• Jaime Lannister – played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
• Daenerys – played by Tamzin Merchant
• Robb Stark – played by Richard Madden
• Ser Jorah Mormont – played by Iain Glen
• Theon Greyjoy – played by Alfie Allen
• Sansa Stark – played by Sophie Turner
• Arya Stark – played by Maisie Williams

Some of these actors are such unknowns that they barely have a web pressence at all. So for more info head over to George R. R. Martin’s Not a Blog to read up on them.

This is all very good news. The finished product is still a long way away, but it looks like it’ll be pretty grand once it gets here!

What’s sort of interesting about this is that there’s no George R. R. Martin on the list. I thought it might be because it was an unfinished series, but so are the Erikson and Rothfuss series.

So what would be on my list? Well, I think I’d keep Robin Hobb, at least the Assassin trilogy, and Patrick Rothfuss. Then I’d add in George R.R. Martin and Ursula LeGuin’s Earthsea books (yes, all of them). Then I’d toss in Scott Lynch’s wonderful Gentlemen Bastards stuff and probably, for a kicker, put in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station. I’ve tried to keep this in the spirit of the original list – easy books that are within the mainstream of fantasy, but Miéville is there to show that it can be so much more as well…

Mark Charan Newton has already posted a list which does the opposite – it tried to completely counter the New Yorker list. I’m sure it will be the first of many.

So it was with some interest that I read this article about how vampires have lost their bite, as it were. Because all of these examples feature vampires who are trying to redeem themselves, especially through their lack of human blood-letting.

Largely due to goths and Anne Rice, I’ve always found vampires sort of annoying. But last year I made a vampire the big bad of a WFRP campaign I ran and I’d happily use them again. But the article’s right – vampires are far more interesting as charming but powerful and diabolical monsters than as safe but sexy wimps.

Let’s make vamps a threat again – no friendly vampires looking to reunite with humanity. No sexy vampire boyfriends. No animal blood drinking softies. Let’s get vampires in our games and our fiction who rip out throats, seduce and then slay and do all the nasty vampire things we know and love.

As a side note, I’d really recommend Fevre Dream as well – it’s very well written and having read so much of Martin’s work through A Song of Ice & Fire, it was interesting to see him tackle something quite different.

Another huge piece has fallen into place for the HBO pilot of A GAME OF THRONES — we have signed Sean Bean to play the part of Lord Eddard Stark.

For King Robert I Baratheon, we’ve got Mark Addy, a veteran British actor of stage and screen that many of you may remember from his fine turn in A KNIGHT’S TALE.

This is wicked news. The casting alone for this work feels more like they are preparing for a movie, not a TV show. It also makes me extremely happy that they are bringing in some serious talent to give these characters the dramatic weight that they’d need to work as well on screen as they do in the books.

The rest of the news can be read over on Martin’s LiveJournal, Not A Blog.

We can only hope. At that rate, he might be finished in time for me to get the last book for my 40th birthday…

• John Scalzi, blogger extraordinaire and sci-fi author talks about how long it takes to get established in genre fiction. It’s an interesting read and remands me that if I haven’t started yet, I probably never will!
• There’s a new, George R. R. Martin edited, Jack Vance homage collection out entitles Songs of the Dying Earth and it’s prompted the New York Times of all places to print a lengthy homage of their own. I’ve never clicked with Vance, despite my love of the Vancian-style magic in D&D, and this article helped me realise why.

Intricate plotting is not Vance’s forte, but he artfully recombines recurring elements: the rhythms of travel; the pleasures of music, strong drink and vengeance; touchy encounters with pedants, mountebanks, violently opinionated aesthetes and zealots, louts, bigots of all stripes and boyishly slim young women with an enigmatic habit of looking back over their shoulders. His stories sustain an anecdotal forward drive that balances his digressive pleasure in imagining a world and the hypnotic effect of his distinctive tone, which has been variously described as barbed, velvety, arch and mandarin.

I’m afraid I’m all about the plots I’m afraid and writers for whom writing is primarily about the form of language have never appealed to me. The article’s a very good read though.

• Another thing I’ve never really got is steampunk, although I finished (and really enjoyed) Michael Swanwick’s The Dragons of Babel today and that has some steampunk elements. The Onion A.V. Club has a primer on steampunk which gives some pointers if you’re been interested but not known how to get into it.
• On the other hand I enjoyed the first two books of Scott Lynch’s as-yet-unfinished ‘Gentlemen Bastards’ trilogy as much as I’ve enjoyed any fantasy work in the last few years – they’re the sort of rollicking high adventure that makes me laugh and keep turning the pages. If you’re the sort of person who likes to wait till a trilogy is all finished before starting, you’ve got a bit more waiting to do. I’m hoping the wait is so the book is right not because Lynch has over extended…
• Finally the Guardian had some musing on fantasy fans recently as a result of the inaugural Gemmel Awards. To whit:

even SF fans have it easy compared to followers of fantasy. These are the people Red Dwarf fans sneer at for being nerdy. They are the zit-ridden little brothers of the SF geeks, whose even-less-healthy obsessions include trolls, giving Anglo-Saxon names to phallic weapons, and maidens with magical powers.

And to think this is an attempt to be complimentary. Sigh.

I will try to be better at getting these all up in a more timely fashion in the future. Promise.