Westeros

Via The Guardian, Sky Atlantic has just announced that Game of Thrones will premiere in the U.K. on April 18th, the day after the U.S. premiere on HBO! This was very much hoped for by British fans, and it looks like Sky and HBO agreed with them that this. And just to head off those questions, we asked clarification as to whether it’d be just for the premiere or not. Here’s what Sky Atlantichad to say:

A brand new behind-the-scenes video from Making Game of Thrones, as they show us glimpses of each of the major areas that are the focus of the story. Lots of good stuff to be seen ... and it looks, from some tweets, that they actually aired it just now, too!

Locus Online, the web site for the leading trade magazine for SF/F publishing, has a list of the best heroic fantasy of 2010 from contributor, Larry Nolen. An excellent list all-around, from what I’ve heard of some of the works. Included in the list is Warriors, the anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It contains “The Mystery Knight” by GRRM, a tale of Dunk & Egg set in the past of the Seven Kingdoms, as well as a number of other stories from notable authors such as Naomi Novik, Diana Gabaldon, Robin Hobb, and more.

After thirty years as partners, George R.R. Martin and Parris decided to make it official, marrying during a small, private ceremony on Tuesday, February 15th. You can read about it over at “Not a Blog”. Of particular note is a list of charities; rather than send flowers or other gifts, they ask that donations be sent to those worthy causes instead.

Below you can find more information and photos.

James Cosmo, who plays Lord Commander Jeor Mormont, paid a visit to an old acquaintance to wish them happy birthday. The Beaver County Times provides a report, and it’s what you’d largely expect from a local paper… but we do have a couple of remarks concerning Game of Thrones:

We hope to have a bit more information soon, but here’s the very first screenshots of Game of Thrones: Genesis, the RTS being for PC being produced by Cyanide and published by Focus Home Interactive. Linda and I have been consulting on this project for quite a few months now, but we admit, the move from the early art assets we saw to fully rendered 3D is kind of amazing.

More below the cut.

It looks like its official: CANAL+ Sweden and Finland (well, they’re one of the Nordic countries—close enough!) have moved from “late spring” to May for its airing of HBO’s Game of Thrones, which means that CANAL+ Norway and CANAL+ Denmark will be following suit as the premier for CANAL+ shows is always the same in these four countries. No exact word on air date, but CANAL+ Sweden informs us that beginning of May is their target and they hope to soon to be able to announce a firmer date. CANAL+ has an official page for the series, which we expect will be updated when the official airdate is decided.

You can read the press release either translated into English or in Swedish as part of a new feature to the site where we will give news particularly relevant to Sweden and Scandinavia in Swedish. Simply look for the links to the Swedish version at the bottom of the article.

GRRM has a couple of updates at “Not a Blog” today. First, he has an intriguing post about Skull Island, which happens to be the fictional place where King Kong is found. Kong, of course, is his term for A Dance with Dragons. Reading into his remarks there, it seems that presently he has one POV nearly complete, another being troublesome, and one more beyond that to write. Does this mean it stands at three chapters left to call it done, with one nearly complete? That seem to be the case, but as we know, difficult chapters have sometimes only be resolved by splitting them up, or going back and rewriting other chapters to provide a new approach, so we’ll have to wait and see.

The other item is a new miniature from Dark Sword Miniatures and Tom Meier, this one featuring Maester Luwin. Of particular note, GRRM points out that the rendition of Luwin’s chain is very near to his own intention (Grand Maester Pycelle’s chain is much more elaborate, being multiple chains woven together and ornamented). As we’ve noted about the Game of Thrones TV series, they’ve gone in quite a different direction, with a very long necklace with great, wide loops of metal making up its length.

Finally, for those who use Twitter, George has given us permission to directly feed his “Not a Blog” RSS feed to Twitter via westerosorg. If you don’t use an RSS reader and Twitter is your primary source for notifications about updates, feel free to follow us and keep an eye open for the tweets, which will use the #notablog tag.

The Making Game of Thrones site has a new article, by way of Bryan Cogman, which is essentially the official pronunciation guide for the first season.

There’s been a few items of note this last week, though on the whole it’s been a bit quieter. Here’s a round-up of some of the more recent news items that may be of interest of fans of the series:

For those who “A Song of Ice and Fire” fans who enjoy Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, one of the biggest frustrations have been the fact that Bantam’s editions of the series have had a number of typographical errors. We got in touch with the editor for the series, Anne Groell, to ask her about the situation in light of the fact that new editions of A Game of Thrones were being solicited for March 22nd, which would include the HBO cover art. We asked if this release would featured any improvements in terms of such errors, and here’s what Anne had to say:

So if you’re one of those disappointed in the conversion to e-book in the past, go ahead and download fresh copies from your Amazon Kindle library to see how the updated e-texts, such as A Game of Thrones, are shaping up.

For those in the UK, Voyager has re-released the first two books with substantial proofreading, and books three and four are due in late February and March respectively. Word is that the texts are cleaned up from their earlier state, although some reports indicate that the proofing has not been perfect.

Last week’s news of an adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” drew a great deal of interest, including an EW.com piece on the topic. It’s an ambitious endeavor, adapting a bestselling epic fantasy series in a medium that generally doesn’t see too much epic fantasy, but GRRM has selected some excellent partners in the effort. Published jointly by Dynamite (publishing the single issues) and Bantam (who’ll publish the collected graphic novels), the first novel will see the art of Tommy F. Patterson realizing Martin’s vast world, while author Daniel Abraham—an old hand at adapting George’s work to comic form— handles the scripting duties.

Below you’ll find our interview with Abraham, touching on a range of topics including his approaching to scripting, his history with comics, the particular challenges of adapting “A Song of Ice and Fire”, and more.

Long in the making, yesterday saw the publication of Other-in-Law’s map of Westeros at his Deviant Art page. A huge, 10mb file stretching more than 3,000 by 10,000 pixels, it puts together all of his regional maps and adds both some adjustments and a terrific series of bordering elements, including a depiction of the Seven and King Aerys II with his Kingsguard. There’s a number of “easter eggs” as well, amusing references to figures both past and present. On top of that, it’s an extraordinary catalog of the heraldry of the setting, drawn from the books and GRRM’s heraldic notes (note that the placement of some these arms are, however, speculative).

Although Tear’s map is a stunning achievement for a fan cartographer, easily equalling any other map for the series, we have to say that we’ve never seen a map that’s this outright charming. And all of it created by OiL in MS Paint, which makes the achievement even more remarkable!

Dark Sword Miniatures, who produce some amazing “A Song of Ice and Fire” miniatures, have provided a peek at several new Tom Meier-sculpted miniatures in their George R.R. Martin Masterworks collection. These feature Hodor with Bran on his back, and the Reed siblings, Jojen and Meera (who has her frog-spear and shield). As always, Meier’s sculpting is exquisite, given how incredibly tiny these miniatures are.

This is a new one for us. Linda and I were invited by the A Podcast of Ice and Fire crew to an audio interview, which is something we’ve never done before. It was a little nerve-wracking, but Mimi, Amin, and the rest of the APoIaF hosts were fantastic! After an interview discussing the website, our history with it, the World of Ice and Fire world book we’re co-authoring with George, and more, we move on to discussing some recent news and then move on to discussing two chapters from A Game of Thrones. It was excellent fun! The APoIaF podcasts are amusing, occasionally irreverent, and filled with some interesting insights from avid fans of the series—check all the rest out!

Two corrections: I was quite wrong about House Manwoody being mentioned in the AGoT appendix. In fact, they aren’t mentioned until A Storm of Swords. However, at the time when George sent us his first set of heraldry notes (April 1999), he had been done with A Clash of Kings and was at work on ASoS, so that’s the first time we had ever heard of the house. Also, as Mimi notes, the wrestler who was the model of Shagga was named Haystacks Calhoun, not Haystacks Howard.