| Follow us using: 
Fantasy news round-up, October 26, 2011
George RR Martin reveals his favourite ‘Game of Thrones’ actors
New York Magazine’s Vulture asked Game of Thrones author George RR Martin to mention who were his favourite actors in the HBO series.
“Certainly Peter Dinklage did an amazing job with Tyrion, who is one of my favorite characters in the books. We always wanted Sean [Bean] and he was incredible in that role,” said the author, who also went on to praise the show’s “three terrific" child actors.
Game of Thrones was renewed for a second season just two days after its premiere in April. Season 2 premieres April 2012.
Joseph Delaney visits schools and bookshops to promote I Am Grimalkin
As Halloween draws near it seemed like a perfect time to catch up with one of our favourite authors, Joseph Delaney. With the film adaptation of the Spook’s Apprentice progressing nicely and a new Spook’s book, I am Grimalkin, recently out in stores the Rochdale-based author has been a busy man.
He visited Waterstone’s in Barrow last week to promote the new book, the ninth tale in series, shortly after visiting Walney School and St Bernard’s Catholic High School (also in Barrow) the previous day to speak to pupils about life as a novelist.
“It has been a great success. I think a lot of children have come after Joseph visited them at school. He went in and did a presentation and talked to children about the books, his history and where he gets his inspiration from. They were all really enthusiastic and asked him lots of interesting questions,” commented Laura Kennie, a bookseller at Waterstone’s in Barrow.
–
Protesters set up own library as Pullman joins campaign
Campaigners have set up a "library outside a library" in Kensal Rise in defiance of cuts by Brent council. Using books donated by residents, protesters outside the building – one of six libraries in the borough that closed after a High Court bid failed to save them last week – are running their own free service. The campaign against the closures is gathering pace. Author Philip Pullman is to join protesters at the weekend, while a round-the-clock vigil outside Kensal Rise library aimed at stopping workman boarding up the buildings entered its sixth day. The campaigners vowed not to move until they have lodged their case with the Court of Appeal.
–
Turkish rights deal for Rod Rees
Flora McMichael, Rights Manager at Quercus, has sold Turkish rights in Demi-Monde: Winter by UK novelist Rod Rees to Inkilap.
World rights in Rod’s four-book Demi-Monde series were acquired pre-emptively by Quercus (who published the first volume successfully in January 2011, and in paperback in September) from agent John Jarrold for a major advance in 2009. Rights have now been sold in ten territories, also including the US, Germany, Russia, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Italy.
The Demi-Monde is set in a wonderfully imagined virtual world – the Demi-Monde of the title. Originally conceived by the US military as a training ground for their troops in the twenty-first century facing street fighting and enemies who use guerrilla tactics, rather than modern technology-based armies, the Demi-Monde was created by the world’s first quantum computer. Young singer Ella Thomas is sent there to rescue a VIP (she ticks all the boxes to blend into the world, which has a late-Victorian technology base) and discovers the world and its thirty million inhabitants, or ‘avatars’, are all too real. Especially those who run the world’s city-states, based on famous human monsters such as Reinhard Heydrich, Shaka Zulu, Empress Wu, Godfrey de Bouillon, Selim the Grim and Lavrentii Beria, with whom the world was seeded to make it more of a test…and that is only the beginning. There is a fascinating website at www.thedemi-monde.com
–
Eric Brown’s Helix sequel to Solaris
Jonathan Oliver, commissioning editor of Solaris Books, has acquired the sequel to Helix by Eric Brown, which was published by the company in 2007 and has reprinted ever since, selling regularly. Helix Wars will be delivered in the spring of 2012, for an autumn publication. The agent was John Jarrold, and the deal was for UK/US rights.
Eric explains the basis of the amazing artefact that is Helix here:
Helix is a vast spiral construct, wound around a main sequence G-type sun, and is the work of an ancient alien race known only as the Builders.
The helix resembles a spiral staircase made up of eight ‘twists’, four above the sun and four below. Each twist or circle consists of well over two thousand ‘sections’ or worlds, amounting to some ten thousand worlds. Each one is approximately forty thousand miles wide, with an ocean in between. Each ‘planet’ is barrel-shaped and rotates on a lateral, equatorial axis, like a bead on a string, and each has its own unique atmosphere and duration of rotation. The arms of the helix at the top and bottom, being further away from the sun, are polar in make-up; those closer to the sun are more clement.
The alien races of the helix number some six thousand, at varying levels of technological accomplishment.
–
Lost Hobbit images get first showing
Previously unseen illustrations produced for The Hobbit by its author, JRR Tolkien, will be published for the first time this week. The paintings and sketches, which were not used when the seminal children’s novel came out in 1937, were recently discovered in the Bodleian Library, in Oxford.
The pen and ink drawings and a series of watercolours were discovered by researchers in material bequeathed by the author’s estate to the library in 1979.
The images show how Tolkien took his distinctive style and developed it into the familiar illustrations that adorn the covers of his bestselling books. Experts say that when producing illustrations for The Hobbit, Tolkien borrowed heavily from those of an earlier book, Roverandom, which he wrote for his son Michael. The picture "The White Dragon Pursues Roverandom" bears a clear resemblance to "The Lonely Mountain" later used in The Hobbit.
The new book of illustrations will feature more than a hundred sketches, drawings, paintings and maps.
Fantasy series we recommend