have already been some early reviews. One of these comes by way of our friends at A Podcast of Ice and Fire, and they’ve gone ahead and shared their thoughts on the book. For our part, Linda and I had an early chance to look at the book, and we have to say there’s some fantastic new art from Levi Pinfold, Magali Villeneuve, and Aranzta Sestayo. There’s also the welcome republication of some of Michael Komarck’s beautiful artwork based on the series that he’s done over the years. Definitely worth checking out, and we hope we’ll see more illustrated editions down the road!

For a recent preview featuring some of the artwork, make sure to take a look at Vanity Fair’s article from last month.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the publication of A Game of Thrones, Random House and HBO has teamed up to create a box containing a special collectible version of the A Game of Thrones: The Illustrated Edition as well as a selection collectibles and exclusive items. The box will be available in three versions—Special, Limited and Ultra—though sadly only in the US and Canada. The full press release has been included below.

Random House have just announced that the first in a series of digital, enhanced editions of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series has been released exclusively for Apple’s iBooks.

Featuring new cover art, numerous illustrations, enhanced maps, sigils, a glossary, and detailed annotations to provide a richer experienced for readers, and to help guide new readers through the dizzying number of characters and locations in the novels. As it happens, Linda and I have known all about this for awhile, since we’ve worked with Random House and Apple on the project—it’s been a really interesting, often very complicated, project!

There’s a lot more information, so here’s Random House’s press release. A tip, however, for those who simply can’t wait and read through it all: if you have iTunes installed, make sure to visit Apple’s launch site for an exclusive video interview with GRRM about the novels and the project, which features some really cool animation:

Vanity Fair has a brand new interview with series editor Anne Groell regarding the soon-to-be-released A Game of Thrones: The Illustrated Edition due to hit shelves next month. The interview also includes a gallery of ten images from the book—some which fans will have seen before, but also a number of new pieces by Magali Villenueve, Levi Pinfold, and Arantza Sestayo. The interview goes into some detail of how Groell and Martin have each worked with artists to develop the artwork Random House has commissioned over the years… and of course also touches on the as-yet-unknown release date of The Winds of Winter.

Check out the interview, and let us know what you think of the featured artwork!

Valyrian Steel, who have created a range of officially licensed replica swords and other items based on both the books and the TV show, have announced a new replica weapon—or two of them, rather—based on the A Song of Ice and Fire books. Daario’s Ladies are a recreation of the notorious arakh & stiletto set worn by the equally notorious Daario Naharis. Designed with input from George R.R. Martin—meaning that we now know what an arakh is supposed to look like—the swords come with a certificate of authenticity personally autographed by GRRM. The set will be produced as a limited edition of 5000 pieces where each item will be engraved with the edition number.

• Blades: Stainless Steel
• Lady Parts: 24k gold plating, matte finish, antique wash.
• Hilt: Cast metal, antique brass plating
• Plaque: Silkscreened fiber board. Includes mounting hardware.
• Arakh Blade Length: 33 1/8 inches.
• Stiletto Blade Length: 12 1/4 inches.
 

Preorders for Daario’s Ladies open on the 27th of August and the estimated shipping date is late Winter or early Spring 2017. The price for the set will be $350.

20 years ago today, the first book in a new fantasy epic was released. Its rather striking-looking hardcover, with a silver-foil wrapper embossed with a throne, made a decent but hardly spectacular debut. Two decades later, it is a different story altogether.

When the anniversary edition of A Game of Thrones is released this autumn (October 18), it is likely to sell as well as everything else does these days that is connected to A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones.

GRRM has posted about the book’s long journey on his livejournal and in the post he also gives some information about the upcoming anniversary edition. To quote:

Make sure to check out the rest of GRRM’s post, not the least as he includes two of the art pieces, one of them a brand new image of Bran and Hodor.

At Balticon, George R.R. Martin finished his highly anticipated reading where he offered fans one of three chapters to read: the “Sons of the Dragon” material from The World of Ice and Fire, and two chapters from The Winds of Winter . . . but one of those George has released previously, while the other was one that he had offered to read only once before and fans had turned it down. This time, they chose otherwise.

For those who are concerned about spoilers, won’t say anything more here, but you’ll find the discussion thread—with links to various reports—on the A Song of Ice and Fire forum. It even inspired some speculation from us!

Over at his “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has reminded fans that his official website, georgerrmartin.com, is alive and kicking… and if it hasn’t been as updated as it could be, well, he’s been busy. That said, there’s a significant update today as George shares two new sample chapters. The first excerpt is from the 23rd Wild Cards novel, High Stakes. The excerpt comes from Ian Tregillis, who wrote the excellent Bitter Seeds (a dark take on superheroes during WWII) and whose latest book The Mechanical has received rave reviews as the start of a new trilogy in a world where alchemy works and where automatons are nearly human.

The other excerpt, of course, is a chapter from The Winds of Winter. It’s one he’s read before, so there have been scattered reports, but he’s never posted it directly to his website. Here’s how George describes its contents:

(Coincidentally, Linda and I have returned to doing A Song of Ice and Fire videos between episodes of Game of Thrones, and we just happened to have made our first video a question of the political situation in Dorne in the novels, including information from the two relevant chapters from The Winds of Winter that George released. We’ll embed that video below. Specific discussion relevant to The Winds of Winter, and this excerpt, starts at the 32 minute mark)

Here’s a pleasant surprise: the Spanish translation of our The World of Ice and Fire, El mundo de Hielo y Fuego (published by one of the very best SF/F publishers in Spain, Gigamesh), has been nominated for the Ignotus Award!  The full list of the nominees can be found here; amazing to see our names on a list that includes the great John Clute.

The premiere Spanish SF/F award, the Ignotus winners are announced at the annual Hispacon Spanish national convention… which, this year, also happens to be this year’s Eurocon.
As it happens, Linda and I are likely to go, because we adored our visit to Barcelona last year, but knowing we’ll be in attendance as nominees is kind of remarkable.

Many thanks to everyone involved in making this book happen, both in the U.S. and in Spain (especially the team of translators with the thankless task of getting such a massive tome translated, and the inestimable Corominas for his striking covers!)

(Thanks to Spanish fan blog el Caballero de la Arbol Sonriente for the tip about the nominations!)

Some say you haven’t really made it in popular culture until Epic Rap Battles of History features you alongside the greatest figures of modern and present history. Well…

(Of course, George would never battle Tolkien. He admires his work far too much!)

Over the course of three years, the novel A Game of Thrones was adapted to the graphic form by writer Daniel Abraham and artist Tommy Patterson. 24 issues in total, it hews very closely to the novel that started off the A Song of Ice and Fire series, not least because Abraham had weekly lunches with Martin during the process during which they discussed adaptation issues. In fact, in an interview, the writer revealed that he had learned of a connection between an early line of dialogue and the end of the series:

Suffice it to say, many have tried to figure out what the line might be. And for those who haven’t had the chance to read the comic? It turns out that Comixology has you covered because of their massive bundle of an assortment of comics which includes the first four issues of A Game of Thrones, as well as issues of Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time and the Pathfinder comic based on the roleplaying game setting. The 18 comic bundle is just $2.99 in the US, (2.69 euros in Europe!), and as it happens it’s very likely that the dialog Abraham was speaking of is in one of those first A Game of Thrones issues.

For those who have the comics, or get the bundle, feel free to comment below as to which line(s) in the comic are connected to the finale of the A Song of Ice and Fire series!

A fan film project that raised over $15,000 dollars to recreate the tower of joy flashback from A Game of Thrones has successfully completed filming and post-production. You can see “Tower of Joy” below:

It’s pretty much a word-for-word recreation of the scene as described in the novel. And there are aerial shots, to. Pretty amazing what can be done with drones and commercially-available digital cameras!

Here’s an interesting discovery at Amazon.com: a 20th Anniversary edition of A Game of Thrones from the publisher of the series, with indications that it will be illustrated. It’s due for publication this October, so it’s a ways off yet, and there’s not much more information in the accompanying description.

Truth be told, we were told that something like this was in the planning stages, so it’s good to see that Random House is ready to start revealing some information about it. Whether the illustrations will draw from the rich body of artwork that Random House has already commissioned over the years, or will commission a single artist to illustrate all the pieces (as with the Subterranean Press limited editions), appears to be something fans will have to wait to discover.

A team of students at the Technical University of Munich have worked hard over a month and more to apply their JavaScript and machine-learning knowledge to cull data from the A Song of Ice and Fire novels (as well as cross-referencing with our own A Wiki of Ice and Fire, as well as looking into what’s been going on on Twitter) to present it all in new, novel ways… and, most interestingly, to make a series of predictions on the likelihood of certain characters dying in the course of the books. The site, A Song of Ice and Fire data, explains how they used machine learning for death predictions, for those curious about the nitty-gritty of the whole process.

It’s been impressive seeing the site develop over the last weeks (one of the teachers of the seminar got in touch with us to make sure they could use the wiki data). Great work from the students, and a deal of interesting insights. We’re not sure if all of their predictions are that spot-on, but there’s certainly a method to the madness!