Foreword : stories for the nights to come / R.A. Salvatore -- Introduction : in praise of living history / James Lowder -- The palace of love, the palace of sorrow : Romanticism in A song of ice and fire / Linda Antonsson and Elio M. García, Jr. -- Men and monsters : rape, myth-making, and the rise and fall of nations in A song of ice and fire / Alyssa Rosenberg -- Same song in a different key : adapting A game of thrones as a graphic novel / Daniel Abraham -- An unreliable world : history and timekeeping in Westeros / Adam Whitehead -- Back to the egg : the prequels to A song of ice and fire / Gary Westfahl -- Art imitates war : post-traumatic stress disorder in A song of ice and fire / Myke Cole -- The brutal cost of redemption in Westeros : or, what moral ambiguity? / Susan Vaught -- Of direwolves and gods / Andrew Zimmerman Jones -- A sword without a hilt : the dangers of magic in (and to) Westeros / Jesse Scoble -- Petyr Baelish and the mask of sanity / Matt Staggs -- A different kind of other : the role of freaks and outcasts in A song of ice and fire / Brent Hartinger -- Power and feminism in Westeros / Caroline Spector -- Collecting Ice and fire in the age of Nook and Kindle / John Jos. Miller -- Beyond the ghetto : how George R.R. Martin fights the genre wars / Ned Vizzini.