Westeros

Back in March, Linda and I were invited to the grand opening of the Power Games (Maktspel) exhibit in Stockholm’s Royal Armory, featuring a replica of the Iron Throne as well as numerous costumes from Game of Thrones alongside with historical costumes from Sweden’s royal history as well as costumes from the award-winning Elizabeth and Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It was a fine occasion, and the quality of the exhibit itself was exceptional.

Now, we’ve been invited back on October 4th for a special event built around the exhibit. Beginning at 11AM, with a chance to have a photo taken by a professional photographer as attendees sit on the Iron Throne, the event will include guided tours of the exhibit, as well as a couple of seminars which begin at 3:00PM. One will focus on on the burgeoning popularity of fantasy, featuring the founder of Sweden’s excellent SF Bokhandlen SF/F bookstore… and the other will be all about The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order:US, UK), Westeros.org, and history in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, featuring Linda andme as well as genre experts from SF Bokhandlen.

Tickets for the seminars can be booked by mailing .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or calling 08-402 30 30 (Monday-Friday between 9-12). The seminar ticket cost is 100 kr, including entry to the museum, and our panel, at least, will be in English.

Hope to see some fellow A Song of Ice and Fire fans there!

Courtesy of HBO, we have an exclusive excerpt from Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones: Seasons 3 and 4, written by Cat Taylor, assistant and official “keeper of scrolls” for Game of Thrones, as well as the lead writer on HBO’s Making Game of Thrones production blog. The first book in the series, covering the first two seasons, was written by writer and co-producer Bryan Cogman, and was a fantastic look behind the scenes, filled with photographs, interviews, VFX renderings, and concept art that showed the massive scale and complexity of the production, as well as the amount of talent involved in making it the visual splendor that it is.

This excerpt suggests that the second volume in the series will do the same, as it gives us an inside look at the appearance of the giants and the mammoths in “The Watchers on the Wall”:

Fans of A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones—or of Wild Cards, Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, Tuf Voyaging, The Dying of the Light, Beauty and the Beast, or dozens of short stories, novellettes, and novellas—should feel free to lift a glass to celebrate George R.R. Martin’s 66th birthday.  May there be many more birthdays to come!

(Also on this day in history: the aftermath of the Battle of Poitiers during the Hundred Years War, which has a bit of influence on the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Curious coincidence!)

Deutsche Welle—a German broadcaster that was among the first to have a web presence way back in 1994—celebrates the 20th anniversary of that presence by doing something… rather unique. See their press release below to learn just what they’re up to:

Thanks to our friends over at Dark Horse—purveyors of fine comics and excellent collectibles—we’re happy to present a chance for two fans to win one of two Dark Horse Deluxe Game of Thrones figures. This contest is open world-wide—if a postal service can reach you, you can enter (yes, even if you’re in Antarctica!)

The latest entries in the deluxe figure series from Dark Horse, the Robb Stark and Arya Stark figures are to-scale renditions of the two characters. Though not posable, they’re larger in size than your typical action figures, and feature quite a lot of detail.

To enter, just post in our comments thread below—sorry, Facebook required—by naming which of the two Stark siblings is your favorite, and why. We’ll select two winners somewhere around the middle of next week, before I head off to Titancon.

For those who follow us here at Westeros.org—whether it’s at our own site, or on Sky’s Thronecast—you may be interested to know that Elio (that would be me) will be a guest at this year’s Titancon in Belfast, which takes place next week at the Wellington Park Hotel. Other guests of the convention include Game of Thrones actors Kerry Ingram, Aimee Richardson, and Eugene Simon.

There’ll be panel discussions, book readings, and more. In my case, I’ll be reading short excerpts from the upcoming The World of Ice and Fire (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK), taking part in a couple of Game of Thrones panel, and will discuss the making of The World of Ice and Fire on stage with Irish writer Peadar Ó GuilÃ%ADn.

Should be fun!

... the Guinness Book of World Records, that is. The 2015 edition of the perennial guide to records great, small, and even exceedingly trivial will be hitting retailer bookshelves next week, and among the new records recorded is “Most Pirated TV Program”.

Citing TorrentFreak’s report, the book states that the 5.9 million illicit downloads of the the third season’s finale, “Mhysa”, make it the most pirated TV program in the world. It will also note that executives at HBO have in the past said that the wide-spread piracy is “better than an Emmy.”

We’ve spoken previously of the ALS ice bucket challenge finding a number of Game of Thrones actors and crew members (since that post, Emilia Clarke has joined in the fun), but it’s not the only effort out there to raise awareness for a serious issue. Actor Joe Dempsie, who has played Gendry on Game of Thrones, has stepped up with a video in support of the 550 challenge. In brief, Scope is a UK-based organization that attempts to raise awareness on issues related to disability in Britain.

Here’s Dempsie and a group of fellow supporters of Scope, performing their challenge and discussing what it’s all about:

Once again, James Hibberd has the scoop, revealing that Mark Gatiss—writer and actor on Sherlock, among many other pop favorite shows—will be returning on season 5 to reprise his role as Tycho Nestoris of the Iron Bank of Braavos. Last seen negotiating with Stannis Baratheon over the Bank’s financial support, his appearance in season 5 certainly heralds more use of Braavos and the Iron Bank for this season.

Hibberd also adds that Gatiss will be filming in Croatia next week.

Although HBO’s Game of Thrones was blanked at the Primetime Emmys, the number of nominations the show received was among the most any regular drama series received this year…. and when you factor the Creative Arts Emmys (of which the show won four), it was the most nominated drama of the year with a total of 19. The show’s cast and crew were out in force in support, and thanks to so many people being around Los Angeles it certainly helped get some involvement in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge as GRRM, Sibel Kekilli, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey, and Kit Harington all took the challenge for the cause. Others who have participated from the cast: Pedro Pascal, Maisie Williams, Sophie Turner, and Joe Dempsie.

Besides the Emmys, we were present at Loncon where “The Rains of Castamere received the Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) Hugo Award. David Benioff and Dan Weiss were both in the crowd, and seemed very pleased to be at their first ever Worldcon for such an occasion. Both of them have spoken in the past of their mutual love of genre literature when they were younger, when they read the likes of Fritz Leiber, Le Guin, and Tolkien, and speaking with them afterward they certainly seemed over the moon at winning the most well-known genre award around.

This is the third consecutive win for Game of Thrones at the Hugos, and this one in particular was noteworthy for winning despite being in the UK, with an outsized UK-based membership who rallied around Doctor Who. “The Rains of Castamere” had a substantial lead in first selections, but as episodes were eliminated “The Day of the Doctor” began to gather more and more steam until coming within passing distance… only for Orphan Black being dropped from the list, and votes for it redistributed, giving the episode a surge that led to its victory.

We have two pairs of tickets to see George R.R. Martin and Robin Hobb on Tuesday 19th August at the Freemasons Hall in London! This event is a once in a lifetime chance to see to two of the world’s greatest storytellers discuss how they build their fictional universes, create their characters and balance fantasy and reality,  their influences and inspirations, their struggles and successes. A must-attend for all fantasy fans. To enter the competition, just answer two simple questions:

* The Stark children aren’t the only people in the fantasy genre who have a close association with a wolf. In fact, Robin Hobb has a particularly notable example of this in her Farseer trilogy. What’s the name of Fitz’s wolf in that series?

* Which of the Stark direwolves is your favorite, and why?

You can leave your answer in comments below. The contest closes Thursday evening, so be quick ... and be ready to keep an eye on your Facebook messages in case you’re a winner as we’ll need your contact information!

If you would like to hear more about HarperVoyager’s authors including George and Robin, why not subscribe to their newsletter http://harpervoyagerbooks.co.uk/subscribe/ “>here.

And tickets for the event, which includes a signed copy of Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb, are available

According to the Belfast Telegraph, veteran Northern Irish actor J.J. Murphy passed away mere days after filming his first scene for season 5 of Game of Thrones. Heretofore an unpublicized member of the cast, the Telegraph reports that Murphy was cast in the role of Ser Denys Mallister, a senior man of the Night’s Watch who in the novels was the commander of the Shadow Tower and a leading candidate to succeed Lord Commander Mormont. The Telegraph notes he was due to film more scenes, and speculates as to whether the role will be removed from the show or if another actor will be cast to fill it.

Murphy, 86 years old at the time of his death, had decades of theatre experience. According to the Telegraph, he was best known for his work at the Lyric Theatre in Belfast, where actors such as Liam Neeson and Ciaran Hinds cut their teeth and learned their craft alongside him. Our condolences to his friends and family.

UPDATE: HBO’s publicity twitter has released the following statement from David Benioff and Dan Weiss:

One of the original parts of Westeros was A Ring of Ice and Fire, a webring that sought to bring together all A Song of Ice and Fire fansites when the fandom still was in its infancy. Over time, webrings grew rather obsolete and outdated as a way of connecting similar sites and eventually the third-party solutions disappeared. We did attempt to make our own within the software we use to run Westeros, but it was poorly suited to it, and as a result the webring has been defunct in all but name for several years. We have now finally pulled the plug on it and removed that section from the site.

However, we are still very much interested in seeing the A Song of Ice and Fire fandom thrive and given the amount of traffic that we do get at Westeros, we thought that we might at least replace the webring with a simpler, more straight-forward solution in the shape of a Links database. Now, if you click through to that page, you will notice that it is as of yet very much in its infancy. However, the submission page is up and running and we hope that we will start getting a few submissions so that we can shape the rest of the page around the content once it starts appearing.

Thanks to the intrepid Marino Santirso, Westeros.org is happy to present his diary from the London Film and Comic Convention. Over the coming days, we’ll be posting interviews with a number of Game of Thrones actors that were present at the convention, and as always they’re quite the charming bunch. Marino has provided an introduction to the diary—and himself—here... and as it happens, we’ve also posted the very first interview as well with actor Finn Jones, who plays the famous Knight of Flowers, Ser Loras Tyrell. Finn was actually one of the first actors we ourselves interviewed way back during the first season, and we’re pleased to say he’s as exuberant as always!

You can read Finn’s interview here. As the week progresses, we’ll add further interviews with the likes of Gethin Anthony (Renly Baratheon), Kate Dickie (Lysa Arryn), Daniel Portman (Podrick Payne), and Kristian Nairn (HODOR) !

HBO’s just sent out a release noting that today, the season 4 boxed set of Game of Thrones can now be pre-ordered (US Bluray, US DVD, UK Bluray, UK DVD). Here’s the full release concerning the contents, and the differences between the DVD and Bluray editions: