Westeros

Today, HBO’s official Game of Thrones Twitter announced the start of a new promotion for the upcoming sixth season of Game of Thrones with this intriguing tweet:

And the masses did just as they asked, flooding the account with their allegiance. What followed were three, individualized tweets whose responses included a very brief teaser video with voice overs from actors Iwan Rheon (Ramsay), Jonathan Pryce (the High Sparrow), and an unidentified actor playing a Dothraki. We’ve embedded these three responses below:

The TCA’s winter press tour is in full swing, an as usual it’s proved a bounty of information concerning Game of Thrones as executive Michael Lombardo spoke with press. As expected, the sixth season of the series will premiere on April 24th, starting at its usual 9PM Eastern time, to be followed by the premiere’s of the comedies Veep and Silicon Valley.The Hollywood Reporter provides further news of note, as well: HBO’s negotiating for two more seasons of the series, taking it through its 8th season.

As James Hibberd notes, this is news from Lombardo was hinted at last year when he said showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss saw the show running “two more years after six”. However, Lombardo apparently went a step further when discussing these plans when he indicated a full 7th season was not expected. Last year, following the remarks, both EW and we ourselves speculated that this could mean Benioff and Weiss were perhaps allowing for an extended, split 7th season,  to take the show through its 8th year. After all, this has been a common solution at networks to keep a popular show on the air for as long as possible. Now there’s the spectre of the 8th season being a full season in turn, or perhaps it, too, might be split across two years to take the show into 2019.

And it must be said, though we do fully expect the 8th season (whether it’s season 8 in 2018 or season 8a followed by by 8b in 2019) will be the show’s last, it’s worth noting that none of these reports indicate that Lombardo named it the final season. What to make of that? It doesn’t really mean anything, given negotiations are still in the work. but HBO’s executives have previously made it sound like they’d be happy to see the show run for ten years, so perhaps they’re keeping their hopes alive. It will be interesting if the official announcement of two more seasons makes any statement about the end of the series.

Subterranean Press, one of the premiere small publishers in the SF/F world, has been noted for their handsome limited editions of George R.R. Martin’s works—not just A Song of Ice and Fire, but also books such as Dying of the Light and Fevre Dream—has stepped once more into the breach by producing a limited edition of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. Featuring Gary Gianni’s gorgeous artwork from the wide release—but augmented by new end-papers, richer paper and binding, and eight of the interior illustrations presented in color (as shown here)—the lettered edition sold out immediately (doubtless fueled in part by the fact that the books would be custom bound, a first for Subterranean), while the limited edition of 750—priced at $295—is still available.

For the die-hard fans of GRRM, the Dunk and Egg novellas, or Gary Gianni’s work, this seems like a genuine must-have!

As George sometimes does at the close of a year, he set to writing a long, contemplative post listing down notable personal events for the previous year. Unlike these other times, however, that long post was lost to the ether thanks to an apparent glitch with Livejournal. Dispirited, GRRM said he’d try to give a “Cliff’s Notes” version of his post afterward, and over the past day he’s done so. For many fans, of course, the primary topic of interest was the status of the highly anticipated sixth novel in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, The Winds of Winter.

George’s final post in his “Cliff’s Notes” round up of the past year was indeed on The Winds of Winter, and it was a long and frank discussion of what’s happened in the novel. The brief version is that while GRRM aimed to finish by the end of the year, the deadlines for getting the book out in time for the sixth season of Game of Thrones have come and gone. He believed at the start of the year he could finish by Halloween, and that was incorrect; he also believed in August that he could finish by January, and that too was incorrect.

GRRM describes in some detail why the progress has been fitful at best, and admits that the pressure of a specific deadline (something he eschewed with his novels prior to “A Song of Ice and Fire”) proved a particular burden, and so going forward he intends to write without a specific deadline in mind—it will be finished when it is finished, and not before. He notes there are dozens of chapters completed, and hundreds of pages done, but “there’s also a lot still left to write. I am months away still… and that’s if the writing goes well.”

At the end, Martin tackles the elephant in the room, whether season 6 of Game of Thrones will “spoil” the novel. The answer? “Yes and no.” He explains in some detail that the show’s many divergences will mean that there’ll be events and characters depicted that will be very different—perhaps entirely different—from his own plans, and he includes a lengthy list of characters who are dead in the show who live on in the novels, and another lengthy list of characters who have never appeared on the show, all of whom may have important roles to play in the novels. It seems clear that the novels and shows will continue the trend of diverging significantly from one another.

The post closes (besides a small post-script confirming that this was his last “Cliff’s Notes” post), with the following: