Games

This one is about war : Season 3 begins airing on 31 March in the USA and the day afterwards in the UK.

Bantam Books have released more info about The World of Ice and Fire , the companion guide to A Song of Ice and Fire . The book is due for publication on 29 October 2013 and will be 288 pages in length. They have also published several sample pages from the book. The blurb: With all new history and material from the maester himself, The World of Ice and Fire is a must have for both long-time fans, new readers, and viewers of the HBO series, Game of Thrones . This lavish, fully illustrated, full-colour book will be the comprehensive guide to the mega-bestselling world that George R.R. Martin has established in his Ice and Fire books. This will be the comprehensive guide to all things Game of Thrones and beyond. From the pre-history to the coming of the First Men, through the reign of the Targaryen kings and Robert's Rebellion, this guide-co-written by George R.R. Martin and the immensely knowledgeable founders and keepers of the www.westeros.org site-will tell se...

Gollancz has confirmed a publication date for The Republic of Thieves , the long, long-awaited third book in The Gentleman Bastard sequence. It will be published on 8 October 2013 in the USA and 10 October in the UK. Tyrion Lannister approves this news. Gollancz's Deputy Publishing Director, Simon Spanton, commented: "Some of you will know about the real difficulties that gathered around this novel for Scott. I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Scott for sticking with it. I know that he was always painfully aware of the delays and what those meant both for his publishers and his fans. So I’d also like to thank Scott’s readers for their patience and for the immense support and the profound goodwill towards Scott that they have shown during this time. It’s been a long wait but I have every faith that their patience will now be rewarded with The Republic of Thieves ." HUZZAH! UPDATE Scott Lynch has posted his own take on the news at Fanta...

Terry Pratchett has announced that the next Discworld book, likely to be out at the end of this year, will be entitled Raising Steam . He made the announcement via a Skype webchat. Pratchett announced the book by holding up a card saying "RAISING", at which point the Skype connection cut out. Pratchett had previously announced that the next Moist von Lipwig novel would be called Raising Taxes , so fans immediately assumed it was going to be that. However, it was then clarified that the book would actually be called Raising Steam . It has no release date as yet, and no further details have been announced. Speculation: given Pratchett's way of announcing the book, which was clearly teasing fans curious about the long-MIA Raising Taxes , I'd guess this was indeed the new Moist von Lipwig book. Pratchett had previously said that he was having difficulty making the tax-based book interesting. This is understandable, given that Making Money - Moist takes over the Ankh-Mo...

The last-ever novel in Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Cycle , Magician's End , will be out in May. This is the 30th novel in the series and marks an end to the saga that began back in 1982 with the publication of Magician . Appropriately, it has been revealed that there will now also be a companion volume to the series. Entitled Midkemia: The Chronicles of Pug , this book will be a 192-page 'coffee table' book containing illustrations and extensive maps about the world of Midkemia. The project grew out of a mooted 'Midkemia Atlas' that Feist planned several years ago. The book will also feature 'narration' from the characters of Pug and Magnus. “In the first year of the reign of King Lyam conDoin, I, Pug of Crydee, magician to the royal court and cousin to the King by adoption, do take quill in hand and set forth this writ, that all may benefit from the knowledge I have gained…” -Pug of Stardock So begins the narrative account of Feist’s best-selling c...

InXile Entertainment have launched their Kickstarter campaign for their roleplaying game, Torment: Tides of Numenera . This game is a spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment , the 1999 PC game which is widely regarded as the best (and certainly the best-written) computer RPG ever made. Eschewing traditional fantasy conventions (no elves, no dwarves, precious few action sequences), the game delved deeply into themes of identity, responsibility, consequence and if people can every truly change themselves. It sold modestly but has attracted critical acclaim like no other RPG in history. Since inXile do not have the rights to the Planescape setting, they are instead setting this game in a different universe altogether. The setting is Numenera, a pen-and-paper setting conceived by Monte Cook, one of the chief designers on the 3rd Edition of the Dungeons and Dragons game. The setting is Earth, approximately one billion years in the future. Our world has been rendered almost unrecognisa...

HBO have released an extended version of last week's Game of Thrones trailer. This version contains a few more shots and some additional dialogue, as well as glimpses of more characters (established and new). Look out for Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr intoning the R'hllor speech and our first glimpse of the 'bear and maiden fair':

On the Westeros forums, Luke Scull, author of The Grim Company and a full-time video game designer, reports that he once wrote out a proposal for a game adaptation of The Malazan Book of the Fallen . I also wrote a proposal for a Malazan videogame. Our producer went to Steven Erikson's house to discuss it with him. I think Ian Camerson Esslemont liked it but Erikson wasn't so keen - my design for the game strongly resembled my current project, The Shadow Sun , while Erikson wanted something more akin to a first-person shooter. As you can imagine, it didn't work out, though I did receive a nice signed and personalised Subterranean Press edition of Gardens of the Moon . Scull states that the head of his company spoke to both Ian Esslemont and Steven Erikson about the game, which would have been an RPG. However, whilst Esslemeont was keen Erikson was not, and apparently preferred a first-person shooter type of approach. Later on, Scull talks about how he envisages a Ma...

A new Space Hulk game is on its way from Full Control Studios. It will be arriving on PC at the end of 2013, with an iOS port to follow. Space Hulk is a sub-set of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The game features Space Marines storming an ancient derelict spacecraft (the hulk of the title) which has been taken over by genestealers, a hardy breed of space-going Tyranid (one of the principal enemies in the WH40K setting and, we have to legally add, in no way was the inspiration for the Zerg in StarCraft , ahem). Because the genestealers are so hardcore, even the normal Space Marines (eight-feet-tall, genetically-engineered superhumans) are no match for them, so the even more massively-armoured Terminator Marines have been deployed instead. The game started off as a board game, released to critical acclaim in 1989. Every time Games Workshop has re-released it (the last time in 2009), it's sold out in days. Electronic Arts have also released two successful computer games based on...

Eight of the ten episode titles for Season 3 of Game of Thrones have been announced. These are as follows (with airdate and writer/director information): Paul Kaye as Thoros of Myr 301: Valar Dohaeris Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss Directed by Daniel Minahan Airdate: 31 March 302: Dark Wings, Dark Words Written by Vanessa Taylor Directed by Daniel Minahan Airdate: 7 April 303: Walk of Punishment Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss Directed by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss Airdate: 14 April 304: And Now His Watch is Ended Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss Directed by Alex Graves Airdate: 21 April 305: Kissed by Fire Written by Bryan Cogman Directed by Alex Graves Airdate: 28 April 306: tbc Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss Directed by Alik Sakharov Airdate: 5 May 307: The Bear and the Maiden Fair Written by George R.R. Martin Directed by Michelle MacLaren Airdate: 12 May 308: tbc Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss Directed by Michelle MacLaren Airdate: 19 ...

Brandon Sanderson has announced that his second Stormlight Archive novel, the sequel to The Way of Kings , will be entitled Words of Radiance . He'd previously suggested The Book of Endless Pages and Highprince as War as possible titles, but settled on this title for the reasons given at the link. Assuming Sanderson completes the novel on schedule, it should be released this November.

Back in the 1980s, when I started gaming, it took a few people perhaps a few weeks to make a good game. Even the mighty Elite - the first proper 3D game and arguably the first proper open-world game - took two guys a few months to put together. A few years later, during the 16-bit era of the Commodore Amiga, SNES and Megadrive (Genesis for you American types), this had increased to teams of a dozen or so taking a few months to a year, tops, to put together a game. The gaming industry was in the good health, with the biggest mega-hits making tens of millions of dollars but even a game selling just a few thousand copies could still turn a profit. How times have changed. Today, it takes teams of several dozen people anything from two to six years to make a game, with budgets in the tens of millions of dollars. Dozens of game development studios have closed over the course of the last generation of gaming (which began in 2005 with the release of the X-Box 360), in many cases despite selli...

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the American SF TV show Babylon 5 . Its pilot episode, The Gathering , aired on 22 February 1993, with the first season proper following eleven months later. Never a mass break-out hit, Babylon 5 remained on-air for five seasons and 110 episodes (plus 4 TV movies and a straight-to-DVD movie), not to mention generating a spin-off called Crusade that lasted half a season before being cancelled and a pilot for a second spin-off that never went to series. Not too bad for a show that, even today, most people have never even heard of. Some of t he regular cast of Babylon 5 in its first season: Jerry Doyle as Security Chief Michael Garibaldi, Peter Jurasik as Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari (with the hair), Claudia Christian as Lt. Commander Susan Ivanova, Mira Furlan as Minbari Ambassador Delenn, Andrea Thompson as Talia Winters, Andreas Katsulas as Narn Ambassador G'Kar and Richard Biggs as Dr. Stephen Franklin, with Michael O'Hare as Commander...

Scott Lynch has posted an update on The Republic of Thieves to the Fantasy Faction website, amusingly in response to the question, "What books haven't you finished?". The Republic of Thieves. (I am so sorry. I simply couldn't resist. In the immortal words of my grandfather: "If you can't laugh at yourself, you're an asshole.") Cheers, SL P.S. It ain't the finishing that's the issue, it's the editing and the miserable damned anxiety attacks. P.P.S. I'm working on both as you read this. P.P.P.S. None of this is the fault of my editors or publishers. They have been patient and steadfastly helpful during a long difficult period of my life. Based on Gollancz's prior information (in their 2013 catalogue) that Republic would be out in the summer if Scott finished before the end of January, and given that he has not finished, we can conclude that book will now not be out in the summer. In fact, at the moment a 2013 publication at al...

Alastair Reynolds has posted this map of the star systems that appear in the Revelation Space novels and short stories. The map was created by Richard Terrett, a fan of Reynolds's work.

Stephen Donaldson has delivered the third and final draft of The Last Dark , the fourth and concluding novel in The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant . This will be the tenth Thomas Covenant novel overall, and is planned to conclude the entire series. According to Donaldson: I have just delivered the third draft of THE LAST DARK. Under the circumstances (the circumstances being that Putnams has already put the book on their schedule for October), I have no doubt that this will constitute D&A. For me, the next step will be copyediting; but of course my  publishers have a variety of things that they need to get done. Just to provide a frame of reference: this draft is 932 pages (not counting WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE and the Glossary). I've done some rather draconian cutting, all of which I believe was necessary. I deliberately wrote the first draft *long* because I wanted to be sure that I didn't leave anything out. But the result was an unusually high number o...

Terry Pratchett reports that he is hard at work on the next Discworld novel, which will feature a new character and will not be part of any existing sub-series. It's been confirmed not to be Raising Taxes , the long-awaited third and final book in the 'Moist von Lipwig' sub-trilogy. Meanwhile, pre-production is continuing on the City Watch TV series. Terry and Rhianna Pratchett have also clarified previous comments suggesting that Rhianna would be taking over the Discworld books once her father (who is suffering from early-onset Alzheimer's) retired from writing the series. Apparently Rhianna Pratchett has now ruled out this possibility, feeling it would not be appropriate to continue the main series without her father's involvement. However, she will be involved in possible spin-offs and future adaptations of the series to other mediums.

The Lifeline Theatre in Chicago is staging an adaptation of China Mieville's 2009 novel The City and The City . The preview run starts today and will continue to 24 February, with the full run taking place from 28 February to 7 April. There will be a joint performance/signing even on 16 March, with China Mieville attending to sign books and talk about the play. Mieville recently relocated from London to Chicago.

Today is turning out to be a bit of a bonanza for asteroid-watchers. Early this morning a substantial meteor shower took place over the Urals in Russia, with one meteor coming quite low before exploding. The resulting airburst shattered windows in various towns and cities (most notably Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk, 900 miles east of Moscow), injuring approximately 400 people. This event takes place only hours ahead of the close approach to Earth of asteroid 2012 DA14, a considerably larger body which will pass about 17,000km over the Earth at around 5pm GMT today. There is no known connection between the two events, with the meteors coming from different directions.

The fifth volume in the Chung Kuo series, The Art of War , is out on 1 March. Unlike the previous volumes, I haven't received an ARC so I'll have to pick it up the old-fashioned way at some point. Here is the Larry Rostant cover art for the sixth volume in the series, An Inch of Ashes : Corvus's new catalogue confirms that there will only be three Chung Kuo novels published this year rather than the previously-suggested four. An Inch of Ashes will be out on 4 July, followed by The Broken Wheel on 7 November. The good news is that apparently Corvus has reached a deal with Barnes and Nobel in the United States, with the UK versions of the novels being released in the USA via their shops. With no news on a US-specific publisher picking up the series, this should be of interest to American readers. The books are also available via Amazon, with the e-editions also accessible from the USA (though not always on release).