Who should the next STAR TREK captain be?

CBS's new Star Trek show is currently in development, with scripts being written and shooting due to start in August or September. The question that is now starting to arise is about casting.

The current rumours are that the new show will take place between the events of the original movies and The Next Generation, that is the seventy-one year gap between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (which took place in 2293) and the events of Encounter at Farpoint (which took place in 2364). According to rumour, the show will adopt an anthology format and will swap ships, crews, characters and premises every season whilst still taking place in a shared universe, similar to Fargo and True Detective.

So the question to ask, is who will play the first captain on the new show? Let's throw some names out there.

Nathan Fillion

For: After the recent and rather abrupt cancellation of Castle, he's free. He's the right age (45) and has some starship-captaining experience (from Firefly). He would, of course, attract tons of viewers and fans just on name value alone. The geek audience would be very happy.

Against: I'm not sure if it's a strike as such, but it's a very obvious and safe choice. CBS and the creative team might be wanting something a bit less obvious. Fillion himself might be looking for a longer-term gig to fill in after Castle.

Rosario Dawson

For: She's a good actress (most importantly) and she's also a firm favourite of showrunner Bryan Fuller, who named her and Angela Bassett (see below) as his favourite candidates for the role long before he got the showrunner gig.

Against: Nothing too bad, but she is signed up to star in The Defenders for Netflix (although that isn't due to start shooting until early 2017) and guest-star in Iron Fist and the second season of Jessica Jones before then.

Stephen Dillane

For: He's got that middle-aged, slightly grumpy but heartfelt British thing going on that Patrick Stewart had. He'd bring in some Game of Thrones fans. He's a bloody good actor.

Against: He doesn't seem to be the biggest fan of genre work, and was downbeat on his Game of Thrones role, although that might have more been the show rather than the genre.

Angela Bassett

For: She's a great actress with tremendous and impressive range. She was Bryan Fuller's #1 pick for the job back in 2013.

Against: She's already a regular on American Horror Story, although that would still leave her some spare time. However, she recently specifically ruled herself out of the running (although noting it'd be cool) because she didn't want to take more time away from her family life.

Michelle Forbes

For: She's a supremely talented actress with fantastic form on multiple genre series, including True Blood, Orphan Black and Battlestar Galactica...not to mention a little show called Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Against: She had recurring role across three seasons as Ro Laren on Star Trek: The Next Generation. That was long enough ago not to necessarily rule her out of a new role on a new series, but it may be more interesting to hold back until a later season and maybe explore what happened to Ro twenty-five years after we last saw her. Forbes herself was lukewarm about the idea of becoming a regular on The Next Generation, remaining only a recurring guest star, and later turned down a regular, starring role on Deep Space Nine, so might be reluctant to return to the franchise, even if it was just for a short-term gig.

Gina Torres

For: She's got SF form from Angel and Firefly, and she's a favourite of Fuller's from both Pushing Daisies and Hannibal. Her current gigs are mostly in animation and voiceover work, so she might be free for this.

Against: Not really seeing anything major against her, apart from her ongoing role in Suits.

Tony Todd

For: Well, he's the only actor we know who's auditioned for a role on the series, although not which role. He's an established Star Trek performer, having played both Worf's brother Kurn on The Next Generation and the older version of Jake Sisko in Deep Space Nine. He's a very accomplished actor with a much larger range than he may be known for from his signature horror character, Candyman.

Against: At 61 he may be considered a little too old for the role, but he's in great shape for his age. CBS may prefer to go for a bigger or at least more "current" name.

David Tennant

For: It's fricking David Tennant. Imagine the craziness of a former Doctor Who becoming Captain of the USS Whatever It's Called (NCC-TARDIS).

Against: The filming dates sound like they might clash with the filming of the third and final season of Broadchurch, but wouldn't rule him out for appearing in subsequent seasons.

George Takei

For: The crowd would go wild. Sulu is one of the more popular and under-explored Original Series characters. Depending on where in the timeline exactly the series is situation, Takei would be the right age to play a much older Sulu, possibly promoted to Admiral and after he's moved on from captaining the Excelsior.

Against: At 79, we'd assume that Sulu would have been promoted out of the captain's chair, so he probably wouldn't be the lead character. But having him, Walter Koenig or Nichelle Nichols show up in a role would be a very nice gesture in the show's 50th anniversary year.

The Lost Reviews: Part 10 - Season 2, Episodes 21-23

Welcome to the Lost rewatch project. I am currently rewatching all 121 episodes of the TV series which aired for six seasons from 2004 to 2010. This is very much a rewatch thread, with the show watched with knowledge of what is to come in later seasons. If you've never watched Lost before, you definitely do not want to read this blog series.

Without further ado, let us continue after the jump.

A concise summary of the entire season.

Star Trek at 50: The USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-D)

The Galaxy-class USS Enterprise (registry number NCC-1701-D), built by the United Federation of Planets circa 2359-63. The ship was commissioned and launched in 2363 under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, its only permanent commanding officer. The Enterprise-D was lost at the Battle of Veridian III in 2371, having served for eight years. It was destroyed in battle with a renegade Klingon Bird-of-Prey, although the Klingon vessel was also destroyed.

Class History

By the early 2340s Starfleet had found itself in need of a new type of starship to propel its exploration and science programmes further forward. The Excelsior class was still performing excellently after fifty years in service, but was starting to show its age. The Ambassador, although a solid design, had not been the jump forward in capability first envisaged. The Federation's borders had expanded significantly and the limits of explored space even further outwards, covering a significant swathe of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants of the galaxy. Faster and more powerful ships, able to operate autonomously for longer periods of time, were required. But there were some recruitment issues with crewmembers potentially spending many years away from home and their loved ones. This led to the inception of the Galaxy Project.

The Galaxy-class starship was envisaged as a major, paradigm-shifting design. These huge starships would carry over a thousand people, including civilians and families, to the furthest reaches of space. They would be equipped with weapons and sensors capable of handling any possible threat and they would be equipped for tasks ranging from deep space exploration to diplomatic missions to planetary evacuations. The design hurdles were formidable, with the warp core alone requiring colossal amounts of research and development. The Galaxy-class's computer system was also tremendously advanced: upon completion, it became the most sophisticated mobile computer in the entire Federation.

R&D of the Galaxy-class began in the mid-2340s. Around this time, in 2344, the Ambassador-class USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-C) was destroyed whilst defending the Klingon outpost on Narendra III from Romulan attack. This act of bravery and honour helped lead to the signing of the formal Klingon-Federation Alliance at Khitomer (a world itself symbolic for an earlier peace deal in 2293 and suffering another Romulan attack in 2346) several years later. Out of respect for the estimated 700 crewmen who lost their lives, Starfleet did not immediately commission a replacement Enterprise. When the Galaxy Project was formally approved, it was agreed that one of the first ships in the class would be named Enterprise instead.

The final design of the Galaxy-class took some time to pin down, with Starfleet being distracted by the outbreak of a long (if mostly low-intensity) war against the Cardassian Union. The Federation also had a brief conflict with the Tzenkethi circa the late 2350s. Finally, somewhere around 2358-60, construction began of the initial Galaxy-class spaceframes at Utopia Planitia Shipyards, on and above Mars. Twelve ships were first envisaged, but only six were built to completion, with the remaining six being held back for new technologies to create a second wave of vessels, due to enter service in the late 2360s. The first three ships to be commissioned were the USS Galaxy, USS Yamato and USS Enterprise (all in service by the start of 2364). Among the ships that followed were the USS Odyssey, USS Venture, USS Challenger and USS Magellan.

The Galaxy-class was immensely successful, furthering exploration at the edges of Federation space, responding rapidly to threats and flying the flag in every corner of space. However, the decision to allow families and civilians on board the ships proved controversial. In early 2365, an alien computer virus overwhelmed the systems of the USS Yamato and shut down the antimatter containment field, completely obliterating the ship and killing over a thousand people, including children (ST:TNG: Contagion). The USS Odyssey was destroyed in battle with three Jem'Hadar warships in 2370, sparking the long Federation-Dominion cold war. Fortunately, the Odyssey had offloaded her civilian crew at Deep Space Nine prior to the battle, but still hundreds of lives were lost (ST:DS9: The Jem'Hadar). The USS Enterprise suffered a series of calamities during its storied seven-year lifespan, including the deaths of dozens of crewmembers, before the ship was finally destroyed at Veridian III in 2371 (Star Trek: Generations), although civilian casualties were minimised thanks to a successful saucer separation manoeuvre. The fate of the Galaxy class may have briefly hung in the balance after the loss of half the ships in service less than eight years into the class lifespan, but the growing threat of the Dominion convinced the Federation to complete the remaining spaceframes and also commission many more. This proved tactically sound: although several more Galaxy-class starships were lost in the Dominion War of 2373-75, the class soon became the mainstay of Starfleet, finally replacing the ageing Excelsior-class.

Starfleet ceased placing families on its front-line starships following this time with the succeeding Sovereign-class of starships only holding enlisted Starfleet officers and civilian researchers in related fields.

The Enterprise-D encounters the Borg for the first time.

Operational History

The USS Enterprise was launched in late 2363 from Utopia Planitia Shipyards above Mars, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard. After a shakedown cruiser, the vessel was ordered to Farpoint Station to pick up the rest of her crew. During this mission the Enterprise made first contact with the mysterious species known as Q (ST:TNG: Encounter at Farpoint). The Enterprise-D soon found itself enjoying a career even more epic and storied than its predecessors. In seven years, the Enterprise initiated first contact with dozens of species, carried out numerous scientific and diplomatic missions and found itself tested against the best ships from other races. The Enterprise crew helped open (often-fractious) relations with the Ferengi Alliance (The Last Outpost) and also became the first Federation crew in twenty years to make contact with a Romulan starship (The Neutral Zone). During several subsequent confrontations (The Enemy, The Defector, Tin Man), the Enterprise acquitted itself well against the formidable Romulan D'deridex-class warbird, helping the Romulans choose the path of renewed diplomacy rather than military conflict.

The Enterprise also proved instrumental in helping resolve the Klingon Civil War of 2367-68 in favour of Chancellor Gowron, who favoured continuing the alliance with the Federation (Reunion, Redemption, Unification). Gowron's enemies, the House of Duras, were engaged in a secret pact with the Romulans. Their defeat ensured the continued Federation-Klingon Alliance and that the two sides would remain allied (a brief breakdown in 2372 excepted) when the Dominion War erupted.

However, the Enterprise's biggest test came in 2365 when it made first contact with the Borg Collective. Thanks to the machinations of the Q, the Enterprise-D was propelled over 7,000 light-years from Federation space in the direction of the Delta Quadrant. It made contact with a single Borg cube near system J25, which had been laid waste by the Borg. The Enterprise initially held its own against the Borg vessel, rendering over 20% of it inoperable, but in the process the Borg learned how to adapt to Federation weapon systems. The ship then became invulnerable. Eighteen Enterprise crewmen were killed and heavy damage inflicted on the the ship before the Q pulled the Enterprise back to Federation space (Q Who?). Starfleet immediately began researching new weapons and defences to use against the Borg, assuming it would be several years before the Borg became a serious threat, but less than fifteen months later a Borg cube (possibly the same one) arrived in Federation space. The single vessel cut a swathe through the Federation, destroying the colony on Jouret IV and obliterating thirty-nine starships at the Battle of Wolf 359. It also took Jean-Luc Picard prisoner and (temporarily) converted him into a Borg. The Enterprise crew recovered Picard and, using the neural link between him and the Borg ship, destroyed the vessel just before it could attack Earth (The Best of Both Worlds).

The Enterprise would continue to serve with honour and distinction until 2371. Whilst attempt to defeat a murderous El-Aurian scientist named Soran, the Enterprise-D was attacked by a Klingon Bird-of-Prey commanded by the vengeance-hungry Duras sisters. The sisters managed to identify the shield frequency used by the Enterprise and direct their weapons fire straight through the shields. The Enterprise retaliated and destroyed the Bird-of-Prey but the ship had suffered catastrophic damage to the warp core, leading to a cascade systems failure of the antimatter containment system. The crew evacuated to the saucer section, which was jettisoned from the rest of the vessel before it exploded. The saucer section successfully executed a crash-landing on the surface of Veridian III. The crew were subsequently rescued, but the saucer was unrecoverable (Star Trek: Generations). Many of the crew transferred to the new USS Enterprise (NCC-1701-E), which entered service within two years (Star Trek: First Contact).

The Enterprise-D's saucer section crash-lands on Veridian III in 2371.

Ship Overview

The Enterprise-D was a Galaxy-class starship. It was launched in 2363 and destroyed almost eight years later, in 2371. The ship had an extremely busy and storied career, although of all the ships named Enterprise it had the second-shortest career (beaten only by the Enterprise-A and its seven-year mission before being decommissioned). However, from construction to destruction it had the shortest lifespan of any vessel named Enterprise.

The Enterprise-D was 642 metres (2106.3 feet) long, 473 metres (1,552 feet) wide and 190 metres (623.4 feet) high. It had 42 decks. It had a rated crew and passenger complement of 1,012, although depending on mission variables and guests this could fluctuate significantly. The ship was rated to carry 15,000 people in cramped conditions during a planetary evacuation. Thanks to its extremely wide saucer section compared to previous models, the Enterprise's internal volume was approximately twelve times greater than the Constitution-class Enterprise.

The Galaxy-class was the fastest ship in Starfleet, until it was overtaken by the Intrepid-class in the early 2370s. The ship had a safe cruising speed of Warp 8.2 and could sustain Warp 9.6 for several hours. In an emergency situation the vessel could briefly attain Warp 9.8. It also had one of the most formidable defensive arrays of any Federation starship, mustering ten phaser banks with wide arcs of fire and three forward-facing phaser cannons mounted in the nacelle struts and above the main torpedo launcher. The ship possessed three torpedo launchers. Like many other Federation starships it had the ability to split into two vessels during emergency situations, with the civilian crew expected to take shelter on the saucer section whilst the stardrive section engaged the threat. The relative long time it too to separate the sections and the fact that the saucer was deprived of warp power (making escaping a threat more difficult) meant that this ability was employed only four times during the lifespan of the vessel. It did, however, ultimately save the crew from the vessel's final destruction.

The Enterprise-D had three shuttle bays and a large number of auxiliary craft, including standard shuttles, runabouts and a Captain's Yacht.


Behind the Scenes

When Paramount decided to resurrect Star Trek as a TV series, it was decided that the show would take place on a new incarnation of the Enterprise (Gene Roddenberry briefly pondered simply directly beaming people from star system to star system, but decided that would make for poor drama). Originally dubbed the Enterprise-7, this was changed to the Enterprise-J when Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home introduced the practice of adding a letter to the registry number. After further refinement this was changed to the Enterprise-D.

The task of designing the ship fell to Andrew Probert, who had worked on the Star Trek feature films and co-designed the refit version of the ship. Probert found the task rather more straightforward than it could have been: whilst working on The Motion Picture he'd drawn an idea for a radically more advanced and futuristic Enterprise. When he went to work on TNG he hung the picture in his office. Writer David Gerrold spotted it and suggested that Gene Roddenberry take a look. Roddenberry liked it and approved it pretty quickly.  The biggest modifications from the original design were rethinking the engines to look better and to permit the ship to be capable of splitting in two.

Two shooting models were built, a small two-footer for long-shots and a six-foot large model for close-ups. However, the six-foot model was quite large and unwieldy to shoot. In Season 3 a four-foot interime model was introduced which became the shooting mainstay. However, the four-footer could not separate and, for reasons of cost, writers were encouraged to have shots featuring this model. This explains why saucer separations no longer took place after the third season. At the end of the seventh season the four-foot model was partially rebuilt with an extra nacelle and weapons to become the futuristic Galaxy-class variant seen in the ST:TNG series finale. These changes were reversed for the model's re-labelling and appearance as the USS Odyssey and USS Venture in Deep Space Nine's second and fourth seasons.

A CG Enterprise-D was built for some shots in Star Trek: Generations and then upgraded for use on Deep Space Nine, particularly during the numerous battle sequences during that show's sixth and seventh seasons. Controversially, the Enterprise-D made a cameo appearance in the final episode of Star Trek: Enterprise in 2004, making it actually the most recent prime timeline Enterprise to appear in Star Trek.

Appearing in all 178 episodes of ST:TNG, one episode of DS9 and one of Enterprise, along with one feature film and dozens of video games, the Enterprise-D is by far the most frequently-used, filmed, photographed and shot Enterprise to appear in the entire Star Trek franchise. Ironically, according to the franchise's timeline it had the shortest lifespan at less than eight years (the Enterprise-A arguably served for a shorter period of time, but it was retired from service rather than destroyed).

Star Trek at 50: The Best of All Worlds

Star Trek: The Next Generation entered its second season in 1988 as a proven success, with massive ratings and generating significant profit for Paramount. However, it had suffered a critical drubbing for most of its first season and behind the scenes the production of the series was a chaotic mess. The long-term future of the series was in doubt, and then every scriptwriter in Hollywood went on strike for six months.

The results were not great. Episodes for the second season had to go into production with only their first, early draft scripts completed (no rewrites allowed under the terms of the strike). One eleven-year-old script from the abandoned Phase II project had to be quickly recycled to serve as the season opener. Producer-writer Maurice Hurley had prepared an elaborate, multi-episode arc continuing from the end of Season 1 showing the Federation and Romulans collaborating to find the race responsible for the attacks in the Neutral Zone, which would have resulted in the unveiling of a new, terrifying insectoid race with a hive mind and superior technology, but this had to be jettisoned in favour of stand-alones.

Somehow, the second season ended up being okay and a much-needed improvement over the first, with several all-time classic episodes. The Measure of a Man was a brilliant morality tale of the kind Star Trek had traditionally excelled at making. Matters of Honour put Riker on board a Klingon Bird of Prey and gave us our first look at a Star Trek story from the POV of the supposed bad guys. But the season will forever be remembered for Q Who?, the episode that introduced the Borg. The original plan for a race of hive-minded insects proved too expensive to realise on screen, so Hurley replaced them with a race of cybernetically-enhanced humanoids, obsessed with absorbing technology from other races. The script also called for the Borg not to be defeated at the end of the episode, with the Enterprise only barely escaping from the Borg threat after Picard begged Q to save them. Patrick Stewart was not keen on this ending but later admitted he was wrong, with the episode winning immense critical acclaim.

However, Hurley had become frustrated at dealing with Gene Roddenberry, in particular when Roddenberry would break his own rules about "perfect" characters that other writers would get chewed out for. In addition, Patrick Stewart had become increasingly aware of the power he held as the star of the show and was volubly campaigning for Gates McFadden (fired at Hurley's direction) to return. These were power struggles that Hurley was increasingly unwilling to fight, so quit at the end of the second season. He did suggest his replacement, however: a young and talented writer named Michael Piller.

When Piller came on board at the start of the third season, he found a show that was still in chaos. With Hurley gone, Rick Berman had acquiesced to Patrick Stewart's demands and Gates McFadden had come back onto the show. But a large swathe of writers had departed and Piller now had to rebuild his writing team from scratch. He assembled a mixture of more experienced hands like Ira Steven Behr and fresh-faced youngsters like Ronald D. Moore and also laid down a series of rules. One of his most far-reaching and successful was the idea that the show was about the regular characters, not the guest stars. The weekly guest stars were there to flesh out stories about the regular, not vice versa. This idea helped strengthen the scripts. Piller was also able to take advantage of Roddenberry's declining involvement in the show to push through scripts based more around conflict and drama.

Piller proved to be an able showrunner and provided tremendous stability and direction, even in the most chaotic of conditions. The most heavily-rewritten and expensive script of the season, which people were writing off as a confusing mess at the script stage, became Yesterday's Enterprise, which met with blanket critical praise. Ron Moore was allowed bring Star Trek to the Klingon homeworld for the very first time in Sins of the Father and broke a cardinal rule of Trek by leaving the story unresolved at the end. The story of Lt. Worf and his struggles with his Klingon heritage would span not just the rest of The Next Generation but expand into the spin-off series as well. Numerous other classics dot the season, but it was the finale that completely transformed the fortunes of the franchise. The Best of Both Worlds saw the Borg return in full force, cutting a swathe of destruction across Federation space before, in a cliffhanger ending, kidnapping Captain Picard and transforming him into one of them.

The episode electrified audiences, with both fans and casual viewers eagerly debating what was going to happen next. Patrick Stewart was taken aback to be in his car and have people yelling "Locutus!" at him from neighbouring vehicles. The fourth season opened with a strong run of episodes even after the cliffhanger was resolved, and the show never looked back. Shortly after this the Cardassians were introduced, and a compelling, multi-episode storyline unfolded over the entire season which eventually ended with the Klingon Empire being plunged into civil war by the machinations of the Romulans. The show overtook the episode count of the original Star Trek and, at the start of the fifth season (around the time Gene Roddenberry sadly passed away), passed 100 episodes. More great episodes followed, the producers started talking about spin-offs and a movie and, most impressively, other science fiction shows started appearing on TV. These started with "soft" SF series which had minor SF elements wedded to more standard forms of storytelling, such as with Quantum Leap and The X-Files, but by the end of Trek's run other space operas had started appearing, such as the short-lived Space Rangers and the much more successful Babylon 5.

Star Trek: The Next Generation concluded in early 1994 after seven seasons and 178 episodes. The show had surpassed the original series in popularity and critical acclaim and the cast and crew were keen to take the show to the next level: by following the original crew onto the big screen.

Trailer for Neil Gaiman's LIKELY STORIES

Starting on 26 May, Sky Arts will be broadcasting a four-part TV series based on short stories by Neil Gaiman under the title Likely Stories.

The stories being adapted are "Foreign Parts", "Feeders & Eaters", "Closing Time" and "Looking for the Girl". The four parts have been scored by Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, who has released a soundtrack EP as well.

STAR WARS EPISODE VIII title leaked...maybe

The name of Star Wars Episode VIII, which is currently filming, has allegedly leaked. You can find the title after the jump. Clearly, SPOILERS ahead.

First teaser trailer for new STAR TREK series

CBS have unveiled the first teaser trailer for the new Star Trek series...which hasn't actually started shooting yet.

So we get the new logo and confirmation that it's coming to CBS and CBS All Access.

According to credible rumours, the new series will be in an anthology format with each season taking place with a different cast at different moments in the Star Trek timeline. Apparently this will be the original or prime timeline as CBS does not have the rights to use the JJ Abrams timeline without making a new deal. Allegedly, the first season is taking place somewhere in the seventy-one year gap between Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (and Star Trek: Generations, which takes place the same year) and the start of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Apparently the first season, which will be between 10 and 13 episodes long, will be heavily serialised and set on a starship, but not on an Enterprise.

None of this has been concerned, but the "NEW CREWS" (plural) part of the teaser does hint that the anthology idea may be spot-on.

The new series is being helmed by Trek old-hands Alex Kurtzman (who worked on the Abrams movies), Nicholas Meyer (the director/co-writer of Star Trek II and VI, and co-writer of IV) and Bryan Fuller (who worked as a writer on Deep Space Nine and writer-producer on Voyager). No casting information has been announced yet. The show is slated to begin shooting in August or September in Toronto and will debut on CBS in January 2017.

No subtitle has been announced. If it is an anthology, it may follow the American Horror Story precedent of having a different title each season. If it doesn't, things may get rather confusing very quickly, as people discuss Star Trek (2017), Star Trek (1966) and Star Trek (2009). Seriously, I'd accept Star Trek Colon Insert Subtitle Here, Star Trek or Star Trek: Thingy at this juncture.

Another excerpt from Scott Bakker's GREAT ORDEAL

A second excerpt from Scott Bakker's The Great Ordeal has been released, this time via Pat's Fantasy Hotlist.

This excerpt catches up with Drusas Achamian and Mimara as they approach Ishual, the fortress-home of the Dunyain and the birthplace of Ansurimbor Kellhus. This is a pretty revelatory excerpt (the Dune influences can be seen here as well), ending on one hell of a cliffhanger.

The Great Ordeal will be released on 5 July in the US and 29 September in the UK.

Happy 20th Anniversary to A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE (more or less)

This year marks two important milestones for George R.R. Martin fans: the 20th anniversary of A Song of Ice and Fire appearing in print and the 25th anniversay of George starting to write the first book.

George started writing A Game of Thrones in the summer of 1991. The novel was published on 6 August 1996. However, that wasn't the first time any Song of Ice and Fire material appeared in print. That honour came three months earlier when his publishers started rolling out various excerpts and outtakes from the novel.

The first thing to appear was a sample booklet from HarperCollins Voyager, George's UK publishers. This booklet contained the first 124 pages from the novel (running up roughly to the end of the chapter where Robert tells Eddard about Daenerys's wedding) and was published separately in the UK for 99p (but now retails online for £150!). It was sold at bookstores across the country as a way of whetting the appetite for the book. My three local bookshops cunningly positioned the booklets next to the hardcover displays for the seventh Wheel of Time novel, which was released on 15 May 1996, to get some cross-series fantasy promotion going on.

In the United States, Bantam ran an excerpt in Asimov's Science Fiction in July 1996 (published in June). This excerpt was huge. Dubbed Blood of the Dragon, it contained all of the Daenerys chapters from A Game of Thrones assembled into one self-contained novella. Blood of the Dragon went on to win the Best Novella prize at the 1997 Hugo Awards, making this the only literary Hugo the series has received so far (Game of Thrones has won three for Best Dramatic Presentation, however). A Storm of Swords got the same treatment in 2000 when the Daenerys chapters were pulled out to form a novella called Path of the Dragon, although this didn't win a Hugo.

So there you go. Although the anniversary of A Game of Thrones itself isn't until August, when we'll see some fancy new editions hit the shelves and likely some more celebration of the fact, A Song of Ice and Fire has now been in print for more than twenty years.

Scott Lynch's THORN OF EMBERLAIN confirmed for September release

Gollancz have confirmed that they will be releasing Scott Lynch's The Thorn of Emberlain, the fourth volume of The Gentleman Bastard series, on 22 September this year.

This is a slight delay from the July 2016 date originally mooted, but Gollancz explained they made the change to better coordinate marketing activities as Scott will be in the UK that month for Fantasycon.

The previous volumes in the series were The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006), Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007) and The Republic of Thieves (2013). Three further volumes are anticipated to bring the series to a conclusion: The Ministry of Necessity, The Mage and the Master Spy (although this title may change) and Inherit the Night.