Forever will the term ‘younglings’ make me want to vomit, wherever I happen to find it.
HBO has just exercised its option, and purchased the television rights to A GAME OF THRONES.
For those of you who don’t know Hollywood, an option gives a production company the right to buy a property (a book, a screenplay, whatever) at a certain agreed-upon price for a certain period of time (a year, six months, whatever). When that time runs out, they can let the option lapse, renew the option, or exercise the option and buy the property. The last is what HBO has just done.
What they have NOT done is greenlight the project. A GAME OF THRONES remains in development. They’re still budgeting, still looking at locations (Spain and the Czech Republic at present, I hear). No decision has been reached, so any celebration would be premature. In Hollywood it is always best not to assume something is going to happen until it actually happens.
If anybody is going to give this novel the treatment it deserves, it would be HBO. Here’s hoping this keeps making forward progress!
Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist: THE NAME OF THE WIND is now available in paperback:
Only the Bookscan numbers are in (it will be a while before we get a full tally), but it looks as though The Name of the Wind has surpassed the sales of both George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones and Terry Goodkind’s Wizard’s First Rule.
Woah! If it beat out A Game of Thrones and Wizard’s First Rule, I am going to have to check this book out. I really enjoyed those two books, especially A Game of Thrones.
According to the Associated Press, Arthur C. Clarke has passed away.
[HT: Charles Stross]
Well, somebody else is giving away a copy of The Last Wish. Over at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist, there are four copies of the book available. I’ve already sent in my entry!
I am really looking forward to The Last Wish finally being available in the US. I have heard nothing but good things about the series.
Thanks to Orbit Books for linking to the giveaway, and for both getting the book to the states and making it available through a fellow blogger!
From Neil’s Journal Kids! Free! Book!:
For the next month, your free copy of American Gods is waiting for you at http://tiny.cc/WRiXE
Feel free to spread the link as widely as possible around the web. If it works, and people read it, then a) we may be able to put up another book and b) sooner or later they’ll simply let us give away the book in electronic form….
There is some follow-up discussion of the pros and cons of making a book freely available if you check out the free book section of Neil’s Journal.
There’s even a fancy little flash widget you can stuff onto your own sites.
One of my favorite authors talking about another of my favorites.
Nuclear war stinks. It completely screws up the middle of the country and totally makes coast-to-coast travel difficult. That’s why the people of Boston need Hell Tanner.
From the announcement:
Tor Books announced today that novelist Brandon Sanderson has been chosen to finish the final novel in Robert Jordan’s bestselling Wheel of Time fantasy series. Robert Jordan, one of the greatest storytellers of the 20th and early 21st centuries, died September 16th after a courageous battle with the rare blood disease amyloidosis.
The new novel, A Memory of Light, will be the twelfth and final book in the beloved fantasy series which has sold over 14 million copies in North America and over 30 million copies worldwide. The last four books in the series were all #1 New York Times bestsellers, and for over a decade fans have been eagerly awaiting the final novel that would bring the epic story to its conclusion.
Dragonmount was able to interview Brandon Sanderson before the announcement was made.
There are some sample chapters and a free ebook available on his site: http://www.brandonsanderson.com/
One of my favorite authors, one whose books I have unfortunately yet to review here, has announced that he has been diagnosed with a form of early onset Alzheimer’s. His Discworld novels are some of my absolute favorites and you really owe it to yourself to try a few of them if you haven’t already. I’m roughly only a third of the way through the series myself and each book I have read has been a real treat and often had me laughing out loud.
From the announcement, An Embuggerance:
I would have liked to keep this one quiet for a little while, but because of upcoming conventions and of course the need to keep my publishers informed, it seems to me unfair to withhold the news. I have been diagnosed with a very rare form of early onset Alzheimer’s, which lay behind this year’s phantom “stroke”.
We are taking it fairly philosophically down here and possibly with a mild optimism. For now work is continuing on the completion of Nation and the basic notes are already being laid down for Unseen Academicals. All other things being equal, I expect to meet most current and, as far as possible, future commitments but will discuss things with the various organisers. Frankly, I would prefer it if people kept things cheerful, because I think there’s time for at least a few more books yet :o)
PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as ‘I am not dead’. I will, of course, be dead at some future point, as will everybody else. For me, this maybe further off than you think - it’s too soon to tell. I know it’s a very human thing to say “Is there anything I can do”, but in this case I would only entertain offers from very high-end experts in brain chemistry.
In the future, neurological disorders are running rampant and medical science is unable to keep up. Humanity is on the verge of extinction unless something can be done. Fifty scientists with terminal diseases head out on a mission to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, to study the pre-life chemistry taking place in the hope of finding a clue to stave off the end of man. Naturally, not all of them survive the trip, but that is only just the beginning of the story.
