Westeros

At 2PM Eastern today, CNN’s The Next List will be airing a 30-minute episode focused entirely on the work of David J. Peterson (Dedalvs on Twitter), creator of the Dothraki language on HBO’s Game of Thrones.

Leading up to it, CNN has posted up some clips featuring remarks from executive producers David Benioff & Dan Weiss, as well as star Emilia Clarke, regarding the importance of the language to the show. Here’s one of them:

It’s worth noting that the Next List blog also contains guest posts from Peterson, touching on the topics of creating languages and the history of invented languages in Hollywood. Well worth reading!

More amazing streaming from Eastercon! This time, George R.R. Martin is being interviewed for about an hour and a half, with questions coming from blogger Adam Whitehead of The Wertzone.

The annual World Science Fiction Society awards—the Hugo Awards—are to be revealed in September, and at Eastercon we’ve found out just who the final nominees are in the categories. And of course, some of the nominations will be interesting to fans:

• Best Professional Artist: John Picacio—multi-award winning artist who illustrated the stunning, best-selling 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar—is up for the Hugos yet again. And a newcomer, as well, one that George has championed: Michael Komarck. His most recent A Song of Ice and Fire, a depiction of Robert and Rhaegar at the Trident, can be seen here as it graces Green Ronin’s A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplaying: A Game of Thrones Edition.
• Best Dramantic Presentation, Long Form: After looking at the rules, it was generally thought that HBO’s Game of Thrones ought best be placed in the Long Form category, as it is—after all—an adaptation of a single continuous story. And it seemed a lot of voters agreed, as Game of Thrones gets a nomination. Its competition includes Captain America, Hugo, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, and Source Code.
• Best Editor, Long Form: A Song of Ice and Fire editor-extraordinaire, Anne Groell—our editor, for that matter, on The World of Ice and Fire, and we’ve been working with her on our bit for The Lands of Ice and Fire—has scored a nomination. She actually edits quite a few other books—she’s the editor on Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series, for example—but the jewel in the crown is certainly Ice and Fire.
• Best Novel: Last, but not least, of course A Dance with Dragons received a nomination! Not unexpected, but a thrill as always. Adding extra reason to celebrate is the fact that Leviathan Wakes—written by James S.A. Corey, a shared pen-name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck (aka GRRM’s assistant)—has also landed a nomination. There’s stiff competition in this category, with China Mieville’s Embassytown, Mira Grant’s Deadline, and Jo Walton’s Among Others are also in the running.

Congratulations to one and all! For a full list of the nominees, see here.

Tune in now to UStream to watch George R.R. Martin,  his wife Parris McBride, Gail Gerstner-Miller, John Jos. Miller, Pat Cadigan, Paul Cornell, and David Anthony Durham discus the origins of Wild Cards in the old Superworlds RPG, and where it is today.

Good stuff!

This is quite cool—Eastercon is live streaming selected panels via UStream... and right this moment they’re streaming Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) going through fight choreography (with a friend of ours, no less—Jo, a historical re-enactor, member of the Brotherhood without Banners, and an all-around awesome person). John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) is also on hand!

It looks like the next panel being streamed from Eastercon will be a Wild Cards panel featuring George R.R. Martin, so stay tuned!

So, everyone hoped for word that HBO was happy with Game of Thrones and would announce on Monday morning that it was ordering another season. Or, as last year, maybe it’d be a day or two more - Tuesday or Wednesday.

Now it’s Friday… and nothing. What’s happening?

The return of Game of Thrones to Sky Atlantic heralds many things—among them, the return of Sky’s after-show, Thronecast. Hosted by Geoff Lloyd, it’s a fun—and often irreverent (in a good way!)—show that has a bit of everything. The upcoming episode 2 will feature an interview with the delightful Maisie Williams.

Oh, and every segment contains a few words on various topics from Linda and I, generally explaining arcane bits of background or discussing how fans are receiving aspects of the show this time around. It’s always nice to chat with Geoff.

If you’re in the UK, you can catch Thronecast at the official site, where you’ll also find interviews with a number of actors that Thronecast got a hold of during the press junket at the end of February. The show also available via iTunes, for your iOS devices or Mac/PC.

Joystiq has published a good interview with GRRM regarding the work being carried out by Cyanide Studio to develop the Game of Thrones action RPG (Pre-order: Amazon US Xbox, Amazon US PS3)  that’s due to be released May 15th for XBox, PS3, and PC.

Some interesting thoughts, and GRRM reveals his level of involvement (in brief: the plot and dialog is all Cyanide, but he’s been involved in making sure that the story works in a way that works with established canon) in the project. Below, check out the latest trailer from Atlus USA (the publisher in the US; Focus Home Interactive publishes it in Europe) to get a taste of that story:

Here’s some good news to tide us over while we wait on pins and needles regarding the renewal (which is coming, you can bank on it, but the exact details may be getting a lot of scrutiny and negotiation from the producers and HBO): Game of Thrones has been named a recipient of the 71st Peabody Awards. It’s a very prestigious award that’s expanded to cover many forms of electronic media, including television in numerous categories such as entertianment, which is where Game scored a nod. Fellow HBO show Tremé also took the award, as did HBO documentary Earth Made of Glass.

The awards are selected by a panel each year, and the panel changes its membership annually. This year, critic and confirmed fan Maureen Ryan was among the judges for the award this year, and she gives an excellent rundown of all the winners, as well as her comments on both the process (every recipient was selected unanimously as a requirement of the award rules) and the various titles getting a nod. Worth reading.

And of course, congratualtions to HBO, the producers, the writers, and everyone else involved in making the first season such a critical and popular success!

We’ve previously announced the news that Bantam will be publishing a poster map collection titled The Lands of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK) that will provide the most extensive look at the setting yet, all of it based on George R.R: Martin’s own map designs. It’s presently scheduled to be published in October of this year.

Now we’ve some more information we can share, courtesy of Random House :

The maps will be drawn by the experienced, freelance cartographer Jonathan Roberts. Having seen his preliminary layout of Braavos based on a map from GRRM that was done quite early in writing A Feast for Crows and was consequently not entirely consistent with what he described in the novels, Roberts definitely knows what he’s about. Fans will have nothing to worry about as far as the quality of the presentation and illustration goes.

It’s been awhile since we’ve had the opportunity to have an outside contributor—not since last season—but it seems as good a time as any to start now! Marc Kleinhenz—who’s writing you’ve probably seen on gaming sites such as Gamasutra or IGN, or at fellow ASoIaF fan site Tower of the Hand—has shared with us a piece asking various fans and individuals familiar with the cities about what senses they associate with the series. Touching on the novels as much as on the TV show, his piece, “The Seven Senses of Westeros”, has some good quotes. Particularly glad he had a chance to ask artist Ted Nasmith about it, and of course Amin from the great Podcast of Ice and Fire, as well as Johnny from TotH.

Oh, and me! It’s a brief read, but I’m curious what you’d say to the question—what senses do you think about when you read or watch the series?

If you’d like to read about the essay I reference in my own answer, it can be found at George’s site here... Or, better yet, listen to him read it himself:

Via TV By The Numbers, we now have the ratings for the premiere, and they are pretty good—3.9 million first airing viewings (just shy of the 4 million many hoped for), but with a 2.0 in the important 18-49 demographic, which is the highest the show has ever received.

Besides that, additional airings garnered a further 2.37 million viewers, raising that total to 6.3 million, and that’s without On Demand or HBO Go factored in.

I think it’s safe to say that it’s just a matter of time for the pick up of season 3 to be announced!

Following the premiere of “The North Remembers”, MTV News revealed that they’ve developed a post-show program to talk about the show—yes, MTV knows Game of Thrones is a big deal! Josh Wigler hosts for MTV, and sitting with him in the studio are Newsarama‘s Lucas Siegel and the always-insightful Sean T. Collins, who blogs about the novels and TV show at his site Boiled Leather and now writes about the show for the august Rolling Stone (what a gig!) If you’ll recall, Sean joined Linda and I, as well as series editor Anne Groell, to annotate A Game of Thrones for the Subtext app.

Oh, and Linda and I were invited to record a very quick segment for this and the next episode and, hopefully, episodes to come!. Yes, it’s Skype—like the bad old days of Thronecast last year—but we’ll sort it out.

On top of that, we later briefly talked about the final scene of the episode with Josh, and ended up being quoted in this article on the topic.

For those who love what MTV’s doing, make sure to watch. Oh! And last year, we recorded podcasts with MTV Geek if you visit our Episode page and start going through each of the first ten episodes.

Amazing responses to the premiere last night, and fans in the UK are going to be watching the show on Sky Atlantic quite soon—don’t forget to hit the web for Thronecast, ladies and gentlemen! For those who’ve watched the first episode, we’ve updated our massive, massive “The North Remember” page with two new videos from HBO (an official recap and the ever-interesting Inside the Episode feature)...

Plus, we’ve already written up a preview hinting at what to expect in the next episode, “The Night Lands”, including HBO’s official episode preview video. Enjoy!

Enjoyed “The North Remembers”, I hope? Fans at our forum seem to have responded well, and have a lot to say to say the least.

Want a taste of more?