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RIP Dan Simmons

News has broken that science fiction author Dan Simmons, best known for his Hyperion Cantos series, has passed away at the age of 77.

Born in Illinois in 1948, Simmons did not break into writing fiction until he was already in his thirties, having instead worked as an elementary school teacher. He credits Harlan Ellison's mentorship with getting him into writing workshops and programmes. He published his first short story, "The River Styx Runs Upstream," in 1982, and another, "Remembering Siri," in 1983. This story is notable as being the first set in his Hyperion setting. Another 1983 story, "Carrion Comfort," inspired his horror novel of the same name.

Despite his reputation as a major science fiction author, Simmons actually broke through as a horror author with his first two novels, Song of Kali (1985) and Carrion Comfort (1989). He attracted critical attention and approval from Stephen King, and won the World Fantasy Award for Song of Kali, with Carrion Comfort picking up a Bram Stoker Award, Locus Award and British Fantasy Award.

In 1989 Simmons also published his first major science fiction work and also his best-known single novel, Hyperion. An SF take on The Canterbury Tales, the book forms a series of narratives told by travellers on their way to confront a mysterious alien entity known as the Shrike. The sequel/continuation (Simmons would occasionally suggest the two books had been written as one ultra-long novel, split in half for practical reasons and a major shift in formal), The Fall of Hyperion (1990), won a British Science Fiction Association Award. The two books were retrofitted as a duology called The Hyperion Cantos and published in omnibus under that title in 1990. After detouring into other settings, Simmons would return to the same universe for Endymion (1996) and The Rise of Endymion (1997), which were not quite as well-received, but still solid. Simmons got to experience the joys of Hollywood development hell, with Hyperion optioned for both film and television multiple times (most recently by actor-producer-director Bradley Cooper, a big fan of Simmons) but never quite making it.

Simmons would continue to write in other settings. The five-volume Seasons of Horror series was published intermittently from 1991 to 2002, and was followed by the Joe Kurtz trilogy (2001-03), which saw him move into contemporary detective fiction. Phases of Gravity (1989) and The Hollow Man (1992) were science fiction, whilst The Crook Factory (1999) was a historical thriller. His next major work was the Ilium duology, consisting of Ilium (2003) and Olympos (2005).

Simmons entered a new phase of his career with arguably his second-best-known novel, though perhaps better-known to a more general audience. The Terror (2007) expertly merged elements of historical and speculative fiction into an engrossing account of the infamous Franklin Expedition. It was adapted as a TV series in by AMC in 2018. Drood (2008) tackled the mystery around Charles Dickens's final novel. Black Hills (2010) attracted less interest, and Simmons experienced significant opprobrium for his 2011 novel Flashback, which some commentators regarded as Islamophobic. Simmons noted the novel was an expansion of a earlier short story in which the antagonists are instead Ronald Reagan-influenced capitalists, which attracted no criticism at the time, though commentators also pointed out his long, post-9/11 history of political commentary on the issue over the previous decade. Despite criticisms, the book sold well and was optioned for television. Simmons rallied to deliver the novels The Abominable (2013) and The Fifth Heart (2015). His final completed novel, Omega Canyon, was due for publication last year but was delayed for unspecified reasons.

At his best, Dan Simmons could be an atmospheric writer, skilled in character, setting and story. His novels could trend long, sometimes to tremendous effect (in his Hyperion Cantos duology and The Terror), but sometimes invoking filler. But he was a restless author, always happy to explore new ideas and new genres rather than resting on his laurels and bashing off a dozen, easy Hyperion sequels. Bradley Cooper, Stephen King and Guillermo Del Toro were major fans, Harlan Ellison regarded him as a protege and George R.R. Martin published him in anthologies.

Dan Simmons passed away today from complications resulting from a stroke. He is survived by his wife Karen and daughter Jane, two grandchildren and his brother. With Hyperion and The Terror, he achieved the rare feat of writing two genre novels which crossed over into mainstream awareness and praise, which is no small achievement.

RIP Rob Grant

In tragically surprising news, as he was in the news just last week, Red Dwarf co-creator Rob Grant has passed away at the age of 70.

Born in Salford in 1955, Grant grew up in the north of England, studying at Liverpool University. He met Doug Naylor in the mid-1970s at university and they collaborated on a series of sketch shows for BBC Radio 4, including Cliche and Son of Cliche. For the latter they created a character called "Dave Hollins, Space Cadet," the last human being alive after being marooned in the distant future. Filing that for future reference, they started working on TV projects for comedian Jasper Carrott and then the satirical puppet show Spitting Image. In 1986, Grant and Naylor wrote "The Chicken Song," a satirical song for Spitting Image which unexpectedly hit #1 on the British music charts.

Both Grant and Naylor were science fiction fans and wanted to do something in that genre. In 1987 they developed the TV science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf for the BBC. After running into numerous problems with casting - original choice for Rimmer, Alan Rickman, bailed out to appear in some obscure American movie set in a skyscraper - and scheduling - the entire first season had to remounted after a studio strike - the show debuted in February 1988 and was immediately successful. Its stars, Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules and Norman Lovett (later joined by Hattie Hayridge and Robert Llewellyn), became well-known figures on British television almost overnight.

The show aired six seasons from 1988 to 1993, selling hundreds of thousands of copies on VHS and hundreds of thousands of copies of two novels penned by Grant and Naylor, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better Than Life. The TV show also spawned a high-selling magazine and a fervent fan community. Despite being one of the the biggest comedy shows in Britain during its early lifetime, the show attracted relatively little attention from the critical community and was mostly ignored for TV awards. Ironically, the show achieved its highest critical success in the United States by winning an International Emmy Award for the Season 6 episode Gunmen of the Apocalypse. There were two attempts to film a pilot for the US market, both failing to go to series.

Grant and Naylor co-created a more conventional sitcom for ITV about theatrical agents called The 10%ers in 1993, but their creative relationship was cooling. They stopped working together after 1993 and dissolved their writing partnership in 1995, though both retained ownership stakes in the Grant Naylor production company. This dissolution, along with legal troubles for castmembers of the show, prevented a new series of Red Dwarf being made until 1997, with Naylor leading a new writing team. Naylor later wrote the eighth season in 1999 by himself. Rob Grant's last contribution to the Red Dwarf mythos was a novel, Backwards, published in 1996.

Grant created and wrote the period sitcom Dark Ages for ITV in1999 and the SF sitcom The Strangerers for Sky One in 2000. He pivoted to writing novels for Gollancz, namely Colony (2000), Incompetence (2003) and Fat (2006), along with a radio series for BBC Radio 4 called Quanderhorn, a pastiche of Quatermass, written by Andrew Marshall. He also penned a radio series called The Nether Regions, again with Marshall.

In 2022 Grant announced an intention to return to Red Dwarf to produce a spin-off prequel TV show called Red Dwarf: Titan. This created a legal tangle with Naylor that took a year or so to resolve. Since 2023, Grant had been working on this project with Marshall, with multiple streaming companies taking meetings but nobody willing to commit a budget. Just last week, they confirmed they had written a novel version of the project, which Gollancz had picked up for publication this summer. This will now be a posthumous release, and Grant's final project.

Rob Grant suddenly passed away on 25 February. Red Dwarf castmembers, friends and fans have posted tributes online.

On a personal note, I met Rob Grant on several occasions in the late 2000s at various publishing events in London with Gollancz. He was very personable, funny and a seemingly infinite reservoir of anecdotes. He will very much be missed.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: Season 1

It is the year 209 After the Conquest, eighty years after the Dance of Dragons and eighty-nine before the War of the Five Kings. The realm of the Seven Kingdoms is at peace. To celebrate his daughter's nameday, the Lord of Ashford is holding a great tourney, and knights and lords of renown from across the realm are arriving to show their prowess in personal combat and jousting. Amongst them are several princes of House Targaryen, now dragonless but still holding the Iron Throne...and a newly-anointed hedge knight by the name of Ser Duncan the Tall. Dunk sees to acquit himself well in the lists, but his lack of coin makes his prospects precarious. A chance encounter with a young boy named Egg, who volunteers to squire for him, changes his fortunes, and those of the Seven Kingdoms themselves.

For the third time, HBO has decided to visit the lands of Westeros and create a new hit television series. Set in the same world as Game of Thrones (set later) and House of the Dragon (set earlier), A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms adapts the Dunk & Egg series of novellas by George R.R. Martin, with three currently published. This first season of six episodes adapts the first and best (to date) novella in the sequence, The Hedge Knight (1998), and tries once again to right the ship that is Westeros-on-TV after a shaky previous season.

Once again, HBO has defied the odds and delivered a stand-up season of quality television. Here writer and showrunner Ira Parker, working with George R.R. Martin and Ti Mikkel, amongst others, has had to thread a needle of creating something that's identifiably part of the same world as the other shows whilst also ploughing its own path and unique identity. He is helped here by the source material, which is exceptional. The Hedge Knight may be George's strongest piece of writing in the world of Westeros and Essos, and maybe even his finest piece of writing as a whole. It's a story operating on multiple levels as Dunk has to consider the price of honour in a land where violence is still used to solve problems, and fairness and justice are relative concepts. The novella moves its pieces around with precision which click into place at the end in an artistically satisfying way.

At first, the TV take on the same story feels like it's a little stretched. Extensive new flashback sequences explore Dunk's background in Flea Bottom, a rough slum in King's Landing (the previous, or rather future, home of characters like Gendry and Davos), and his period as squire to Ser Arlan of Pennytree. Multiple new subplots have been inserted into the story of the tourney itself, with Dunk refusing an offer for an opponent to throw a match to satisfy the betting crowd and seeking wise advice from the local working girls. More minor characters in the novella like Ser Raymun Fossoway and Lord Lyonel Baratheon, the Laughing Storm, are here fleshed out in greater detail, with distinct character arcs of their own. The show also leans into the lighter and less-ominous tone with more humour, including a lot of toilet humour (quite literally, in some cases)

This expansion of the novella is good, in that minor characters are given more depth and more motivation for helping Dunk, but it does slow down the action. One of the novella's strengths is how it moves with a purpose, says its peace and is done. The TV show slows things down perhaps a tad too much in its opening episodes, with the impact of making the episodes feel both too short (only one exceeds 40 minutes, and several barely crack 30) but also risking feeling like there is too much filler.

This problem quickly evaporates in the third episode, however, as the main plot from the novella kicks into gear and suddenly the season catches fire and does not let up. The infamous tourney battle which is the centrepiece of the novella is rendered here as one of the finest medieval combat sequences ever staged on the screen, with a refreshing use of helmets (often inexplicably absent from Game of Thrones) and intelligent use of weapons. The plotting is impressive, dialogue often poetic and the acting throughout is outstanding, particularly by Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as Egg, both outrageously good finds. Bertie Carvel (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell) is also outstanding as Prince Baelor "Breakspear" Targaryen, Daniel Ings is a very different Lyonel Baratheon from the book but a compelling performer, and Youssef Kerkour excels in a small role as the blacksmith Steely Pate.

The production values, as you would expect, are excellent. That this is a cheaper show than House of the Dragon and the last couple of seasons of Thrones is to be expected. There are no dragons in the story and the whole show takes place in one castle and the field next door, as well as some miscellaneous Northern Ireland scenery. But it's clearly not cheap. There are vast crowds of spectators, the extras budget alone must have been exceptional, and there's a lot of action sequences involving trained fighters and horses. HBO are their most relatively frugal for this franchise, is still capable of delivering stunning imagery. Dan Romer also delivers a superbly atmospheric soundtrack.

But what makes the show work the best is the relationship between Dunk and Egg. Claffey and Ansell sell the characters' relationship extremely well, with Dunk's pragmatism and idealism (or naivete) counterpointed by his inexperience, whilst Egg's book smarts lacking real-world application is charmingly handled. When the season ends, you immediately want to see more of these characters and their adventures. And there's good news on that, with Season 2, based on The Sworn Sword, already in production for a 2027 release.

The first season of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (****½) has a slow start but quickly picks up, delivering a relentless battery of well-judged character moments, action, worldbuilding and pathos. It's refreshing to take a visit to a time in Westeros's history when decency and compassion are still respected, and the two leads should be well established for great careers by their performances here. The show is currently streaming around the world and will be released on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K in the summer.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 01

Earth, 2099. The eastern seaboard of what was once the United States of America is dominated by a colossal conurbation known as Mega-City One, stretching from Nova Scotia to Florida. Eight hundred million people live in a society that is heavily automated and served by robots. With over 92% unemployment due to automation, people survive by following fads, watching TV and picking fights with their neighbours. With most of the rest of the world reduced to post-nuclear ash, aside from a few other distant mega-cities, this creates a special kind of pressure cooker in the city where crime and stress is rife.

In charge of law and order are the Judges, custodians of the law who can investigate crimes and deliver sentences - even death sentences for serious crimes - on the spot. The system would be in danger of corruption, but one Judge and his utterly implacable loyalty to the law stands as an example to everyone else: Judge Joseph Dredd. Dredd has to tackle not just a full-scale robot uprising in the city and a six-month secondment to the Luna-1 colony on the Moon, but an even more annoying situation: his inadvertent acquisition of a servitor robot called Walter.

Judge Dredd is possibly the single most famous British comic character of all time. Debuting in weekly anthology comic 2000AD with its second issue in March 1977, Dredd has appeared in every single issue since then (as of today, that's 2,471 issues and counting), as well as the monthly Judge Dredd Megazine since 1990. A stoic dispenser of law and order and the owner of the most famous chin in comics, Dredd has been a firm fan favourite in the UK, thanks to his satirical world and cynical outlook. Video games, audio dramas and two movies (one okay, one excellent) have furthered the character's appeal.

If you want to catch up on the extensive Dredd mythos, publishers Rebellion have provided a handy way of doing so. The Complete Case Files aims to collect together every single story featuring the lawman since his inception. I say "handy," rather than "inexpensive" because this is certainly a long-term and pricy endeavour, and one that's ongoing for some time to come. As of last week, The Complete Case Files had reached Volume 49, featuring stories published in 2010.

For total newcomers, this is probably not the place to start. Dredd is best-known for his expansive, massive mega-epic sagas expanding over dozens of issues. Stories like The Cursed Earth, The Day the Law Died, The Apocalypse War, Democracy, The Dead Man, Necropolis and Judgement Day combine action, character development, themes, satire and worldbuilding to superb effect. The problem is that none of those stories are here: The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died are both in the second volume, The Apocalypse War is in the fifth, and the rest are some way off.

Volume 01 is instead basically Judge Dredd: The Prototype, or Early Instalment Weirdness: Dredd Edition. The creative team are really working on the fly here, experimenting from story to story with tone, how much serialisation they should be dealing with and how to handle Dredd's character, what there is of it. The tone is definitely whackier and funnier (though still jet-black in its composition) than it can be later on, with Dredd's stoic demeanour often being undercut by extreme social awkwardness, a feature of his character that is downplayed in later years. The worldbuilding is also basically being done ad-hoc: the first story even calls the setting "New York," with NYC only being incorporated into the much vaster and far crazier technourban hellscape of Mega-City One in the next instalment. Early issues also suggest that Judges are relatively rare law enforcers dealing with high-level crimes (or whatever crimes they happen to personally bump into) and there's a "proper" police force working below them, an idea which is dispensed with pretty quickly, whilst Mega-City Three is frequently mentioned before it is replaced by Texas City towards the end of this first volume.

The average quality of the stories is also not that great. You can tell the writers are aiming the stories firmly at 1970s teenage kids who've graduated from The Dandy and The Beano to something more adult, with lots of violence and explosions solving problems, although some stories do have Dredd using his brain more to outsmart his opponents. The majority of the stories in this volume are one-off adventures of the week (and these are much shorter issues than the US norm) with limited or no continuing elements, which makes the flow of reading it feel choppy. There's an awful lot of filler here.

There are a few stories that stand out, though. Robot Wars is the first multi-part, long-running Dredd epic and, though low-key compared to the really big hitters, it does show the advantages of longer-form storytelling. There's more character and world development, and we get our first memorable entry to Dredd's formidable rogue's gallery, with the renegade robot Call-Me-Kenneth. Unfortunately this story also lands Dredd with his lisp-inflicted comic sidekick, Walter the Wobot, who is Code Jar-Jar in terms of annoyance levels. His appearances become more sporadic over time, but he is very present in this volume, which can be trying. The volume even collects a series of one-page adventures starring Walter that 2000AD ran for a while, which is both laudable from a completionist point of view and intensely irritating from literally any other (fortunately, readers can simply ignore those stories).

Another early highlight is The Academy of Law, which sees Dredd gain a protege in the form of trainee Judge Giant. This story is the first to delve into the worldbuilding of the Justice Department, the gruelling twenty-year training every cadet must undergo, and how Dredd is very much not a typical Judge. Oddly, Giant doesn't show up again in this collection, but does later become a recurring character.

The most accomplished single story in the collection is The Return of Rico, in which Dredd's clone-brother Rico Dredd returns to Mega-City One for revenge after twenty years in maximum security prison on Titan. We get a lot of backstory to the Judges, the city and Dredd himself (who has mostly been an enigma to this point), and find out what happens when Judges go bad and how they are dealt with. It's the most personal character development Dredd gets in the whole collection, and the only story to really engage Dredd's actual humanity (though only briefly).

The collection rounds off with the loose Luna-1 arc, where Dredd is appointed Judge-Marshal to the moon colony for six months. The moon is a lawless frontier, which Dredd is keen to clean up. This arc leans heavily on the "the moon as the Wild West" metaphor which is...odd, but a choice they commit to and keep up. Like most of the collection it's variable, but in the First Luna Olympics we get additional worldbuilding by discovering that there are "Sov-Cities" in Eurasia which are effectively in a new Cold War with the American Mega-Cities (something that becomes hugely important later on). At the end of the arc Dredd returns to Mega-City One and fortunately the stage is set for the significantly stronger Volume 02, which gives us both The Cursed Earth and The Day the Law Died epics.

It has to be said that as an introduction to Judge Dredd, this collection can be pretty rough. Even going into it knowing it's a collection of fifty-year-old action comic strips aimed (predominantly) at teenage boys, with characterisation, worldbuilding and any kind of thematic development happening almost by accident, it can be underwhelming. This collection is Dredd at his most superficial and least interesting as a character, and the satirical take on Mega-City One as a horrible place to live which is effectively governed by fascist cops is not really explored at all, instead being played completely straight.

If you want a proper introduction to Dredd, The Essential Dredd collection is a better (and considerably shorter) place to start. If you've already sampled those and want to take a completionist approach and are going into this with your eyes open, there is some fun to be had with these stories. Robot Wars is interesting and The Return of Rico is the closest the collection comes to an actual classic, but you do have to accept a lot of filler (and a few straight-up terrible) stories to get there.

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files - Volume 01 (***) is widely available now, with is more than can be said for some of the later collections. An intriguing historical artifact which does set the scene and lay the foundations for the much better stories that follow.

The Complete Case Files Volume 01 contains every Judge Dredd story printed from Prog (issue) 02 to Prog 61 of the comic 2000AD, published from March 1977 to April 1978 (no Judge Dredd story was published in the first issue). The stories are set in the years 2099 and 2100. The writers in this collection are John Wagner, Pat Mills, Robert Flynn, Kelvin Gosnell, Charles Harring, Malcolm Shaw and Joe Collins. The artists in this collection are Carlos Ezquerra, Mick McMahon, Ian Gibson, Brian Bolland, John Cooper and Massimo Belardinelli.

Thank you for reading The Wertzone. To help me provide better content, please consider contributing to my Patreon page and other funding methods.

RED DWARF co-creator returns to franchise after 30 years with new novel

Red Dwarf co-creator Rob Grant is returning to the franchise he created in 1988 with a new novel. This will mark his first contribution to the Red Dwarf mythos since his 1996 novel Backwards, published three years after his last contributions to the TV series.

Rob Grant created Red Dwarf alongside his writing partner Doug Naylor, expanding on ideas they originally created for the radio comedy sketch Dave Hollins: Space Cadet. Red Dwarf is set three million years in the future, aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf which had to flee out of the Solar system when an onboard radiation leak sterilised the ship. The sole survivor is chicken soup repair technician Dave Lister, sentenced to suspended animation for bringing an unregistered cat on board. The ship's powerful-but-deranged AI, Holly, releases Lister from suspended animation and charts a course back to Earth. To keep Lister sane, Holly resurrects his officious and pedantic superior officer Arnold J. Rimmer (the J stands for Judas) as a hologram. They later discover a humanoid creature who descended and evolved from Lister's cat, and then rescue a sanitation droid named Kryten to round out the crew.

Red Dwarf ran for six seasons on the BBC from 1988 to 1993, with Grant and Naylor also penning two spin-off novels, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (1989) and Better Than Life (1990). The series became a massive smash hit success. The show went on hiatus after Season 6 due to creative differences between Grant and Naylor and legal troubles for some of the cast. Grant decided to pursue solo original novel projects, penning Colony (2000), Incompetence (2003), Fat (2006) and The Quanderhorn Xperimentations (2019), the latter based on a radio series for BBC Radio 4.

Meanwhile, Doug Naylor returned to helm six further seasons of Red Dwarf, airing intermittently in 1997, 1999, 2009, 2012, 2016 and 2017, followed by a TV movie in 2020. Grant occasionally contributed interviews to various re-releases on DVD and Blu-Ray, but did not seem interested in returning to write new material.

In 2022, a legal battle erupted between Grant and Naylor for control of the property. The events were disputed, with Grant confirming that Naylor was continuing to develop new TV projects with the existing cast whilst he was in talks to develop a new reboot TV series that would allow the franchise to continue indefinitely (with the existing castmembers now ranging from their late fifties to early seventies), whilst Naylor complained he'd been forced out of the loop. In 2023, the two sides confirmed all legal issues had been resolved, with both Grant and Naylor free to continue developing their respective projects.

Grant's project is Red Dwarf: Titan, originally planned as both a TV series and novel. Titan is a low-key reboot of the Red Dwarf premise, deliberately set in a parallel universe to avoid clashing with the established canon (though Red Dwarf's approach to canon and continuity has always been "relaxed," to say the least). This fresh take is set on Red Dwarf whilst it is still in the Solar system, and before the nuclear accident that wipes out the crew. The story starts with the crew of the ship accepting shore leave on Saturn's moon Titan, where Lister and Rimmer reluctantly have to work together after receiving an ominous message from the distant future.

Plans for a possible TV version of the project remain on the backburner, so Grant has proceeded with the novel, cowritten with his recent writing partner Andrew Marshall (best-known as the creator and writer of the hit 1990s sitcom 2point4 Children).

The novel will be published on 16 July 2026 by Gollancz in the UK.

Doug Naylor's plans for further Red Dwarf adventures with the original crew have apparently hit problems caused by the collapse in funding for a lot of UK shows in the post-pandemic era, with Dave (the UK channel that commissioned Seasons 9 through 12 and the 2020 special) no longer able to fund original programming as it used to.

Royal Shakespeare Company confirms launch of GAME OF THRONES: THE MAD KING for Summer 2026

The Royal Shakespeare Company has confirmed it will debut its production Game of Thrones: The Mad King, based on George R.R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire novels and HBO's Game of Thrones TV series, in June 2026. Tickets will go on sale on 14 April this year.

The Mad King is an immediate prequel to both the novels and TV show. Set fifteen years before the events of the books, the play is set during the great tourney at Harrenhal, where a young Robert Baratheon, his best friend Eddard Stark and Eddard's older brother Brandon and younger sister Lyanna rub shoulders with the likes of Jaime Lannister, Ser Arthur Dayne, Prince Rhaegar Targaryen...and King Aerys II Targaryen, the Mad King, whose increasingly erratic rule threatens the peace of the realm.

The full press release follows:

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) today announces the world premiere of Game of Thrones: The Mad King, a new play based on the novels by George R. R. Martin, adapted by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King will have its world premiere at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon in Summer 2026. Priority booking will go on sale from 14 April 2026 with public booking to be announced in April 2026. For early access, visit rsc.org.uk/join to become an RSC member. More information will be announced later in the year. Full details of the upcoming RSC season will be announced on Thursday 26 February 2026.

Enter the world before.

A long winter thaws in Harrenhal, and spring is promised. At a lavish banquet on the eve of a jousting tournament, lovers meet and revellers speculate about who will contend. But in the shadows, amid growing unease at the blood-thirsty actions of the realm’s merciless Mad King, dissenters from his inner circle anxiously advance a treasonous plot. Far away, the drums of battle sound.

Family bonds, ancient prophecies, and the sacred line of succession will be tested in a dangerous campaign for power. Who will survive? Who will rise?

Wars aren’t won by those with most cause, but whose story’s best told.

Game of Thrones: The Mad King is a sweeping new stage epic from the world of George R. R. Martin, written by Duncan Macmillan and directed by Dominic Cooke. Spanning the final years before the events of the novels, this powerful drama reveals a legendary chapter of Westerosi history.

Come face to face with familiar characters from the houses Targaryen, Stark, Lannister, Baratheon and Martell and witness the events that set the stage for the world’s most critically acclaimed series.

Executive Producer and creator George R. R. Martin said: “When I first wrote Game of Thrones, I never imagined that it would be anything other than a book. It was a place for my imagination to exist without limits. To my great surprise, it was adapted for a series and viewers have been able to enter the world of my imagination through the medium of television. For my work to now be adapted for the stage is something I did not expect but welcome with great enthusiasm and excitement. Theatre offers something unique. A place for mine and the audience’s imagination to meet and hopefully create something magical.

“For me, the RSC was the obvious choice when thinking about putting a Game of Thrones story on the stage. Shakespeare is the greatest name in English literature, and his plays have been a constant source of inspiration to me and my writing. Not only that, he faced similar challenges in how to put a battle on stage, so we are in good company. It will be thrilling to watch the events of this new play unfold in a live environment. Duncan’s masterful script honours the world completely, and I am so excited for both fans of the series, and perhaps people who have never picked up one of my books, to experience this new story in a theatre.”

Adaptor Duncan Macmillan and director Dominic Cooke said: “The play is a prequel, taking place over a decade before the events of Game of Thrones. A long winter has started to thaw and, for the first time in years, all the great houses come together for a tournament - destined to be the greatest of the age. It feels like a new dawn, full of hope and opportunity. But tournaments always have a darker purpose.

“George’s storytelling is Shakespearean in its scale and its themes - dynastic struggle, ambition, rebellion, madness, prophecy, ill-fated love. From the beginning, Shakespeare’s histories and tragedies have been our primary reference for the ambition of this production, so the RSC feels like a natural home.

“It will be thrilling for us to share this new play with audiences, both those that know and love George’s books and HBO’s series, but also audiences who know nothing and want to come and experience something both beautifully intimate and truly epic.”

RSC Co-Artistic directors Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey said: “When we first read Duncan’s script, it was immediately apparent how this epic cycle of warring families sits in a continuum with Shakespeare’s history cycles. So it feels like an exciting and apposite marriage between the RSC and Game of Thrones universe.

“Stories of power, ambition and the complexities of succession are evergreen - and this adaptation explores the true nature of authority through the lens of young people grappling with inherited identities. The story will have all the epic qualities audiences would expect from Game of Thrones, but ultimately, it has a very human heart.”

Pinnacle launches DEADLANDS 30th Anniversary Kickstarter

Pinnacle Entertainment has launched the Kickstarter for the 30th Anniversary celebration of their seminal tabletop roleplaying game Deadlands.

Originally launched in late 1996, Deadlands used a novel rules system built for fast, six-shootin' action mixed in with magic and weird science. The game combined different die types with cards for greater randomisation and a whole magic system built around deck-building (this was streamline later on). The game was notable for its setting, which mixed Wild West action, Lovecraftian horror, steampunk science and black comedy. Think of Army of Darkness meets Unforgiven meets The Difference Engine with zombies and you're most of the way there. It's not for nothing that the legendary Bruce Campbell himself provided the introduction for the revised edition of the game in 1999.

The game had a revised edition in 1999, two sequel TTRPG games (Deadlands: Hell on Earth and Deadlands: Lost Colony) and a spin-off miniatures game using a simplified version of the rules, The Great Rail Wars, but an attempt to pivot to the d20 rules system (derived from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition) in 2002 backfired spectacularly and nearly drove the company out of business. Regrouping, the company used The Great Rail Wars rules as the basis for a new, universal rules system, Savage Worlds. The company released new versions of Deadlands for Savage Worlds, namely Deadlands Reloaded in 2006 and Deadlands: The Weird West in 2020. Both have been successful.

For the upcoming 30th Anniversary, Pinnacle decided not to re-release the original game. A 20th Anniversary reissue of the revised edition was released in 2017, and was recently reprinted and should be (for now, anyway) widely available. Instead, they've decided to look to the past of the game but focus on revised material for the current edition of the game.

First up in the Kickstarter package is Deadlands: 30 Years of Games, Grit, & Ghost Rock. This is a history and behind-the-scenes account of the making of the game over three decades, with exclusive new information on various movie and TV adaptations of the property that never quite took off, as well as multiple video games that were in development at one time or another but were cancelled. The book also acts as an art book, collecting most of the cover art for all of Deadlands' various editions and sourcebooks over the three decades. The book also includes the introductions to previous editions by Joe Lansdale, Mike Stackpole and Bruce Campbell, and an account of the time Campbell played the game.

As well as the requisite coins, cards and special dice, the set includes a new rulebook for playing the game. Deadlands: Core Rules combines the Savage Worlds Adventurer's Edition rulebook and the Deadlands: The Weird West corebook into one integrated edition, with irrelevant material from Savage Worlds (i.e. lasers and spaceships) removed and some material from the Deadlands: Weird West Companion added. This creates an all-new starting point for the game which is easier on both the wallet and the brain whilst trying to look up rules and not being able to remember which book they're in. This rule book will be available in a regular edition and a leatherbound special edition.

An additional new book is Deadlands: Rascals, Varmints, & Relics, a combined bestiary and item book collating previous material and adding new information on monsters and items.

The set also includes the Deadlands Accessories Box, which includes a GM's Screen, action deck, ammo tracker, poster map, dice and reference cards, and the Deadlands Starter Set, which includes a simplified "showcase" set of the rules for new players, an adventure called The Cursed Caverns, maps, tokens, pawns, another Action Deck, templates, archetype cards and so forth. 

Available as various add-ons are the extant material for the current edition of the game, including the adventure/campaign books Hell on the High Plains, The Abominable Northwest, Horror at Headstone Hill, Carnage in the Cascades and Night Train, and various map packs and archetype card sets (customisable pregen character cards, basically).

The Kickstarter will be running until 14 March and, predictably, has already been fully funded.

BALDUR'S GATE TV series in development at HBO from LAST OF US team

HBO is developing a TV series based on the Baldur's Gate video game series, set in the Forgotten Realms fantasy world and Dungeons & Dragons multiverse. The TV show will be set shortly after the events of the video game Baldur's Gate III and will see some returning characters from the game alongside new faces.

If Lump the Enlightened is not in the TV show, we riot.

Craig Mazin, the showrunner of The Last of Us and Chernobyl, is lining this up to be his next project once work on the third and now-confirmed-to-be-final season of that show is completed. Mazin will be the main writer, showrunner and producer, with Chris Perkins from Wizards of the Coast serving as consultant. At this stage, none of the team from Larian Studios, who produced Baldur's Gate III, are involved, and it appears that Forgotten Realms creator Ed Greenwood has also not been consulted on the project so far. However, some of the voice cast from the video game may return, either voicing or playing their characters where that makes sense, or in new roles if not.

Mazin, a noted gamer, has completed Baldur's Gate III more than once, having put over 1,000 hours into the game and completing it on the challenging "honour mode." He is also an avid tabletop gamer, having run ongoing D&D campaigns for over fifteen years straight.

Baldur's Gate is apparently designed to share continuity with The Forgotten Realms, the Shawn Levy-produced show in development over at HBO's now (or soon-to-be) sister streamer, Netflix.

With the final season of Last of Us not likely to land before mid-2027, the Baldur's Gate show may be lucky to hit screens before the end of the decade.

Sales of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE surpass 100 million

It's been a long time coming, but sales of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire sequence, perhaps better known by the name of its TV adaptation, HBO's Game of Thrones, have finally and officially passed the 100 million mark.

The Juniper Books rejacketing of the Song of Ice and Fire series.

The news was buried in The Hollywood Reporter's recent article on Martin, although the main focus was elsewhere (yes, The Winds of Winter still isn't out yet, and yes, the fall-out from Martin's public dissatisfaction with House of the Dragon continues to reverberate).

The series started off a little sluggishly, with A Game of Thrones only doing okay on its first publication in August 1996 (the series turns thirty this year) and it taking until the paperback was released before sales picked up, something Martin attributed to the cover quote from fellow fantasy author Robert Jordan, of Wheel of Time fame. Sales and critical acclaim grew with the release of A Clash of Kings in 1998 and A Storm of Swords in 2000. By the time of the release of A Feast for Crows in 2005, sales of the series had approached or exceeded five million. At least twelve million copies had been sold by the time A Dance with Dragons was published and the Game of Thrones TV series launched, both in 2011.

The immense success of Game of Thrones propelled sales of the novels to insane heights. The books reportedly sold a further nine million copies in the first year of the TV show alone (from 2011 to 2012). Sales hit 70 million in 2016 and are believed to have reached 90 million around the time of the pandemic, coinciding with the - contentious in some parts - conclusion of the TV series. With the franchise off the air and no new novel in the mainline series appearing, sales appear to have slowed, although spin-off books The World of Ice and Fire (2014), A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (2015, collecting three earlier-published novellas) and Fire & Blood (2018) all sold extremely well.

Sales of the series appeared to uptick again after House of the Dragon launched to initial success in 2022, and no doubt there has been another sales boost from the successful launch of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms a few weeks ago.

Crossing the 100 million mark puts Martin in rarefied company. In the secondary world/epic fantasy field, he is just behind Sir Terry Pratchett and Robert Jordan, who have both also crossed the 100 million mark in the last few years, though of course J.R.R. Tolkien continues to rule the roost with at least 300 million sales of his various Middle-earth books (and this figure is highly conservative). Stephen King has over 400 million sales, but only around a tenth of those comes from his epic fantasy or at least epic fantasy-adjacent work, the Dark Tower series and Eyes of the Dragon, meaning that Martin may comfortably be the biggest-selling living epic fantasy author (unless you count Harry Potter as epic fantasy, which most don't seem to).

How long he holds onto that crown will be interesting to see. Brandon Sanderson recently passed 50 million books sold, but Sarah J. Maas recently hit 75 million copies sold and is selling books at a staggering rate.

It should also be noted that book sales are famously sluggish in their reporting, with the reporting sometimes trailing the real figures by many years. Martin's actual sales could be a fair bit higher than this number.

If the books continue to generate hit TV shows, we'll likely see a steady increase in sales. Obviously one thing would blast sales through the stratosphere again, but when those winds will blow remains to be seen.