Westeros

Big Download has a good interview with Regis Robin, the designer of Cyanide’s Game of Thrones: Genesis real-time strategy game. Some interesting details come out, such as the role that misdirection will play in the game and more about the historical setting of the game, which starts off 1,000 years prior to the time of the novels.

Making Game of Thrones has posted up two brand new videos, a teaser and a House Stark featurette! See them below:

Jamie Sives, who plays Jory Cassel, has been interviewed by SweetSigma, a fan of the actor and Sigma Films, with which he has been associated. Some interesting tidbits regarding his familiarity with the books, his fellow Scottish actors on the production, and more.

We had rather expected that HBO would find a way to get the official poster art into the hands of fans, but we had expected that to be ... well, with a poster. It turns out they have a better idea: a brand new t-shirt. It’s certainly a great shirt concept, with the Iron Throne and Sean Bean. You can find it, and some other terrific t-shirts, over at the HBO Shop.

Hopefully the wait won’t be too much longer for a poster, as we suspect that one will do brisk business for HBO.

GRRM has shared a couple of updates to his “Not a Blog”. Amusingly, the excellent actor (and friend of GRRM) Roy Dotrice has been awarded a Guinness Book of World Records entry for having voiced 224 unique, distinguishable characters for a single audio book: the unabridged Game of Thrones. George notes that Roy has almost certainly already broken this record, if not with A Clash of Kings, then certainly with A Storm of Swords.

As to A Dance with Dragons (US, UK), George has apparently vanquished a kraken… only to have another one “swarm up from the depths”, suggesting he’ll have to write at least one more chapter having to do with the ironborn. He notes that A Dance with Dragons has now surpassed the page count (in manuscript) of A Storm of Swords by some 30 pages.

HBO has released a new(ish) video to TV Com, iTunes, and possibly other videos. Using a lot of material we’ve seen before, it does also include a handful of new clips—including our very first look at Lysa Arryn and her son Robin on the weirwood seat of the Eyrie, a new shot of Khal Drogo, and a look at the men-at-arms of the Arryns riding up towards the screen.

This has been a pretty busy week for news on all fronts Game of Thrones, so we thought we’d write up one of our irregular recaps for those who fear they have missed something of interest.

Known as Samwell Tarly on the show, John Bradley is among a troop of young actors who’ve landed a role in one of the biggest television productions ever seen in Europe.

We had the opportunity to interview him concerning his budding career, his approach to acting, and his landing and playing the role of Jon Snow’ss best friend on the Wall. A gifted young actor practically fresh out of drama school, at the same time that he landed a significant role in Game of Thrones, he’s also playing a part in in Canal+‘s Borgia, in the role of Giovanni de Medici, and we’ll discuss some of his experiences there as well.

Read the interview!

Do we really have to say anything else? This is a gorgeous image, and sells the series very well indeed! A wistful, melancholy Ned, the Gothic Iron Throne, the sword, Cersei’s line, “You win or you die”... Perfect. This official poster will be used to publicize the series in the run up—just a bit over a month away - to the premiere of the show.

Any thoughts? Share them below! The one curiosity we have noticed is the fact that the sword is not Ice. It’s the arming sword that Ned uses instead, when he isn’t using the ancestral weapon. It would have been nice to get that in there. However, we’re guessing its size did not suit the composition very well, and it’s an excellent composition.

Oh, and it’s been pointed out to us that the crow… has three eyes (you see two, but one happens to be in the middle of its head!)

As we mentioned recently, Tor.com ran a poll asking for the best SF/F novels of the last decade (more or less), and A Storm of Swords landed at the #6 position. Tor sent out to various people to write appreciations for each of the selected works, and they very graciously approached Linda and I. You can read it here.

Focusing a bit on one particular event in A Storm of Swords, we tried to distill a bit of a sense of what it was like to first read that moment, and to be carried through it by one of the best authors working in the field.

For those who’ve coveted the Maester’s Path scent box sent out to a few lucky people (including ourselves) a few weeks ago, HBO and Winter is Coming have teamed up for a contest, a rare opportunity to get a hold of one of these exclusive items! Unfortunately, for legal reasons, the competition is for U.S. residents only (before you ask, that is also why Westeros.org—run by two people in miserably rainy, windy Sweden—won’t be offering any similar contest.)

Go over to WiC to earn more, and good luck to the contestants. We hope whoever wins will share a report of your impressions when you get it!

The Abducted web-comic, fun for geeks and nerds the world over, has a special A Game of Thrones installment today that’s rather amusing, especially for those of us wrestling with the question of how to deal with spoilers in relation to the TV show (Linda may have been too traumatized to finish A Storm of Swords, but she’s thoroughly spoiled on it, so not quite the same thing!) One of the co-creators, Aldrin, adds some additional thoughts on the subject, concerning an ultimatum to get the series time in done for A Dance with Dragons (US, UK).

This is not the first web-comic to reference the series, though, and we doubt it’ll be the last. Two of our favorites of the past can be found at Least I Could Do and Ctrl+Alt+Del, as well as M. Luisa Giliberti’s amazing series of chibi-inspired comics (note: contains spoilers from throughout the series).

The 5th and final part of my report, stemming from visit to Paint Hall and Magheramorne, is now up. It covers a long car-trip I shared with GRRM and Parris, in which we discussed several topics, and then my time spent watching some of the filming—and meeting executive producer David Benioff and several of the actors—at Magheramorne quarry, where Castle Black has been raised.

Below is a full index of the parts, from events from before the set visit (such as breakfast with George and first meeting Bryan Cogman) on through the whole visit, as well as a link to my Moot report from the same evening.

Subterranean Press—after a good deal of discussion, consideration, and canvassing opinion—has gone ahead and signed contracts to publish the first two volumes of the A Song of Ice and Fire limited edition. Full details are not yet available, but this is a very interesting turn of events.

When Miesha Merlin first published A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings as limited editions, few would realize at the time that the company would close down and the production would shift to Subterranean. In the course of the move, an incredible amount of numbered sets were “broken”—left incomplete—through various issues related to documentation and the like. The first two novels—illustrated, respectively, by Jeffrey Jones and John Howe—have become quite rare, especially when trying to match them up to broken sets; the numbered Game of Thrones has now hit four figures in value on EBay and at specialist booksellers.

In related news, the excellent artist Marc Fishman has over 30 interior illustrations completed for the limited edition of A Dance with Dragons, and will complete the rest of his work—including several full-color paintings—when he receives the finished manuscript for the novel, which is due to be published on July 12.

Suvudu has started its latest cage match series, this with a host of science fiction and fantasy favorites, and as has become a tradition, a character is once again championing A Song of Ice and Fire: Jon Snow.

In his first match-up, he’s paired off against Richard K. Morgan’s character Takeshi Kovacs, a man with a past in a future where a mind can be downloaded and placed in just about any body, introduced in Morgan’s amazing Altered Carbon (if you’re a fan of science fiction or of noir-style, gritty stories, definitely give this a try).  Personally, Jon Snow has Ghost… it’d have to be one hot, military tech-level “sleeve” (bodies in which one can be downloaded) to give Kovacs any chance in hand-to-hand. Suvudu’s write-up seems to agree. Do you? Go and vote!

You can see the rest of Suvudu’s cage matches at the bracket.