Games

Patrick Rothfuss won the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Novel this week for his second book, The Wise Man's Fear . The other winners at the award were Helen Lowe's Heir of the Night for the Morningstar Award for Best Debut, and Raymond Swanland for the Ravenheart Award for Best Cover Art for Blood of Aenarion . Meanwhile, the Locus Awards were also announced this week. George R.R. Martin won the Best Fantasy Novel award for A Dance with Dragons , whilst China Mieville won the Best SF Novel Award for Embassytown . Catherynne M. Valente won a triple prize of Best YA Book ( The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making ), Best Novella ( Silently and Very Fast ) and Best Novelette ( White Lines on a Green Field ). Shaun Tan won Best Artist and Ellen Datlow Best Editor.

This weekend I attended Eastercon 2012, the largest annual British science fiction and fantasy convention. This year it was held at a hotel adjoining Heathrow Airport. For the first time in its history, the convention was sold out in advance, likely due to the presence of George R.R. Martin (although having authors such as Joe Abercrombie, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Chris Wooding, Lisa Tuttle, Pat Cadigan and Cory Doctorow didn't hurt either). Finally! Time and budgetary constraints meant I could only attend for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, though I did manage to catch the Game of Thrones TV panel, featuring actors Miltos Yerolemou (Syrio Forel) and John Bradley West (Samwell Tarly). Gethin Anthony (Renly Baratheon) and Natalia Tena (Osha) could also be found around the convention, though they didn't take part in the panels. This was followed by a Wild Cards panel where GRRM talked about the long-running shared world setting with John Jos. Miller, Pat Cadigan, Paul...