Westeros

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:

We previously reported that Texas A&M’s Cushing Memorial Library had arranged for “Deeper than Swords”, an exhibition of material from their collection of material from GRRM that they have been archiving for many years. Martin himself was present for a couple of days of the event, and now those who missed out on the opportunity to attend can get a taste thanks to the university recording and placing on Youtube’s Martin’s speech and interview which was a centerpiece of the whole event:

For more from the event, see this post from author Martha Wells, who attended the events and took many photos of the exhibit and events.

For those who drop by Georgerrmartin.com—Martin’s official site on the web—will have discovered that it has now gotten something of a facelift. It contains all the great features—the essays, the photos, the miniatures, and more—that make it stand out as uniquely Martin’s personal site, but it’s been given a much more modern design. 

You know, we knew about plans for this for… well, a long while, we won’t mention how long exactly. ;) But glad to see it’s finally come to fruition.

An excellent new interview with George R.R. Martin has been published by the UK newspaper The Telegraph. Conducted and written by Jessica Salter, the article takes us into Martin’s home—some very nice pictures of his collection of ASoIaF-related art, and (for us) a rather thrilling look at one of the stained glass windows he commissioned for his “Library Tower” (thrilling, because the design is very familiar)—as he discusses his life and his work.

It’s definitely worth reading.

George R.R. Martin may be one of the panelists at the Emmy webcast tomorrow, but if you’re eager to read an in-depth interview with him, you can’t go wrong with this very interesting interview from the New Jersey Monthly, which goes hand-in-hand with their profile of “the King of Fantasy”.

Great to hear a bit more about Martin’s early life, a bit more about the origins of the series, and some of his thoughts on the television show. Here’s a quote:

Amazon.com’s Omnivoracious blog has a brand new interview with George R.R. Martin, discussing aspects of his work as the writer of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, as well as the Game of Thrones TV series. Note that it’s vaguely spoilerish, so if you’ve not read through at least the first three novels and your extremely paranoid regarding even the vaguest of potential spoilers, best avoid.

Last night, we posted about the Game of Thrones-themed Sports Illustrated Power Issue. We now have the podcast—hosted by Richard Deitsch—with GRRM, which you can find here along with a partial transcript of some of Martin’s remarks.

It’s very much sports-oriented, but there’s some remarks that touch on the characters and the setting (such as Martin’s comparison of knights to athletes).

We’ve placed this interview in the So Spake Martin collection, where you’ll find a great deal of links to interviews, correspondence, and reports from readings, panels, and conventions.

This past weekend, George R.R. Martin was at Boskone. A few reports have floated around since then, regarding his signing, the Q&A… and a reading he did of material from not one, but two chapters from The Winds of Winter. Thanks to a fan, we now have a pretty detailed rundown of what was contained in those chapters over at the A Song of Ice and Fire Forum. You can read it here, but in case it needs to be said, there are some definite spoilers therein!

For reports of other readings from Martin, and discussion of chapters he’s released on his website, you can go to our The Winds of Winter sub-forum.

For those who may have thought a $50 cover price was a bit steep for The World of Ice and Fire—the book we’ve co-written with George R.R. Martin—it looks like Amazon.com has received some corrected information: it’s now priced at $40, which is presently discounted down to under $28 presently (Preorder).

For that matter, the book appears to have picked up a new subtitle: “The Official History of Westeros and The World of A Game of Thrones”. This is actually news to us, since those are decisions outside of our purview.

By the by, speaking of Amazon, they’re now shipping the Game of Thrones Complete Second Season Bluray and DVD sets (Order: US Bluray, US DVD) , with the Bluray down to $29.99—more than 50% off the retail price! If you’ve missed it, I’ve written up a review discussing some of its features. I even came across a fourth dragon’s egg since that review, featuring a Littlefinger and Varys scene that fans will doubtless enjoy.

We’ve noted this previously, but a new article in Texas A&M’s The Eagle provides some amazing insight into the forthcoming Deeper than Swords exhibition at the Cushing Library, focused entirely on A Song of Ice and Fire and the many things that have been born from it. George R.R. Martin was invited to have his life’s work archived at the library back in 1993, in recognition of his contributions to science fiction and fantasy fiction and television, and has been a “dream donor” ever since.

Among the holdings in their archives:

Concerning the event itself, here’s what The Eagle has to say:

(Many thanks to Olaf Keith for pointing this article out.)

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin shares the news that his science fix up novel, Tuf Voyaging, has now been reissued by Bantam Spectra. A fix up is a novel that’s constructed from a number of short stories, and in this case these stories tell the tale of Haviland Tuf—a rather eccentric merchant in the far future (in the setting Martin has dubbed the Thousand Worlds) who becomes commander of the most powerful, dangerous ship in the galaxy. They’re alternately amusing and scary, and the final part always gives me chills.

In his post and in comments, Martin ends up responding to questions regarding his recent overall deal with HBO, which will see him pitching and potentially writing and producing new series’ for HBO. Here’s what he had to say about some of the possibilities kicked around (we’ve bolded text for key points):

This is pretty cool: George R.R. Martin has signed an overall deal with HBO, according to Deadline’s Neelie Andreeva.

What does that mean? Per the article:

Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has posted the fact that he and co-editor Gardner Dozois have delivered the cross-genre anthology, Dangerous Women. He has provided a full list of contents, and there’s a surprise in there for fans of the series:

Emphasis mine, for those looking for details on Martin’s story.

This is a nice bit of information (thanks to Olaf Keith for pointing it out: according to USA Today, every book of the A Song of Ice and Fire series were among the 100 top-selling novels of 2012. The highest placed on the list? The first and the oldest, A Game of Thrones, at #21. That’s quite a position for a book published 16 years ago!

Courtesy of Tor.com, Daniel Abraham’s original story set in the WIld Cards shared-world universe is now available on-line. “When We Were Heroes”  features Curveball and Bugsy, two characters introduced in the “new” Wild Cards trilogy that began with 2008’s Inside Straight. Tor.com suggests that this is the first of several stories George R.R. Martin has commissioned in the wake of the success of Fort Freak.

In further news, over at “Not a Blog” GRRM has noted that the follow-up to Fort Freak, Lowball, is nearly done, and that the third novel in this trilogy—High Stakes—will be in progress immediately after Lowball has been delivered to the publisher.