Westeros

This year’s World Fantasy Award finalists have been announced, and The Book of Swords anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and the late Gardner Dozois is nominated in the anthology category. The award winners, which are juried (but include a popular component in that two finalists in each category are chosen by popular vote), will be announced during the World Fantasy Convention taking place on November 1st through 4th in Baltimore, Maryland.

For the full list of finalists in all categories, see this post over at Tor.com.

At SDCC, Random House has made a poster available featuring the Targaryen family tree that will appear in Fire and Blood, and provided a signup link for their mailing list that leads to a PDF of the same. We don’t have that handy, but what we do have is an image of the poster:

Fans have already starting poring over it, and we thought we’d comment on a couple of things that have been pointed out

San Diego Comic-Con remains a place for launching trailers for series and films, as SyFy reveals its first trailer for

Nightflyers, a science fiction horror series “from the mind of George R. R. Martin” thanks to its being a loose adaptation of his award-winning novella of the same name.

You can see the trailer below:

Cast definitely seems larger than what’s in the novella, and there’s some very different motivations for the Nightflyer’s mission, but you can pick out moments that are drawn from the original story as well. As Martin has recently stated in an interview with Publisher’s Weekly, the show is not part of the broader Thousand Worlds far-future history in which the story was set, and in fact will take place within our solar system.

UPDATE: We have the Netflix trailer for the series below, and it makes some things a fair bit clearer while including a number of additional glimpses of the show.

Yesterday, the 2019 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar was published, containing art by award-winning artist John Jude Palencar.

Just before the release, Palencar shared a preview of the artwork over at the excellent Muddy Colors blog, including some initial sketches for pieces that you’ll have to get the calendar to see in finished form.

While Linda and I were in Spain for Celsius 232, George R.R. Martin was in New York City for ThrillerFest, where among other things there was an interview and Q&A (we’ve embedded the video!) with editor Anne Groell. Topics discussed include the new Nightflyers TV show from SyFY, the history of The World of Ice and Fire and Fire and Blood, and more.

At the close of the festival, Martin was named that year’s Thriller Master, the lifetime achievement award from the International Thriller Writers association. Here’s a press release, and the video of the awards ceremony below!

An interesting set of reports from yesterday touch on HBO’s future and the future of Game of Thrones.

First, the Belfast Telegraph reports that allegedly staff at Paint Hall—the massive studio space used by Game of Thrones as its main base of operations for all of its seasons—have been told that the prequel pilot ordered back in June will begin filming this October.

Suffice it to say, if true, this is a very fast production path by HBO standards. By way of comparison, the original Game of Thrones pilot was ordered in November 2008 but filming did not begin until October 2009—almost a full year after. And Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen show had a pilot order in September, and began filming in May, eight months later.

If the Telegraph’s report is accurate, it’ll just be four months from pilot order to pilot shoot. But it’s important to stress that caveat—it’s entirely possible that October will see the beginnings of pre-production, such as set building, location scouting, and costuming, rather than actual filming. What can it mean, however, if this tight deadline really is true?

We have two thoughts on it.

Reports from over the weekend reveal that the final scenes have been filmed for Game of Thrones season 8, the final season of HBO’s hit fantasy series. It’s been an extraordinarily long shoot, beginning on October 23rd of last year, meaning just over 8 months have gone into filming the last six episodes of the show. Maisie Williams has posted a farewell image on her Instagram which has caused a bit of a stir in and of itself:

Though no air date has been announced, we do know from HBO that the show will not air until 2019.

I’m off to the U.S. for the week to visit family, but ahead of that Linda and I found some time to sit down and (finally) record a video for the Youtube channel where we discuss the news (including comments from George R.R. Martin at Not a Blog) and consider just what the writer and prospective showrunner, Jane Goldman, brings to the table.

Also, wild-eyed musings about whether she could convince her frequent collaborator Matthew Vaughn to direct the pilot…

Big news today, thanks to EW: HBO has ordered a pilot to be filmed of one of the several successor shows that have been in development, and we have a lot of details to go with it.

The pilot will be from Jane Goldman, who has previously given hints about what she was working on. And the new report shows that yes indeed, there’ll be magical creatures of some kind in her work…

While some fans mused going that far back, we admit, it was something we considered quite unlikely because it’d surely give a vastly different feel to the setting. But HBO seems to have been quite intrigued. And, as the EW article notes, this doesn’t necessarily mean HBO is done with pilot orders, as the article notes, “[s]ources say the other four prequel ideas are still under consideration.”

It should be stressed this is a pilot order, rather than a greenlight straight to series. HBO is known for being careful with productions, and often ordering pilots, many of which never end up being made. But it’s another step closer for there being some sort of Game of Thrones spinoff in 2020 or later.

For those with a 4K monitor or television with internet capability, HBO has released a short, sweet 4K trailer for today’s release of the Game of Thrones Season 1 4k Blu-ray. We’ve discussed the details of this release in our initial post, but suffice it to say the 4K scenes featured in the trailer look very detailed indeed!

You can see the trailer below:

(And for those wondering, we’ve wrapped up our own contest for two copies of the UHD release! Congratulations to Al and BransNotTheNightKing!)

As previously reported, HBO is preparing to release the first season of Game of Thrones in 4k Blu-ray format on June 5th. In time with that, we’re pleased to announce a contest to win a copy of the Blu-ray!

This contest is, first off, US only! But that said, there’s two of these Blu-ray collections on offer. You’re allowed two entries, and only two, one each for Facebook and one for Twitter. To enter via Facebook,  post to the comment thread of this very post either directly at Westeros.org or via the Westeros Facebook Page. To enter via Twitter, simply reply send us a reply to the tweet about this post on the Westerosorg timeline.

Winners will be chosen on the 5th of June, with the sets sent out on June 6th.

Sadly, it has just been reported by author Michael Swanwick that Gardner Dozois—a close friend of George R.R. Martin, and frequent editorial collaborator—has passed away unexpectedly following a minor illness. Dozois, winner of multiple genre awards as a writer, was best known for his work as an editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine (which he co-founded) and of numerous anthologies.

It’s with these collections, in particular, that he returned to collaborating with GRRM as they worked together to produce a number of anthologies including Old Mars, Old Venus, Rogues, Dangerous Women, and quite a few others. In 2017, Dozois’s continuing and influential contributions to the genre led to his receiving the 2017 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, awarded by the Science Fiction Writers of America.

Our sincere condolences to his friends and family. We know he’ll be much missed.

In an exclusive, Deadline Hollywood reveals that Warner Animation Group (part of the Time-Warner multimedia conglomerate which also happens to own HBO) has struck a deal with George R.R. Martin to produce an animated version of The Ice Dragon, his 1980 fantasy novella.

Despite marketing claims otherwise, The Ice Dragon is not part of the A Song of Ice and Fire universe, although Martin has obviously made references to it in his more recent writings, much as he’s made nods to others of his past stories and characters.

Martin is noted to have a producer credit, which is fairly standard for such adaptations.

In an interview with The Indian Express, award-winning writer and director Brian Helgeland shared some thoughts on his work on one of five (or perhaps four) possible successors to Game of Thrones following its final season. This makes the second screenwriter attached to the successors to talk publicly about their work, following Jane Goldman‘s comments in an IGN interview last year.

The first take away: fan speculation that Helgeland had moved on, due to his being attached to write and direct a new film, seems to have been mistaken.

A big, but very pleasant, surprise for fans of Dark Sword Miniatures and their GRRM Masterworks line of officially-licensed A Song of Ice and Fire miniatures: DSM and the legendary sculptor Tom Meier have put together a 15th Anniversary package of eighteen new miniatures. There’s an amazing gallery of images of the figures at Dark Sword’s order page that we highly recommend fans checking out.

Among the characters depicted? Maester Aemon, Darkstar, Grey Worm, Jon Snow as Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch, Dunk & Egg, Rhaegar at the Ruby Ford, Syrio Forel, the Blackfish, and ... well, more, including a spectacular Cersei Lannister piece. Plus, on top of that, Dark Sword has thrown in five additional figures to the bundle, also sculpted by Meier, to help fill out the cast of a tavern or inn where some of the most memorable scenes in the novels have taken place.

Supplies are limited, according to Dark Sword, so don’t delay on ordering if you’re a fan of miniatures or a collector of ASoIaF memorabilia—these are really amazing works of art, as Tom Meier is one of the very best miniaure sculptors in the world.