Westeros

While Linda and I were out speaking about The World of Ice and Fire at Gothenburg’s city library, HBO finally revealed the premiere date of season 7 of Game of Thrones: July 16th. And with that reveal, they also launched the first lengthy teaser, titled “Sigils” for its extensive use of the heraldic beasts and objects of the Seven Kingdoms.

This follows after the recent reveal of the Season 7 poster, via Entertainment Weekly. You can find the (brief) press release from HBO below!

Over at George R.R. Martin’s “Not A Blog”, faithful minion Raya revealed the artist behind this summer’s forthcoming the A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar, as well as an image of the cover of the calendar featuring Victarion Grejoy in his plate armor and kraken helm.

The artist, Eric Velhagen—do check out his personal site with its extensive gallery!—has been twice nominated for the Chesley Awards, the premiere awards for the SF&F genre, and has been published in the prestigious Spectrum series of art books.

We also have some hints of the subjects Velhagen will be depicting in the calendar, courtesy of Random House:

The A Song of Ice and Fire 2018 Calendar is due to be published July 18th.

Montegrappa, one of the oldest manufacturers of pens in Italy, has quietly released a line of Game of Thrones pens that are quite gorgeous. Drawing inspiration from four of the families—Baratheon, Lannister, Stark, and Targaryen—the series of pens feature three variants: ballpoint, rollerball, and fountain.

Montegrappa’s pens are currently available on some specialty sites, while their own e-commercse store is only available for those who reside in Italy. We noticed, when taking a look there, that the fountain pens are out of stock. We double-checked with HBO and they inform us that Montegrappa will have more available by the end of the month, which means those specialty retailers out there who currently don’t have them in stock will be able to order them in. No word as of yet whether they will be appearing at the HBO Store, but we’ll keep fans posted.

Here’s the full details from Montegrappa, below:

George R.R. Martin has provided new information on an anthology slated for October, Book of Swords, which will contain a never-before-published piece of “fake history” that was originally created for The World of ICe and Fire. We reported on it last week, but waited on reporting more as we knew GRRM was going to provide more information at his “Not a Blog”. Of particular interest to ASoIaF fans are the following:

George R.R. Martin’s friend and regular editorial collaborator, Gardner Dozois, has been working away at an anthology titled Book of Swords since 2015, inviting a host of authors to contribute. One of the invited authors, Matthew Hughes, posted a list of some of the authors that were then on board. The list included Ken Liu (whose contribution, “The Hidden Girl”, was optioned for film last year), Ellen Kushner, Scott Lynch, Robin Hobb, Daniel Abraham, K.J. Parker, Garth Nix, C.J Cherryh, Elizabeth Bear, and Cecelia Holland.

Hughes suggested there’d probably be some other significant authors, and as fans have now discovered, one of those names is George R.R. Martin himself. We don’t have a table of contents to share as of yet, but we’ll say that there’s a great deal of speculation among fans related to The World of Ice and Fire and Dunk & Egg.

We’ll see if we can’t shake that table of contents loose.

Sky Atlantic, home of Game of Thrones in the UK, and chef director Dan Doherty of the Duck and Waffle have teamed up with UK delivery service Deliveroo to present “The Drama Kitchen”, a pop-up takeaway which will be open from this evening to Sunday evening. The idea behind the concept? The 12 different meals available to order are all inspired by some of Sky Atlantic’s shows… including, of course, Game of Thrones.

See the Game of Thrones menu created for The Drama Kitchen:

That photo makes it all look quite delicious, although here’s hoping Bowl o’ Brown excludes human flesh! For those interested in ordering, note that availability is restricted geographically:

“The Drama Kitchen” will be open from January 26 to January 29.

Over at Not a Blog, George R.R. Martin has given a short and sweet update on the highly-anticipated The Winds of Winter, despite his general policy (forged from past experience) to not remark on it. It’s a brief comment, which we’ll share here:

And that’s it. As he notes, he thinks it could be finished this year… or maybe it won’t be, as he’s noted he has been wrong before. But for those who’ve irrationally feared he’s given up on the series, this should hopefully settle some nerves.

The New Year has begun, and Random House has informed us that this Friday—January 6—will be the last day they will be taking orders on the GRRM Box with its collection of collectibles and goodies for fans of both A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Thanks to Random House, we’re glad to say that fans can order any of the available boxes at 15% off with the code LASTCHANCE if they order here.

For more about the GRRM Box, you can read our announcement post sharing the full details.

During the airing of the 6th season of Game of Thrones, the Royal Mail and Tourism NI collaborated to release ten limited edition stamps dedicated to the TV series. Each week, a new stamp was released, featuring images that resonated with the series. Now, Westeros.org is pleased to have a contest to win a limited edition stamp sheet—one of only 100 sheets produced!—featuring all ten stamps.

There are three ways to enter the contest, and get a chance to win the stamp sheet:

1) Follow our Facebook page and post on the initial post from us with this title.
2) Follow our Twitter account and RT our initial post from us with this title.
3) Join our forum and post to the thread in the Game of Thrones News section indicating your interest in entering the contest.

At the end of the week we’ll collate all the entries and choose one winner. This competition is open world-wide.

Good luck!

Apple and Random House, continuing the enhanced edition series announced back in September, have now released the A Storm of Swords digital enhanced edition. Just as with the prior two books, this enhanced edition includes a bevy of art, journey maps for POV characters, an extensive glossary, and numerous annotations providing insights and trivia into the text. There’s a brief video featuring George R.R. Martin featuring some nifty animations:

To learn more about the series, you can visit here. The A Storm of Swords enhanced edition, as with all enhanced editions, is exclusive to iTunes.

The Hollywood Reporter, covering HBO CEO Richard Plepler’s presence in Spain for the launch of HBO Spain, reports that Plepler remarked to their reporter that there are “embryonic conversations” going on in HBO headquarters about possible spin-offs between himself, President of Programming Casey Bloys, and the producers of the hit show. To quote Plepler more directly:

This continues the pattern of various executives and producers acknowledging their interest in following the series up with some sort of spin-off after its initial run is complete. Suggestions that have come from various parties to those conversations include a feature film, a continuation of the Game of Thrones story beyond its end (presumably following a mixture of old characters—some of those who survive the whole thing, no doubt—and new creations for the theoretical sequel), and even prequels drawing from the histories in The World of Ice and Fire or the Dunk & Egg novellas as found in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

Although the ultra limited edition of the GRRM Box, with a run of just 200 priced at $600 each, sold out almost instantly (the limited and deluxe limited sets are still available), publisher Random House has announced that they are donating the rarest of them all—Ultra Limited Edition Box #001—in an auction to benefit the Wild Spirit Wolf Sanctuary.

Here’s the press release with the full details regarding the auction, which will be hosted on EBay and will begin tomorrow, December 2nd:

An official website for the Wild Cards superhero shared-world novels, whose origins lay way back in 1983 with a roleplaying game campaign that George R.R. Martin devised, has now been launched.

Of note are a number of initial blog posts from Martin and other members of the Wild Cards Consortium discussing various aspects of the shared world, from its inception and on down to recent days. It’s a good looking site, featuring a cover gallery, interviews, videos (including a 1988 recording of a Worldcon Wild Cards panel!), sample stories, and more.

The latest entry in the series is High Stakes, which was published this August.

UPDATE: Editor Anne Groell has gotten back to us to confirm that Ben Avery has adapted the script, and that the page count is 148 pages, not 240 pages as previously reported. We have corrected the report below.

“The Mystery Knight”, the third in the Dunk & Egg series of novellas set in the past of the Seven Kingdoms, is finally getting the comic book adaptation fans of the first two adaptions have beeing waiting for, according to Amazon. The adaption was first announced in 2013.

With a July 4 release date—matching the date on Random House’s own site—it looks like it’ll be released directly in collected format.

The Hedge Knight, the well-regarded first adaptation from Dabel Bros Productions, had art by veteran artist Mike S. Miller (who is listed as illustrating The Mystery Knight) and script by Ben Avrey (also returning). Eventually rights for the collected series shifted to Jet City Comics, Amazon’s own imprint, who followed up by then eventually publishing the The Sworn Sword collection which for a time was published by Marvel Comics.

HBO’s just passed along word that they’ve entered into a collaboration with Vintage Wine Estates to create a selection of Game of Thrones wines including a Chardonnay, a Cabernet Sauvignon, and a red blend. (Funnily enough, this isn’t the first time there’s been wines produced with a A Song of Ice and Fire bent—the Brotherhood without Banners fans produced a very limited run of Arbor Gold” and a “Dornish Red” wines—with custom labels and all—for the 2006 Worldcon, L.A. Con IV!)

Here’s the press release below: