Visitors at Westeros.org have chosen two essay topics for Pearson Moore’s Game of Thrones Season One companion book, “Direwolves and Dragons”, following a poll!
Out of a field of seven essay options, visitors chose “The History of Westeros” and “The Seven Claims to the Iron Throne” for inclusion in the first season omnibus of essays.
According to Pearson, “Visitors chose the two most interesting topics. If they hadn’t selected them, I probably would have included them anyway. These are fascinating threads in the storyline!”
The ebook edition of “Direwolves and Dragons Season One Essays” will be published around August 30, and the paperback edition should be available in mid-September.
In his latest “Not a Blog” update concerning his signing tour, George R.R. Martin notes that a thousand people turned up to have their books defaced in Seattle… but that that wasn’t the only thing he did. He visited the Amazon.com headquarters, apparently… and he dropped by the studio of renowned game developer Bungie, creators of the Halo franchise. Well, suffice it to say, this has raised some eyebrows.
Bungie has moved to being an independent developer after a long stint under the auspices of Microsoft, and they caused a bit of a stir when they announced (on April 29, 2010) that they had signed a 10-year deal with Activision Blizzard to develop games based on a “new IP” for the company. Details have been thin on the ground, except that there has been some argument as to whether the first big project within the IP with be an MMO (sometimes dubbed an “action MMO” by the press) or not; a spokesperson stated they were at a conference, only to have Bungie later state that it was actually a joke. So, MMO or not? Who knows.
Rumors have certainly suggested it’s an FPS MMO, and an anonymous source—claiming to have been one of thirty contractors let go by the company—indicated it was in a new, science fictional setting. So… maybe it really is just that Bungie are a bunch of geeks and sent out the invitation to George (who, for all we know, may well have played games of theirs like Myth: The Fallen Lords, in the days when he had time for such things).
Or, maybe it’s something else? This doesn’t even go to mention the possibility that Bungie’s new IP is actually licensed from works other than A Song of Ice and Fire, such as his ‘Thousand Worlds’ science fiction setting, or something like Wild Cards. However… there does seem to be one thing that may—may—suggest that it’s definitely not ASoIaF, and may indeed have nothing at all to do with GRRM’s work: the studio put forward the notion that the property could include spin-offs like comics or movies. It seems clearly impossible for ASoIaF to fall under that, and while Wild Cards is a shared-world series, it doesn’t seem to us like the Wild Cards Consortium would necessarily have a game studio take over such aspects of their intellectual property (than again, we could be wrong).
Wait a minute. A massive social game. Something on mobile platforms. And guess what Bungie announced in June? Yeah, that’s right, a social/mobile initiative called Aerospace in which Bungie partners with independent studios and provides them resources and support to get their games out there. Is this what’s going on? This seems to fit the sort of thing that may be going on, rather than the “new IP” which surely sounds like it’s something Bungie wants to own lock, stock, and barrel. Who’s ready for a Game of Thrones game where rather than farm, Farmville-style, you burn crops and raze buildings to the ground? That’s what Grok! Studio—which represents some of the media rights for GRRM’s work, as well as that of many other notable authors—has been hinting at, suggesting that HBO may be looking into a massive, multiplayer social game based on the TV series.
Okay, enough speculation. Whatever the reason for Martin’s visit to Bungie, we won’t have to wait for Bungie for a PC game based on A Song of Ice and Fire: Cyanide Studio and Focus Home Interactive are aiming to release A Game of Thrones: Genesis—a unique strategy game—this summer, and they have an RPG in the works as well.
Thanks to Maureen Ryan of AOL TV, there’s a great article covering both the TCA and part of Ryan’s exclusive interview with George R.R. Martin Yesterday, HBO had its session at the Television Critics Association press tour, and while they discussed many of their current programs, questions did circle back to Game of Thrones, presently in production for its second season.
Surely we can call the World Fantasy Awards a tourney? Because the third “Dunk and Egg” novella, “The Mystery Knight”, is nominated for this year’s awards. Published in the Martin and Dozois-edited cross-genre anthology Warriors (US, UK), “The Mystery Knight” is the second of the “Dunk & Egg” novellas to be nominated for the award, with the first entry in the series, “The Hedge Knight”, also having been nominated.
Also of note, 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar (US, UK) artist, John Picacio, has also been nominated in the Best Artist category.
Congratulations to them both, and to all the nominees!
Continuing our video series discussing plot elements and details of A Dance with Dragons (first video here), Linda and I discuss some important things concerning Jon Snow. Suffice it to say, there are spoilers! Comments will, naturally, have spoilers as well.
For more discussion about the novel and the series (as well as the TV show), be sure to visit our board, the A Song of Ice and Fire Forum, where we’ve a pretty amazing community with a lot of great discussions on just about everything under the sun.
An hour and a half left before the submission of questions, and voting on same, closes for tomorrow’s live-streamed Authors@Google chat with George R.R. Martin!
A lot of interesting questions in there. At this stage, unless you’ve a really amazing question, it’s unlikely that a new question will get enough up-votes to be in the top selection… but you can certainly influence which questions are likeliest to be asked, just by voting!
The event will be the first Authors@Google event to ever be streamed live from the Googleplex. It will start at 12PDT on the 28th, via this URL.
BlueBolt, the lead visual effects vendors for the first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, have posted a video of VFX breakdowns to give a sense of the process. It’s a great display of movie magic. According to our interview with BlueBolt co-founder and first season VFX producer Lucy Ainsworth-Taylor, BlueBolt will not be the lead VFX vendor this season; check out our interview for some of the reasons why, which are actually pretty exciting!
Or, our second interview with Game of Thrones star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau! Not much more to say here—why delay the read? It’s short but sweet… and Nikolaj dodged the one question we were most hoping he’d answer. Well-played, Kingslayer, well-played.
San Diego Comic Con’s over, but more interviews are appearing done around then (keep your eye out for one of our own!), and here‘s a video interview from the CBC in which George R.R. Martin discusses the adaptation by HBO, its genesis, and the impact its had. Oh, and he mentions The World of Ice and Fire, which he’s co-authoring with Linda and I!
This was unexpected, and pleasant, news: according to SF Awards Watch (as originally reported in Chinese Science Fiction Newsletter, George R.R. Martin has won “Most Popular Foreign Author” in the annual Galaxy Awards run by Science Fiction World magazine in China.
China actually has quite a burgeoning science fiction and fantasy readership, with SFW at one point claiming the largest circulation of any science fiction periodical in the world.
Congratulations, George!
As promised in our video review of A Dance with Dragons, Linda and I recorded a few videos discussing various topics we thought interesting and worth talking about from George R.R. Martin’s latest entry into the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. Today we’re releasing the first set—I recalled only rather belatedly that I had 15 minutes, not 10 minutes, per video, so this first bunch is split in two—on the topic of… well, see for yourself. But note: there are definitely spoilers.
For further discussion of these and many other topics, we highly recommend the forum, and have begun work to expand the Citadel’s Frequently Asked Questions and Prophecies sections to cover the novel, with work soon about to go under way on the Concordance.
... paper of record, the New York Times, and several of its best seller lists! With a phenomenal opening week of sales making it the fastest-selling new fiction release of 2011 to date, A Dance with Dragons stormed atop the Hardcover Fiction, E-book fiction, and Combined Print and E-Book charts, making the second #1 debut for George R.R. Martin (after A Feast for Crows back in 2005). Besides that, after briefly dipping, A Game of Thrones has surged back into the #1 Mass-market Paperback Fiction list, giving GRRM no less than 4 #1’s this week. A tremendous, and well-deserved, accomplishment!
To add to the plaudits, we note that A Dance with Dragons also debuted at #1 on USA Today’s best seller list, the first time George has managed that feat (AFfC ended up at #2).
The Times has a graphic showing the climb through the charts of all five novels of the series. Beginning with the Game of Thrones hype, the novels have climbed upward, with A Game of Thronesnow having spent 14 weeks in the top ten of the combined print and e-book charts.
Following up on our previous report, Access Hollywood has posted two videos, the first featuring several minutes with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Ser Jaime Lannister), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), and Emilia Clarke Daenerys Targaryen), discussing season 2.
In the earlier article, the quote from Coster-Waldau made it seem as if characters not in the novels would be making an appearance, but from watching the video it seems much likelier that he’s simply referring to characters who have been introduced from A Clash of Kings, the second novel in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series.
See the videos below!
Access Hollywood has one of the most detailed Season 2 remarks from the actors and executive producers of HBO’s Game of Thrones. A lot of choice quotes here. But here’s a couple of highlights:
The voting for this year’s Ennie Awards is now open to the public, and Green Ronin—publishers of A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying—are up for several awards!
Of note, the A Song of Ice and Fire Campaign Guide is up for three awards: Best Cover Art (this is by the amazing Michael Komarck), Best Setting, and the coveted Product of the Year. GR has a number of other products nominated, including their DC Adventures Hero’s Handbook which is also competing in the Product of the Year category.
Congratulations to Green Ronin, and please considering weighing in with your vote!