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Fantasy Author Robert Jordan Passes Away
willith writes "James Oliver Rigney Jr, author of the long-running fantasy series The Wheel of Time and better known to millions of fans by the pen name Robert Jordan, died on 16 Sept 2007 from cardiac amyloidosis. Jordan announced he had been diagnosed with the disease in March 2006 and vowed to beat the odds, but determination and gumption sometimes just aren't enough in the face of a disease with a median survival time of just over two years. Jordan was in the process of writing the twelfth and final book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light, but the book was not slated for release until 2009 and is still incomplete. While there is hope that the book will still be finished from Jordan's notes, this is devastating news to all of us who have been reading the series since 1990."
While I don't like to be the one to "flog a dead horse". The Wheel of time Series has been in a downward spiral since about book 5. Disjointed, dragging out endless plot lines in a poor attempt to make it to book 12. Personally I hope they don't bother to put book 12 together, I stopped at 9.
First, let my condolences go out to his family.
The books started with such promise, action and just the right hint of risque possibilities. But by the 6th book it had taken on this horrific endless Days of Our Lives persona that you just knew would not end well. By the 9th book I was so sick of waiting for something, anything to happen that I was just about unplugged. My wife bought me the 10th book, and I did something I almost never do...I flipped to the end to see if he finally wrapped it up.
I put the book on a shelf and never read it.
Maybe wikipedia will post the ending someday, and I will chance across it.
Only tyrants and oppressors need fear a well armed populace.
The guy died.. please, show a little respect for the dead.
I got into Wheel of Time fairly young--maybe just after the third book came out--and kept with it despite the punishing slowness of the books after, say, Lord of Chaos. But it really was something different, I think. It was epic, not a standard journey to slay the bad guy after this first couple of books, like so much of fantasy after Tolkien it seems. And though slow and a little tedious at times, it never pissed me off like the last couple of books of Dark Tower, which it seems is the standard metric for WoT.
Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain - The Great Hunt
All generalizations are false, including this one. Mark Twain
I've read a few interviews where he said that the ending had basically been written for years, so at least that's something. I hope they find someone to finish it. Despite losing a lot of focus in the middle it really has been a great series and was finally starting to look great again. It deserves an ending even if someone else has to fill in the gaps.
The Farewell Tour II
Agreed, however I would at least like to see the answer to a few questions that were supposed to be resolved. Closure (and not closure someone else made up - what he actually intended from notes) is better than no closure even if it is obvious where the new author picks up. If he was on schedule then he I would think that he should have had a good deal of it done (a 2009 release date is fairly soon, it's not like one typically writes a 1000+ page book and go through editing/printing in a year), though I have no idea if he was anywhere close to on schedule.
If it is just another author filling in the gaps and answering - me I'll read it at least for the parts that he wrote. However the other stuff I'll just pick my own conclusion and assume it is as much cannon as what is in the book. This is why I tend to not read large multi-volume stories until they are done, I have read some where they just end right in the middle.
It feels kinda crass to feel that sorta thing about some guys death, but if he is like any other artist I would bet he is happy that many people are disappointed that they didn't get to see the end of his works. Especially given the scope and amount of time he put into the series.
------- Sorry about the spelling, I suffer from two problems. Dyslexia makes it difficult to spell well, lazy makes it
Haven't read Brooks or Martin, but as a bit of nostalgia the last four series I read were the first and second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Belgariad and the Mallorean, and Eddings definitely isn't anywhere near Tolkien, who although I personally can't fucking stand his writing style was at least a great author. Eddings... good God, if I read "oh ${ONE_DIMENSIONAL_CHARACTER}, you're a treasure!" one more God damn time I'm going at my eyes with large grit sandpaper. Maybe you're like me, and read it for the first time at 14 or so--I loved it then; looking back, I've apparently grown out of being fucking retarded. Now, you may say I haven't because I stuck with it through two whole series, but I'm going to call it 50% stubbornness, 45% incredulity, and 10% ... retardation. God what a horrible writer. Zakath's entire personality changes with no inner turmoil whatsoever, Eriond is all but forgotten for the majority of the Mallorean even though he's possibly the most important character, Sadi carries around an infinite supply of a drug for any situation but mostly throws "the brown acid" powder in dogs faces ... gah, I could go on for hours. I've rambled, but you need to re-evaluate your estimation there. The Elenium and whatever the other one was called was basically the same thing if I'm remembering correctly.
As for Donaldson, yeah, he's an excellent author, but halfway through his first series I spontaneously coughed up an entire thesaurus and by the end I was pouring milk over bowls of Paxil for breakfast. The second series I think was just a transcription of the hallucinations of a high fever...
No sir, as much as The Wheel of Time rambled in books 7-10.5, and as much as he allowed his taste in women to affect the characters he wrote (he could write good female characters, just didn't seem to want to), Mr. Rigney was a fantasy author of a caliber that hasn't been seen since Tolkien and won't be seen again for a long, long time. R.I.P.
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People keep going on about how slow and long this series was, however it has been an inspiration to me and reminds me very much of the great George R. R. Martin series, A Song of Ice and Fire, which I've only just started reading. The only book I was dissapointed in was Crossroads of Twilight. In serial work not every issue can be a home run. Sometimes you need to make one be a sacrifice to set up the next issues which makes them even better. As a good storyteller, Robert Jordan realized this. Those that want EVERY thing to be issue, episode, whatever to be the BEST one there is, will of course not like this but I have a hard time thinking of any long pieces of serial work that they'll enjoy.
Using openSUSE instead of Windows since 9th of October, 2007 and liking it.
Although some of the comments here have been fairly tasteless (what do you expect on the Internet) I think it is fair time to reflect on an author's works.
Obviously and unsurprisingly the Wheel of Time series dominates our impression of Mr Jordan. I'll start with saying that stand alone the first book is one of the best fantasy fiction books out there as far as I am concerned. I found the style and story imaginative and compelling, which is difficult to do in a heavily cliched genre.
However, like many others I went along for the ride with the rest of the series up until a point where I became frustrated with the author and I personally gave up at about book 9 though I had effectively given up on the series a couple of books before that.
I don't really know what Jordan's rationale for the length of this series was, I'm not a fanboy and don't follow any of the WoT forums for any insight into this, maybe I will do one day. I generally assume that he felt he had a story to tell and as far as he was concerned if it took many books to tell it - he would do so.
The lessons of the 'Wheel of time' series are that you need to bring all your readers with you, and that the value of literature isn't in the weight of paper. Readers are frankly puzzled that after 4 to 5 thousand pages why Jordan left his main characters in stasis whilst opening up new plots and new characters in the later books. The publisher and editors have a responsibility to help authors in this regard even if it causes tension. I'm left wondering if Jordan had a more focussed approach he would have been the top fantasy writer of his generation, but now I suspect he will be remembered as a curiousity.
RIP Robert Jordan
No matter what one thought of his works, we should remember that what was posted was about the passing of a man that has touched thousands of souls. Whether for good or ill, the fact that he has reached so many deserves some measure of consideration and respect. If nothing else but to contrast our own passing in this journey, we could hope that our own foosteps will leave behind a fragment of the memory that this soul has done.
To the detractors I say, perhaps if you would look upon yourself and wonder what those you have touched would utter at your own passing, perhaps some charity and kindness would not be un-deserved.
Unless you prefer to measure quality, not kilograms.
Hundreds or thousands of decent people died in the last 24 hours. If *you* have had enough of an effect on the the world that random nerds care enough about you to make a reference to your legacy, count yourself lucky.
Robert Jordan wrote some great books. Then he turned 1 great book into 4 shitty ones, and unfortunately died before the end. Sucks. But if you can't laugh about shit, what's the point?
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
You know, as soon as you know you're more likely to die than to live another year an author who has the least bit respect for his fans would coredump everything about the end onto a few reliable persons. Jordan strikes me as one of those. He wanted us to know the end when he got there.
If you see a rock violating the law of gravity, then the law is wrong, not the rock!
I've read a few interviews where he said that the ending had basically been written for years...
My friends who read the WoT series and I always had a theory that he'd written the ending years ago, and that in some strange, literary mockery of Zeno's Paradox, he just wrote the plot half-way there each time he churned out a new book.
It certainly seemed like some sort of plot time-dilation was happening in the last few books by their accounts.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
How dare you say that Tolkien didn't know how to tell a story? Are you insane?
I love good stories. I've read books, watched movies and tv shows, listened to my grandmother's tales and a good story is a good story. You know it's good because it takes you to another place and you cherish the experience when it's over, period.
Tolkien does this better than the vast majority of published storytellers.
It's a pity you were never able to finish his books and I understand that writing style can turn people off (it happens to all of us) but what you claim is preposterous. Next time, just say you don't like his writing style.
And he would have finished it, if each of his books wasn't 150 pages or so of plot and 450 pages or so of whining about how come she has prettier embroidery on her dress than I have on mine and I'm jealous that she has better furiniture than I do and unending angst over whether or not I should use my powers and whine whine whine complain complain moan whine whine. If all his characters weren't such whiny bastards, the series could have been done several books ago.
I bought The Eye of the World in hard cover when it was first released. I'd read some of his prior works, Conan stories and so on and liked his writing. Each year, I'd wait for that next book and buy it hard cover the first week it appeared on the shelves.
The first three books were incredible. Then I read four and five, and grew disenchanted. Waiting for the books, then finding out he wasn't wrapping up threads but rather further expanding.
Finally I bought book six, got about half way through and then just quit. I couldn't take it any more.
I'm sorry to see him pass away, but I never understood what he was trying to accomplish with this series. It had such potential, and then was just pissed away. Sad. I wonder if we'll ever know why, or what he had intended.
The thing that pissed me off the most is that his ideas were really good, and he had the capacity to create decent plots. But he kept stringing us along and his plots went to hell, and then there was basically nothing because his character development and skill as a wordsmith are seriously lacking.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Indeed, that is a very purposeful thing he did in his works, he drew from cultures, so that the northern nations, along the Blight were drawing from Japanese culture prodominately, thus the Blightlander's saying is a Japanese saying, and their old fables are all historical events. Like the one about Queen Elizabth, and the one about Neal Armstrong. Unfortunately, it would ruin the atmosphere of the book if everything had a bracket behind it naming the origins of the phrase or cultural element, he left it for the reader to recognise and understand or simply accept and move on, oblivious to the allusions.