• When doing an interview promoting Spartacus: Blood and Sand in the UK, Lucy Lawless dropped two pieces of information that shocked me. The first was that her children have no interest in her work: “I may as well work in a bank.” The second was that a man once asked her to sign his axe. She says, “ Was a bit creeped out by that,” but she doesn’t say she didn’t sign it.

• The Catherine Hardwicke-directed, Amanda Seyfried-starring Red Riding Hood movie has just added Saul frakkin’ Tigh to the cast. Michael Hogan is joining the picture as a character known as The Reeve.

• St. Paul University in Ottawa is making waves by offering a course on ethics in The Lord of the Rings. It was inspired by books like The Simpsons and Philosophy (The D’oh! of Homer); The Matrix and Philosophy (Welcome to the Desert of the Real); and The Sopranos and Philosophy (I Kill Therefore I Am), but I’m betting those didn’t cost some kid’s parents $735.

• Only days apart, I stumbled across two lesbian-interest blogs publishing stories of interest. First was the Top 10(ish) Actresses(ish) You Didn’t Know You Need To Know. This brings the ladies of Legend of the Seeker at the top of a genre-heavy list. The very next day came The Top Women of Sci-Fi TV, which definitely leans to science fiction with characters like Seven of Nine, but also includes Cara Mason (Tabrett Bethell) of Legend of the Seeker.

• The world’s shortest teaser-trailer premiered for Smurfs; it has 3 seconds of Smurfs for 53 seconds of trailer, but at least you get to see the little blue guys in Times Square. USAToday also says that Gargamel isn’t out to eat them anymore, just use them to make his magic more powerful.

• HBO has signed Brian Kirk to direct two episodes of Game of Thrones. He’s previously knocked out episodes of Dexter and Brotherhood, but I don’t see a lot of genre work. The bonus is that he’s from Northern Ireland, where they intend to film.

• In other news for Game of Thrones, sci-fi geek goddess Jane Espenson has been tapped to write an episode of the fantasy series.

• And one of the more unusual casting calls I’ve seen has gone out for Game of Thrones requesting amputees in Northern Ireland for the series. They’re also seeking hairy, bearded men, and women with dark hair.

• This featurette from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice explores the legacy of creating a live-action version of the mops and buckets scene from Fantasia, one of the most iconic pieces of film of all time.

• Ther new DLC for Dragon Age: Origins will have you exploring the backstory of a non-playing character. Dragon Age Leliana’s Song will show how the bard got to Ferelden.

• If you had given up on Narnia.com during the long silence between films, it’s time to check it out, because it has been updated in advance of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

• Buried deep in an interview about Tilda Swinton’s new film I Am Love, she expresses shock that the trailer for Voyage of the Dawn Treader revealed she was in the film. She also swears that she spent less time filming the scene than the interview took, which was only 23 minutes.

• The new international trailer for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has a “Pee gauge.” Hmmmmm.

• E3 has been going on all week, and there’s been a ton of game news, but we knew most of it already. The detailed specification sheet for Lord of the Rings: Aragon’s Quest looks like it has some new information though.

• And as long as we’re talking about Lord of the Rings, I just have to share this picture, which made me do a spit-take on my laptop. Yes, I’m twelve on the inside.

• And I was unaware that Snoop Dog was a huge fan of True Blood in general, and of Sookie Stackhouse in particular. But HBO has released his Oh Sookie.

• Some quotes from True Blood’s Anna Paquin have been interpreted in a few naughty ways. What she said about dating costar Stephen Moyer was: “I think that one great bonus is we don’t need a fluffer.” And that’s been reported in different ways, including the idea that the sex scenes aren’t simulated, which is extremely unlikely.

• Harry Potter is over. Well, filming Harry Potter is over. We still have two movies we get to watch, and I think you can still buy Bernie Bott’s All Flavor Beans.

• Speaking of Harry Potter, on the Tony Awards Sunday night, Daniel Radcliffe presented with Katie Holmes, and she’s either a giant, or Daniel is really, really tiny (editor’s note: or, perhaps, it’s a little of both; Radcliffe is 5′5″).

• Most authors of “mainstream fiction” don’t even acknowledge fantasy fiction exists. But John Grisham is aware, and he’s ticked. He used to get introduced as “the world’s best-selling author” and now he’s number two behind J.K. Rowling. He wants his spot back, and started writing Young Adult fiction for that purpose.

• Continuing the “All Harry Potter” edition of Palantir!, Tom Felton says that Ralph Fiennes delivers some “horrifically evil speeches” as Lord Voldemorte in the Deathly Hallows films.

• Sir Ian McKellen took to his Twitter account to reassure fans that The Hobbit will indeed get made, and that he still believes they’ll start filming in November.

• Besides Smallville, I’m having trouble remembering the last successful live-action comic book series on television. But DC Entertainment CEO Geoff Johns tweeted that he was trying to break a clip of Jaime Reyes’ Blue Beetle out to show at Comic Con.

• Above you can see a newly-released picture from HBO’s adaptation of Game of Thrones from George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice book series. And below, we have the first teaser trailer for the series that arrives in 2011.

• Studios have announced a slew of new dates for 2011 and beyond movies. The fantasy highlight is probably Red Riding Hood starring Amanda Seyfried as a young girl who falls for an orphaned woodcutter in a medieval village haunted by a werewolf. The Catherine Hardwicke film is set for April 22, 2010. The supernatural horror film The Apparition is set for September 9^th, 2011 with Sebastian Stan. And Disney has a new Winnie the Pooh film July 15^th, 2011 – start ‘em on fantasy young!

• The whole point of Dragon Age Origins: The Darkspawn Chronicles has been revealed, and it’s both less and more than some were expecting. The point of the expansion package is to let you play the bad guys and hack and slash your way through the regular, good playable characters. While it always feels good to be bad, the short length of the game explains the price.

• Emilia Clarke has been cast to replace Tamzin Merchant in HBO’s adaptation of Game of Thrones. The role is for Daenerys, who is an exiled princess. Elements of last November’s pilot will be reshot to accommodate the casting change. As casting for supporting roles is ongoing, the production start for the series has been pushed back to mid-July from June.

• Narnia: The Exhibition, with props and costumes from the films, is running two concurrent showings, one in Montreal and another in Jacksonville, FL. After spending the summer in these locations, the show moves on to Huntsville, AL, and Louisville, KY.

• Peter Jackson sat down to talk about the new King Kong attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood, but like most things he does these days, talk turned to the upcoming film The Hobbit. According to Jackson, they’re currently discussing whether to shoot in 3D, and plan on casting for a November start date for filming.

• Speaking of Tolkien, his grandson Simon Tolkien was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times, ostensibly about his new mystery novel. But the entire interview seems to be about his grandfather’s later days, how The Lord of the Rings derailed his life’s work, The Silmarillion. As for what he thought of Peter Jackson’s movies, he found the first one good, and the others progressively worse. He thinks the later films showed much that the book left out.

• But Simon Tolkien might believe actor Charles Ross has taken the story too far the other way in his One Man Lord of the Rings, now being performed in Kentucky. He’s taken the entire film trilogy and whittled it down to 70 minutes of a comic retelling.

• A big batch of pictures from the set of Lost Boys 3 has surfaced. You know what you don’t see in most vampire movies? A bunch of people in bikinis at the beach and on boats in the marina.

• Shrek Forever After mashes up every fairy tale and fantasy story ever written into one incomprehensible mess. The film opened to a $71.3 million weekend, which most see as a failure. Robin Hood pulled in another $18.7 million to take 3^rd place behind Iron Man 2, and other new opener MacGruber staggered in with a disappointing $4.7 million.

• When you hit the theaters September 24th to see Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole, you’ll be greeted with a brand new 3D Roadrunner/Coyote cartoon before the film starts.

• HBO is hosting midnight screenings for True Blood in theaters across the country June 1^st. Based on the content of the Season 2 finale, an extended peek of Season 3, and a Q&A with Alan Ball, I’m assuming a satellite hookup is involved. Tickets are free.

• And speaking of the True Blood season 2 finale, if you wondered what happened to the bull mask Maryann wore when she got her maenad action on, the third minisode shows how Sam worked out his frustration on the bovine mask.

• I’m super-excited about the HBO series based on George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Despite the fact that George R.R. Martin is not my bitch, I anxiously await both the series and the next book. But the news that HBO actually hired a language expert to invent a language for the horse warrior Dothraki people made my day. New languages are world-building at its finest. Hopefully it doesn’t end up sounding “athastokhdeveshizaroon.”

• I’m pleased that the actors did their own stunts in Prince of Persia. I’m not pleased that the movie looks like it could act as a sleep aid – is that just me?

• On a list of 5 Shows That Will Get Me To Watch TV Again, the author has two that fit as genre series: The Walking Dead is the adaptation of the zombie comic, the Untitled Alien Invasion Series is by Steve Spielberg, who only missteps occasionally. Me, I’m holding out for M*A*S*H: Iraq. That’s worth paying for cable to see.

• If you didn’t already love J.K. Rowling for giving the world Harry Potter, her reasons for remaining a British citizen despite her wealth will likely give you a warm fuzzy:

….A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state — the very one that Mr. Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

• In another odd Harry Potter tangent, Daniel Radcliffe is returning to Broadway after he wraps Deathly Hallows and this time he sings! He’ll starring in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying.

• Aasif Mandvi, who I was completely unaware of, played Commander Zhao in the upcoming Avatar: The Last Airbender, tweeted some reshoots were underway, and a new character was being added. Please let it be the Cabbage Merchant!

• My fellow Palantir-er, Tim O’Leary let you have the news that Joss Whedon was going to direct The Avengers. Now comes the news that he might also be rewriting the screenplays for both The Avengers and Captain America. It makes sense – Joss is a great writer, understands genre work, and the Marvel films need to start having a common feel if they’re to come together in The Avengers.

• If you haven’t read Neal Stephenson’s insanely good Anathem, I highly recommend it. I also recommend you go and check out the Long Now Foundation’s 10,000 Year Clock which featured in the book and is now real. No point in thinking small like the Mayans did, now is there?

• I hate myself for caring about The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, but I’m really excited to see the movie, despite my aversion to Nic Cage. The WonderCon panel did not put me off the film.

• My contempt for reboots of franchises is fairly well known in cyberspace. But even I’m struck by the concept of rebooting a book. Has anyone ever had the guts to do it? I suppose you could argue Wicked was a reboot of The Wizard of Oz. But it was a huge media property – I’ve never heard of Little Fuzzy by H. Beam Piper. But Jon Scalzi is going to reboot the books. And he has the permission of the estate. And it may be science fiction, but that looks more like a demon than an alien on the cover. Who knows if this is a good idea?

• Here’s an odd one. This is the trailer for a short called Hector, Inc. which seems to have some paranormal stuff, magic, and a demonic penguin, all in an office setting. Suitably strange?

• There’s an interesting question brewing at io9.com about which franchise has the most rabid fans. They lump science fiction and fantasy in together, which I think is a little sloppy. So what about fantasy – which fans are craziest? Doctor Who, which has been making time travel possible through a living space ship for so many years? What about Twilight? Their fans are unreasonably supportive, but fairly recent. True Blood? Harry Potter? Can we lump in D&D? What fantasy franchise has the mostly insanely loyal fanbase? What sets it apart – longevity, role playing, merchandising? Tell us in the comments.

• Speaking of Doctor Who, here are some clips from “The Victory of the Daleks” which should be airing this weekend in the U.K. It seems an odd take on an old enemy.

Have a great weekend!

HBO, which last fall filmed a pilot for a TV series based on George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice fantasy novels, announced today that they are moving ahead with the project, called A Game of Thrones, after the first book in the series.

The cast includes Mark Addy, Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, Jennifer Ehle, Iain Glen, and Lena Headey.

Nine more episodes will be filmed in Belfast starting in June, but a broadcast date for the series has not been announced.

Below is an image from the pilot.

• Will there be a Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog 2? Joss Whedon says yes, but if so, he better get on it quick, or Neil Patrick Harris says he won’t be able to fit it in for another year.

• What the hell ever happened to that Dragon Age Origins expansion pack, Return to Ostagar, that was supposed to be out earlier this month? Still not released. They didn’t take into account “changes across all the game’s platforms,” which as good an excuse as any, but only the xBox version was scheduled for release in January anyway.

• The dailies for the pilot of the would-be HBO series A Game of Thrones (based on George R. R. Martin’s amazing books) supposedly look fantastic, and the show will almost certainly be greenlit. But this quote from HBO Programming Chief Michael Lombardo is worrisome to me and indicates a deep-seated misunderstanding of fantasy: “The fantasy is so incidental, it has a very adult tone,” Lombardo said. “You forget it’s fantasy while you’re watching it, and that’s what I love about it.”

• It’s unusual for the star of a franchise to admit, mid-franchise, that one of the movies didn’t really work, but, refreshingly, that seems to be what Narnia’s Ben Barnes is saying about Prince Caspian (and I could. not. agree. more.): “There’s more joy and fun in [The Voyage of the Dawn Treader],” he says. “It’s a better story than Prince Caspian, which maybe took itself a bit too seriously.”

• Speaking of Narnia, lampposts from the movies have been recycled, and are now actually in use in a development in downtown Los Angeles. Alas, it doesn’t look to me like they’re using the lamppost.

• The latest rumor: Tobey Maguire as Bilbo. Wait, wasn’t this one already shot down? Sure enough, everyone who knows anything denies it. But I confess, I’m now thoroughly confused (and starting to really not care).

• In anticipation of the opening of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter attraction at  Universal Studios Islands of Adventure, they’re raising their prices! Meanwhile, they’re also hiring. Wanna be a wizard? Okay, so the auditions for actors are already over, but they are hiring cashiers and greeters. Here are the latest pictures from the park.

• What’s more cynical than grinding a tired superhero franchise into the ground? Stopping mid-series and immediately “rebooting” it with another origin story, low budget-style: “The plan for the movie is to be in the $80 million range and feature a cast of relative unknowns. … And the story will be pared down to center on a high school kid who is dealing with the knowledge that his uncle died even though the teen had the power to stop it.” Still, it’s being directed by the guy who did (500) Days of Summer, which was a wonderful movie.

• Inspired by Avatar, George Lucas wants make Star Wars 3-D. How about he use that inspiration to make something that doesn’t suck? CollegeHumor.com has a pretty funny response (and wow, they got that up quick!):

• Mel Gibson will definitely not be in the Mad Max reboot. I know this shouldn’t surprise me (given “the incident”), but it kinda does.

• The New Yorker interviews Neil Gaiman.

• Tim Burton may tell the story of Maleficent (from Sleeping Beauty), which sounds good on paper, but what is this but a slightly different take on Wicked?

• How very, very depressing. Publishers, specifically Bloomsbury are putting pictures of white girls on books about black characters.

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Looking to buy any of the projects mentioned in this article (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

• This is old news, but I suppose it must be said: Avatar is a massive hit, and its prospects are growing better by the hour. Even more interesting to me, surveys find that every single demographic gives the movie an “A”!

• Speaking of which, Stephen Spielberg liked Avatar a lot, saying it’s as revolutionary as Star Wars.

• The first issue of the returning Realms of Fantasy magazine is available for free download.

• The X-Men: First Class project means that the Magneto: Origins movie is now off the table — the Xavier/Magneto origin will now be part of the former film.

• A (dubiously sourced) rumor says that Taylor Swift will play Supergirl.

• 28 Star Wars mashups. Good Lord, some people have way too much time on their hands!

• Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast (which makes Dungeons & Dragons) is suing Atari, which owns some digital rights to the game and recently sold them. Can I be honest? I didn’t even know Atari still existed.

• Tobey Maguire as Bilbo was a rumor with no basis in fact. Really? People on the internet are just making shit up? Who knew?!

• The decade’s most “profitable” actress was … Harry Potter’s Emma Watson. Which just kinda proves how stupid these kinds of surveys are.

• A great blog with all the news about HBO’s upcoming A Game of Thrones.

• A new website does for sci-fi/fantasy books what RottenTomatoes and Metacritic do for movies: it compiles and composites all reviews for particular books. Helpful!

• Liza Minnelli is not a fan of The Wizard of Oz – but only because she has a hard time watching what they do to her mother.

• Oh, and Happy Holidays!

Looking to buy any of the projects mentioned in this article (or any other media)? Support TheTorchOnline.com by purchasing it through this link.

• HBO has finished filming the pilot for the upcoming A Game of Thrones series. Airlock Alpha thinks it’s going to be a hit because the source-material is so rich and kick-ass, and because the casting was so great. (I agree on all counts!)

• Likewise, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has finished filming (or is just about finished).

• Not all teenage girls like Twilight. Myley Cyrus told a radio station, “I’ve never seen it and nor will I ever. I don’t believe in it. I don’t like vampires.” Ironically, she’s involved in a project with the producers of Twilight: a movie based on the young adult novel Wings in which a teenage girl learns she’s actually a fairy.

• How many times have I read this headline? “XXXXX is the next Harry Potter Franchise!” Well, now they’re saying it about The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel, a fantasy series by Michael Scott. Ironically, the fictional series involves the real-life historical character of Nicholas Flamel, who inspired J.K. Rowling through his work on the legendary “philosopher’s stone.”

• New Moon is a hit. Yawn.

• Ten episodes of The Twilight Zone you should see. These aren’t (just) the usual choices. Here’s the first list, which is the usual choices. I remarked to a famous author friend once that an idea of his was similar to an episode of The Twilight Zone, and he said to me words that are very, very true: “Everything since The Twilight Zone is a rip-off of them. When you think about it, they pretty much did it all.”
  

• Michael Moorcock is writing a Doctor Who novel.

• Over the weekend, I finally saw 2012. Yeah, Roland Emmerich is good at blowing things up, and it looked great. But man, what a bad movie. Let me see if I have this right: they crash-land a plane in a random spot on the continent of Asia and just happen to be within a half-hour’s drive of their destination, and they just happen to be picked up by truck heading that direction? This is one of only 50,000 complaints I had with the film.

• Brad Pitt may enter a Dark Void – a Bermuda Triangle-themed movie based on the video game.

• It costs less on Amazon? An independent bookseller explains why that’s not necessarily true: “Of every $100 you spend here, $68 stays in your community. For a big box store, $43 stays in the community, shopping online changes that to a big fat zero…We pay taxes in your town, our building and our business and our owner.  More money that stays in the community, through schools, public works, etc.  The sales tax you pay through us goes to your state.” She also points out that big businesses often kill small businesses with artificially low prices, but once their competition is gone, they either raise prices or slash inventory.

• An interview with author Michael Swanwick: “The Lord of the Rings is not the same book at age sixteen as it is at forty. On my first reading, it was the greatest adventure in the world. On my last, it was the saddest book I’d ever read. Everybody in it is in the process of losing everything they hold dear, and their task is to acknowledge the necessity of doing so, to make the sacrifice for the sake of those to come, and then to die. An adolescent simply couldn’t feel that the way an older man or woman might.”

• The reviews are great, and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (Terry Gilliam’s latest and Heath Ledger’s last film) is cleaning up overseas.

• Joss Whedon pens a cheeky open letter offering to buy the rights to The Terminator franchise … for $10,000.

• Really, really interesting: Ursula K. Le Guin takes on the “dragons” of publishing! She and a group of fantasy/sci-fi authors are getting together to publish their books electronically — bypassing traditional publishers.

• How do you make a movie about a character who can’t be depicted? The producer of The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix is working on a $150 million movie about Mohammad, but, in accordance with Muslim strictures, he won’t be seen. I’m trying not to be religion-phobic here, but this seems like a really bad idea.

• Shooting for the pilot of the HBO series A Game of Thrones has begun. With all the buzz and such a top-notch cast, I’m increasingly optimistic this will go to series — and be a hit.

• Does Spiderman already need a reboot? If so, here are some ideas.

• Publisher’s Weekly interviews urban fantasy author Anton Strout: “I hate reading stories where you don’t know the limitations of the world. When everything is possible, there’s no tension for me.  I can’t get invested in the characters because they’re not realistic enough to me, not grounded. I need the core of their world to feel real, limiting them in a way.” Truer words!

• A Chinese online gaming company is banning men who play as female characters. Wow, that company has issues.

• The Green Lantern director Marty Campbell talks of the movie’s  complicated special effects: “It’s daunting. Just the process, something like 1,300 visual effects shots, it’s mind-blowing, quite honestly.” The Green Lantern’s powers are generated through a mystical ring. “It’s energized by a battery on the planet of Oa, which taps into the willpower of everyone in the universe. From that ring you can form constructs. So if you got into a fight, you could form a giant fist. Or a fighter plane.”

• Now we know why Robert Zemeckis wants to do a sequel to Roger Rabbit that nobody else cares about. He wants to use the “performance capture” technology that he’s used in Beowulf, The Polar Express, and A Christmas Carol. I admire his persistence, but let’s face it: at least two of those three movies sucked.

Sean Bean, the actor who played Boromir in Peter Jackson’s movie versions of The Lord of the Rings, has been cast as Ned Stark in the pilot for A Game of Thrones, HBO’s television adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s series of fantasy novels, A Song of Fire and Ice.

Bean also stars in the upcoming Percy Jackson and the Olympians, a big-screen adaptation of a popular children’s fantasy book series.

“I can’t imagine a better Ned,” Martin writes on his blog. “The deal took some doing, so my fingers have been crossed for a month now (and boy, that made it hard to type), but now it’s done, and I’m thrilled.”

Martin also reports that Mark Addy (A Knight’s Tale and The Full Monty) has been cast as King Robert I Baratheon; Hollywood Reporter says the deal is being finalized but is not yet signed.

In other casting news, Harry Lloyd (Will Scarlett on the BBC series Robin Hood) will play Viserys Targaryen, the beggar king.

The relatively unknown actors Jack Gleeson and Kit Harington will play Joffrey Baratheon and Jon Snow, respectively.

“I’ve seen readings by both Gleeson and Lloyd, and both should be terrific,” Martin writes.

It was previously announced that Peter Dinklage, who played Trumpkin in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, has been cast as Tyrion Lannister.

The first season of the TV series, should the pilot be picked up by HBO, will correspond to the first book  in the series, which is titled A Game of Thrones. Subsequent seasons will reportedly be named after subsequent books.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Ask the Oracle! (Be sure to include your first name and the city, state, and/or country you are writing from.)

Q: If Merlin, which is now airing on NBC, aired last fall as a series on BBC in Britain, why can’t I buy all thirteen episodes on DVD? Shouldn’t it be out by now? — Nina, Richmond, VA

A: Yes, and it is — but, alas, not in the United States.

The Oracle forewarns you: this answer is a little wonky. But in order to control when and where digital content is released, entertainment corporations have divided the world up into eight different “regions” (including one, region 8, that is “international space,” such as cruiseships, airplanes, and, presumably, outer space).

Why do this? It’s all about the money. For example, it allows the movie studios to charge more for content sold in rich countries where people can afford to pay more. They’ve even gone so far as to try, with mixed success, to code their content so that it’s not playable in DVD players that are in a different region than where the content was purchased.

Regarding Merlin, this is another example of the beauty of the DVD region codes (at least from the point-of-view of entertainment corporations): the show did play last fall in what they call Region 2 (which includes Europe and the U.K.), and people there are now enjoying access to the show on DVD. But here in Region 1 (which is the U.S. and Canada), the show has not yet been released on DVD, enabling NBC, which partnered with the BBC in producing the show, to maximize their profit: first they can air it on television, generating television revenue, then they can release it on DVD.

You could try to order Merlin from Amazon.uk.com, but the Oracle warns you that it might not play on your DVD player.

Q: I have a framed map of Narnia, and also one of Middle Earth. Does a poster-sized map of Earthsea exist? How about Thomas Covenant’s The Land? — Chereeeee, St. Paul, MN

A: The Oracle can reveal that Ursula le Guin herself draw a map of Earthsea that is available for download on her website. One size is large, which should be suitable for framing.

Maps also exist of The Land (at least as it exists in the First Chronicles of Thomas Convenant; the land has changed considerably by the time of the Second Chronicles).

Incidentally, that map of Narnia you have? If it’s Pauline Barnes’ original 1971 map (and not the ugly Rose Publishing knock-off), it’s something of a collectors’ item.

Q: Do you think the TV failure of Kings, the (relative) failure (so far) of Merlin, and the so-so ratings for Legend of the Seeker will affect the chances for A Game of Thrones actually making it on air? — Brant, Saratoga Springs NY

A: The Oracles thinks no … and yes.

Since HBO has announced that this fall they’ll be filming a pilot for the series, the odds of the show actually airing have increased exponentially; HBO, unlike the broadcast networks, doesn’t film a lot of pilots that don’t end up airing, especially for expensive, effects-laden shows like this one. And keep in mind that this is HBO; since they’re subscriber-based, they don’t need to drawn the huge viewing numbers of the commercial-based networks. Instead, they need to attract viewers passionate (and hungry) enough to shell out extra money to subscribe to the network.

In short, A Game of Thrones seems exactly the kind of show that would work perfectly for the network — just like True Blood, another fantasy show, which is currently a huge hit for them. Likewise, Starz, a premium channel looking to draw attention to itself, seems like a great place for the Lucy Lawless’ new, graphically violent fantasy show, Spartacus: Blood and Sand, coming in January.

That said, we’d be fools not to acknowledge that the (relative) failure of all these recent, high-profile fantasy shows (True Blood aside) does put some extra pressure, and suspicion, on future, non-vampire-related fantasy programming. They probably don’t have quite the grace period that they might have had two years ago.

It also makes the Oracle wonder: fantasy television programming, at least of the “high fantasy” sort, may not have the innate widespread appeal that the broadcast networks require; even Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Xena: Warrior Princess, fantasy’s two most recent break-out shows, never drew massive numbers.

While the viewers of such shows (including the Oracle) are passionate about them, fantasy television programming really might be better suited to subscription and niche cable networks.

George R. R. Martin, the author of the bestselling fantasy series A Song of Fire and Ice, has confirmed via his blog that the pilot for an HBO television series based on his books will film in October in Northern Ireland.

“At last it can be told,” Martin writes.

As exciting as the actual confirmation of filming is for fantasy enthusiasts, this actually isn’t earth-shattering news. HBO announced in October 2008 that they had commissioned the filming of A Game of Thrones, a pilot for the first season of a television series based on the first book in Martin’s series; subsequent seasons would be named after the other books in the series.

As for whether the pilot will ever be aired or actually become a series, it’s likely that no decision will be made until well after the pilot is made, edited, and focus-grouped. That said, in the past, HBO, a premium cable network, has commissioned fewer pilots than the broadcast networks, and brought more of them to air.

And it’s encouraging news that the filming will definitely take place. The pilot will be shot in Paint Hall, once part of a shipyard where the Titanic was constructed and now a massive film studio where the movie City of Ember was shot.

“Yes, [my wife] Parris and I will be going over to Ireland this fall to see at least part of the filming,” Martin writes. “Not for the whole shoot, alas, I don’t have time for that… but we have to be there for at least part of it. Maybe we’ll see some of you in a Belfast pub.”

“This is the first time that a TV production of such vast size and scale has been filmed in Northern Ireland,” says Peter D. Robinson, Northern Ireland’s First Minister.

“There’s lots of other exciting news on the pilot as well, but nothing I can share,” Martin writes, possibly alluding to casting decisions. “Sorry, lips are sealed.”

Watch a video about Paint Hall.