More amazing streaming from Eastercon! This time, George R.R. Martin is being interviewed for about an hour and a half, with questions coming from blogger Adam Whitehead of The Wertzone.
An article concerning the question of why British accents dominate fantasy takes a cool little detour to the A Song of Ice and Fire forum, where the journalist writing the article—Brian Wheeler—started a thread to query fans on the board on the topic. Rather neat, and an interesting question that ties into the general notion that the “past” sounds English, for whatever reason.
Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont in HBO’s Game of Thrones, also touched on the topic in our interview with him late last month.
TIFF has posted the very last part of the “In Conversation” interview with GRRM, at its Youtube channel. And for fans of the novels, this one’s particularly cool—the last nine minutes feature his reading a short excerpt from a The Winds of Winter chapter! Definite spoilers for those who’ve not yet read all five novels in the series:
As promised, HBO Canada and TIFF have posted the “In Conversation” with George R.R. Martin, hosted by Teri Hart. Looking at it, it looks to just be the first part of the interview, but there’s definitely plenty to watch as Hart and Martin discuss his work, his fans, and the television show. You can see it below:
Other interviews, and reports about the full “In Conversation” interview, can be found at the March section of the So Spake Martin collection.
We mentioned yesterday that GRRM was going to appear on the CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos Hour, and to keep an eye out on the official site for the online video. But the show’s producers went the extra mile and posted the full, extended interview on Youtube. We’ve added it to the So Spake Martin collection, along with links to reports and interviews from the TIFF “In Conversation” and other media appearances by GRRM, but you can see it embedded below:
And for those of you in Canada? HBO Canada has the “In Conversation” video up already, and posted here, but it’s region-locked for Canadians only (for now—TIFF.net plans to post it on their Youtube channel next week).
Busy, busy times. Thanks to an invitation from the excellent Amin of Podcast of Ice and Fire, yesterday I joined him, Alex from Tower of the Hand, Apocalypse Dan, and Stefan Sasse from TotH and Boiled Leather for the latest episode of the podcast (which mysteriously ended up with the episde number of 69… hrm!)
Lots of good discussion about the TV series and the books, but naturally it’s full of spoilers and the occasional off-color humor. Check it out!
Canadian band Irish Moutarde has turned their Celtic punk rock stylings to George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series ... and they did it using the lyrics to “The Bear and the Maiden Fair”, a song that appears in snippets throughout the series. They just premiered it yesterday, and have even gone ahead and made it available for download from their site. Here goes:
Amazing!
We sent this around on our social sites at Twitter, Westeros, and Google+ yesterday, and it’s been spreading like wildfire ever since. For those who’ve missed it, then, take a look at Chirtopher Bishop’s Valentine’s Day cards inspired by A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones.
In a similar vein, someone running a Robb Stark fan Tumblr had these Robb-centric Valentine’s Day messages to offer, which we thought rather cute.
The Huffington Post’s television critic Maureen Ryan runs an annual auction for charity called “Swag for Charity”, with items covering the range of swag she gets from studios and networks in her role as a critic. This year, GRRM contacted Mo and offered to throw in a number of signed books to the cause, so there’s an excellent chance to fans of his work to get their hands on a complete signed hardcover set of “A Song of Ice and Fire”, an amazing collection, the start of a superhero saga that’s lasted decades, and much more (including some Spartacus: Vengeance items).
Bid early, bid often, because all proceeds goes to deserving charities, including Partners in Health! The auction on the George R.R. Martin items ends on Sunday.
Over at “Not a Blog”, GRRM has been making recommendations for this year’s Hugo Awards—the oldest and most well-known award for science fiction and fantasy—in various categories. His own work, A Dance with Dragons, is eligible for the Best Novel category, and of course Game of Thrones is eligible in the Dramatic Presentation, Short Form category… but, intriguingly, it’s also eligible for the Dramatic Presentation, Long Form category. There’s some interesting discussion on that topic in comments.
The take out? I’d say fans of the show who nominate should all nominate it in the Long Form category, and maybe not vote for it at all in Short Form (a category which will, with 99.99% certainty, be won by the Doctor Who episode “The Doctor’s Wife”, written by Neil Gaiman) so that the administrators have an easy choice to make as to category. It worked back in 2008 when fans nominated Heroes in Long Form and almost no votes were thrown in for Short Form. That’s what we intend to do, in any case, having gotten a supporting membership of our own.
All members of last year’s Worldcon, and current members of this year’s Worldcon at Chicon in Chicago provided they get their membership—any membership, even the $50 Supporting membership, which has a number of perks such as receiving e-books of all the finalist novels - on or before January 31st), can nominate. And you should do. And if you can actually attend the event, even better—five days of SF/F/H goodness, academic tracks and film tracks, parties and meeting many of the luminaries of the genre past, present, and future, parties, art dealers and memorabilia and books upon books, parties…
Did I mention the parties? The Brotherhood without Banner will be making a strong showing, and their parties are famous. And of course, George will be there, and as he always says, a con’s the absolute best setting to see him, not just at signings and readings, but also on panels and, yes, in the party rooms.
Thanks to Indigo Books, we’ve learned that George R.R. Martin will be speaking and signing books at the Indigo store at 55 Bloor Street West, at 7 PM on March 13th. Great opportunity for Canadian fans to meet GRRM. This appearance hasn’t apparently made it onto his Appearances page just yet, so it must have been recently finalized.
And we’ll just mention that his official page is a great way to see where he’ll be in coming months. Trips planned for this year include London in April for Eastercon, as well as such varied places as Portugal, Montana, Seattle, and Spain.
The David Gemmell Legend Award is a U.K.-based award for fantasy, divided into several categories according to the sub-genre. Presently, the Legend Award has opened up its polls to determine the short lists, and in the Legend category for Best Fantasy Novel of 2011?
You guessed it: A Dance with Dragons by George R.R. Martin, along with many other books besides. The polls close on March 31st, and then voting will open to determine the final winners in each of three categories. To vote, visit the poll (and make sure to check the radio button above the title you want to support).
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?
We’ve previously reported on the benefit auction for writer Terri Windling, with contributions of rare and signed items from various authors, artists, and more, including George R.R. Martin. Some more GRRM-related material has come in—including an original piece of art from the Subterranean Press limited edition of A Feast for Crows, drawn and donated by artist Thomas Canty (one of our very favorite artists, BTW!) so we’d thought we’d provide links to all the relevant items to make it easy to find:
There are many, many other things in there, from prints from Alan Lee to signed books by Neil Gaiman, and much more. All for a good cause!
According to this article from the New York Post titled, “The Pen is as Mighty as the Sword”—and, anecdotally speaking, from various tweets I’ve seen over the last months—it seems that Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire mania has had a grip on New York City of late.