Westeros

Patrick Rothfuss, whose debut with The Name of the Wind made quite a splash both within and outside the fantasy genre, has organized the Worldbuilders charity drive on an annual basis. Last year, he helped mastermind a unique literary calendar, sales of which directly benefited Worldbuilders: it was a pin-up calendar, featuring photos inspired by works such as Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and Tom Sawyer.

Now Rothfuss has announced a 2013 pin-up calendar, but this one’s done with the support and permission of a number of contemporary authors… and, specifically, genre authors. So why is this here? Besides the fact that it’s a good cause, one of the authors who has given his support and permission is George R.R. Martin.

Just over a week and a half for now, the second annual Titancon convention will be taking place in Belfast. Last year’s event was a big success, and this year’s will be no different by the looks of it—the coach tour of shooting locations has already sold out, but memberships to the Saturday event remain, while Friday’s Culture Night (free entry) should be good fun. Among guests to this year’s Titancon will be actors Ron Donachie (Ser Rodrik Cassel), Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel), Kristian Nairn (Hodor), Art Parkinson (Rickon Stark), and Aimee Richardson ((Princess Myrcella Baratheon) from the cast, as well as storyboard artist William Simpson, and a host of extras from the series who’ll share the kinds of stories only extras can tell. And, by the looks of the program, a whole lote more will be going on. Like the raffle, in which George R.R. Martin and his wife Parris are donating quite a few items.

If you’re planning on going, or even just considering it, do drop by the Brotherhood without Banners forum where you’ll find a general Titancon thread as well as a very handy coordination thead to help people with ride or taxi sharing, hotel check-in, and so on.

(For those wondering, Linda and I won’t be there in person due to work obligations, but we’ll be there in jealous spirit. There’s always next year…)

Dark Horse, well-known producers of comics and collectibles, revealed some of their newest offerings at Comic-Con.

Among the items revealed were the Tyrion Lannister at the Blackwater statue due in February (and now available for pre-order at 20% off from TFAW, who ship internationally), a protoype of Jon Snow with Ghost, Stark and Greyjyoy shield pins, and more.

One of the things reporter Amy Marie noted was that those two pins were also being shown with several other prototypes which they hadn’t quite decided on in terms of when they would be released…

.... and now you—yes, you, the fans of Game of Thrones—are going to help them decide! From the horse’s mouth:

Take the survey below:

Funko, a well-known maker of pop culture toys such as bobbleheads and vinyl figures, has just sent out a press release revealing that they’ve licensed rights to produce a series of vinyl figures based on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

They are, to say the least, amazing (and amazingly cute). These are going to make amazing stocking stuffers come the holidays, I expect.

Looking around on-line, these vinyl figures are also likely to be very affordably priced, which is all the better. The only question is, why not make bobbleheads? Though I suppose a Ned Stark bobblehead would tend to have its head fall off…

To see the rest of the figures joining the Imp— Eddard Stark, Daenerys Targaryen (with dragon!), Khal Drogo, Sandor Clegane, and a White Walker (an interesting choice, that one)—just visit the gallery. And hopefully these will do well enough to merit more in the series! What characters would you like to see added to the collection, if a second series is released? Arya, surely. Jon seems pretty likely. Jaime, of course. I’d like to see Varys and Littlefinger, myself.

Thanks to the splendid Maureen Ryan of the Huffington Post, she has shared her post and recording from her hour+-long interview with George R.R. Martin at Chicon 7 , this year’s Worldcon. The post provides a great synopsis and guide to the full interview, and it’s much recommended. Some good stuff in there—anecdotes about writing “Blackwater”, the role of prophecy on the TV show as compared to the novels, and more—that you should really make time to listen to.

Just after we returned from our vacation and were buried under work to catch up on, there was a very interesting announcement picked up by the media and fellow fan sites: UK digital movice service Blinkbox announced that they had negotiated the right to start streaming the second easons of Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones right now, well ahead of the DVD and Bluray releases for those two award-winning original series. For those who didn’t have Sky Atlantic and were never able to watch the series, or would love to watch the episodes again, this seems like a terrific opportunity.

The press release is below… but before we get to that, a contest: in partnership with blinkbox, we’re offering 10 movie vouchers! This one’s going to be a Twitter contest, and the rules are simple: follow westerosorg and tweet the hashtag #GOTBlink. We’ll pick ten random winners. This is UK ONLY, so don’t use the hashtag if you’re not entering the draw! Winners will be contacted at the end of the week.

We’ve updated the So Spake Martin collection with a lengthy report from George R.R. Martin’s reading at Chicon. There, he read a lengthy extract from The World of Ice and Fire, which Linda and I are co-authoring with him. You can find the update here, provided from long-time forum member Trebla (much appreciated, Treb!)

As an aside, you’ll also notice something new on this and other So Spake Martin entries: we’ve opened up Facebook comments for those who would like to comment on or discuss entries. We’ve similar made comments available on the FAQ and Prophecies sections.

Via Bleeding Cool, we’ve an interesting quote from co-executive producer and writer Vanessa Taylor regarding the writing of season 3:

Big visuals to open episodes? If I had a guess, the tremendous success and impact of “Blackwater” and the skills of VFX house Pixomondo (recently discussed in a Variety article on German-based VFX houses) have opened them up to the possibilities of spectacle in the series.

The quote from Taylor is from Jeff Goldsmith’s Q&A podcast, which is predominantly focused on Hope Springs, Vanessa Taylor’s first feature film. You can listen to in full; we’ll be checking it out to see if any more Game of Thrones tidbits came out of it.

(Thanks to Marcelo Cordova for the pointer!)

Though the livestream was sadly marred by a ridiculous claim of "copyright violation" that led to it being shut down—made all the more ridiculous by the fact that the Dramatic Presentation clips shown were all used with permission of the copyright holders, and were surely brief enough to merit a Fair Use argument—the Hugo Awards rolled on. Here’s the results for the fans:

It’s that time again, folks: the World Science Fiction Convention is presenting the Hugo Awards, the oldest literary award for works of science fiction and fantasy. A number of the nominees may be of particular fans of George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, and HBO’s Game of Thrones:

One of the more interesting program items at Worldcon this year will be an hour and a half long interview focused on Game of Thrones with GRRM, conducted on stage by TV critic Maureen Ryan of the Huffington Post. Ryan has posted a call for questions.

She makes no promises about asking everything, but she’ll use some of them, and get a sense of what topics are most interesting to the wider community. My suggestion? Go over there and let her know what you’re most interested in asking about! Me, I’d like to know a bit more about what he considers so different between his Littlefinger and the Littlefinger portrayed on the TV show, which is a remark he made in passing during an interview for Sky’s Thronecast.

Thanks to the latest “Not a Blog” update from GRRM, we’ve learned that Game of Thrones actor Ron Donachie—last seen playing Ser Rodrik Cassel—will be attending Chicon 7, the 70th Worldcon, as a representative of the show for HBO. Donachie also happens to be the audio book reader for the new audiobook of Fevre Dream—Martin’s award-winning horror novel set on the Mississippi in the Antebellum—which Martin announced back in June.

Martin has also shared his Worldcon schedule, which we’ll repost below, with an interesting possible caveat: in comments he mentions that instead of reading one of the chapters from The Winds of Winter that he’s read on previous occasions, he might instead read from The World of Ice and Fire (the book we’re co-authoring with him) as he did at Bubonicon (a report from which can be found here). GRRM asked for opinions. Personally, the chapters he’s read have generally been read several times, and there are extensive reports available on the “A Song of Ice and Fire” forum… whereas he’s only read once from TWoIaF, and there’s plenty of details from that reading that haven’t been shared with fans.

Here’s his schedule:

Back during Comic-Con, we had a great look—thanks to correspondent Amy Marie—at Dark Horse’s forthcoming licensed products, but one in particular really caught some eyes: the statue of Tyrion Lannister wielding his axe during the Battle of the Blackwater Rush.

More details have since come out, and Dark Horse has very kindly offered us an exclusive, high-res image depicting the statue from a number of angles. It looks like the tentative price for the 10-inch statue of $200 seems to have held, but they’ve actually managed to get it ready for February 2013, which is nicely timed in conjunction with season 3’s premiere in April.

If you can’t wait until February, Dark Horse is releasing their Daenerys Stormborn bust in October; it’s available from international comics and collectibles seller TFAW—Things From Another World—here.

Over the weekend, HBO released four names of new cast members and their roles to fan sites—we reported our pair , veteran actors Dan Hildebrand and Ramon Tikaram in the roles of Kraznys and Prendahl, last weekend, and now Winter Is Coming has added their pair of actors, both playing Eastern characters as well: MC-turned-actor Ed Skrein in the role of Daario Naharis, a skilled, untrustworthy sellsword who’ll Dany will meet along the way, and Jacob Anderson will play the role of Gray Worm, one of the eunuch slave-soldier called the Unsullied that the Ghiscari slaver, Kraznys, trades in.

Of the two, Anderson has a good deal more acting experience and credits, having been in a number of British TV series and mini-series, as well as in a number of episodes of Episodes. Skrein has only recently gotten into acting, though apparently he has a role in the Ray Winstone action film, The Sweeney.

Game of Thrones set fans abuzz with the news from yesterday that Ciarán Hinds had joined the cast as Mance Rayder, the King-beyond-the-Wall. Now, we can confirm two additional names for the cast, these two focused on the region of Slaver’s Bay where Daenerys Targaryen’s story will be taking place next season. So, without further ado…