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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."
Good journey Robert
I remember reading a Stephen King interview just after I had read The Gunslinger and he said that he didn't know if he would ever finish the Dark Tower series. I didn't touch any of them until after the last was published. I have avoided Jordan's series for the same reason - and it seems appropriate that I find out at slashdot that while King lived to finish his, Jordan didn't make it.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Not that it is a big surprise. Personally I expected this message for about a year now.
It would have been nice for him to be able to finish the series. True, a certain amount of foot-dragging in the middle of the series got him into this fix, but still I think somebody undertaking such a large venture, and mostly sucessfully, should have the satisfaction of seeing it finished.
It will be interesting to see how this is going to be finished. The material should be there, but writning style is a major part of these books and not too easily emulated. There are layers within layers.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Bastard. Now I'll never know how it ends.
Well, here's hoping he left enough notes (and by all accounts he would have) for the story to be finished off 'correctly'. I threw in the towel at the end of book 10 after none of the vital plotlines from book 9 were measurably advanced - in retrospect I should have stopped at book 7. Nonetheless, if it IS brought posthumously to some kind of conclusion it'd be nice to know what happens. A lot of wonderful storylines in an excellent fantasy world, if only he could have split it up into about 3-4 parallel series like Feist did with Midkemia.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
It seems like yesterday that David Gemmell passed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gemmell), although it has been a year at this point.
And now Robert Jordan passes. Say what you will about the quality of the later installments of the Wheel of Time, but the first five or six books (at least) are some of the most enjoyable and well-written fantasy I've read. Growing up, he was one of the authors who introduced me to fantasy, along with David Eddings, Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind, Anne McCaffrey, and Tad Williams. I'm grateful to them all.
(Perhaps) an appropriate Gemmell quote:
Y'know, I'm all for respecting the dead, but there is absolutely NOTHING WRONG with criticizing the dead, even with calling an asshole an asshole, or a hack a hack. I didn't really have a problem with the parent's post--it was a little snarky, sure, but nothing that needed a massive wall of text response like you gave it.
Since you seemingly can't handle someone knocking an author you like, I shudder to think how you'll react to this--which is a direct criticism of YOU.
The mocking of the recently deceased is one of the clearest signs of lack of intelligence
Some feel the same way about talking to the dead, or writing messages to them on slashdot. We all have our own means of coping with death, and thinking that of your own culture is the one true way, on a site read by people the world over, is just asking for the same disdain you're dishing out. Over here, 'not' making jokes would be considered rude. Fuck, I hope when I die I have a full room of people laughing at the little quirks that made me an individual. Even more so, I hope I don't have some jerk telling all my friends that they should be miserable, and not celebrating my life.
It's so true. He should have done what R.A. Salvatore has done. Rather than taking his trilogy and making it 12 books long, he just wrote another trilogy using the same characters and then another. Then he wrote a prequel trilogy and so on ad infinitum. The end result is a story-line that is nearly as long as WoT, but is manageable because you take it in chunks. Each series of books is fairly self-contained, and tells a story in itself while still leaving enough loose ends on which to base another series of books.
Actually, now, as I am writing, I am reminded of the best at this, Terry Pratchett. You don't even have to read the books in order. He really is a genius at making every book completely self-contained, yet having them still sit in a larger story line. In many of his trilogies I have actually read the second or third before the first, and it made complete sense.
I'd always seen this series in the book store but didn't start reading it until late last year. I was reading Goodkind at the time, but his character development was making me ill so I decided to switch. So far I've been quite happy with the series, with only a few characters being subject to speed reading.
When I heard the news RJ was sick, I was really hoping the series would be concluded. He sounded quite hopeful, as people usually do, but in the end succumbed. I hope someone picks up where he left off and truly makes book twelve an icon of a great series and gifted writer.
I've only "known" Robert Jordan since January, when I started reading The Eye of the World, the first book in the Wheel of Time series. I started reading knowing full well that the series begins to go downhill, as my cube neighbor was a huge fan and has read the series through twice and began reading it again when I did (and even though he was a huge fan, he could admit pretty much exactly where the series falls off).
I have recently finished the sixth book, and I can begin to see a downward trend. But I so thoroughly enjoyed the first few books, I have to go on. Honestly, the first three books are amazing in my opinion, and you can always count on Robert Jordan to deliver a fantastic final 100 pages, even if the 600 before that were worth speed reading.
Even though I've only been in Robert Jordan's universe for a few months, I still feel his loss. It saddens me to know the series may never be complete, and if it is, it won't be completely his vision. Whether this is for better or worse, it still bothers me. I will continue to go on with the series, maybe at a slower pace so I can time the final release better if we ever hear a date.
Here's to you Robert Jordan, thank you for the little time we had together, I still look forward to the future.
Death is lighter than a feather, duty heavier than a mountain.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
The drawn out writing was not the big problem for me.
What eventually turned me away from this series was the way it felt like I was reading someone else's teenage masturbatory fantasy. Think about it:
- Main character had awe inspiring power which was corrupting him. Basic angst
- Main character had an injury which caused constant pain. Instant angst.
- Main character had 3 women who were in love with him and willing to share
Aside from that, I do not like it when an author will spend 3 books building up a character as surprisingly powerful, and then throw out a one line "Yeah, we found this other person who is even stronger than X!".
END COMMUNICATION
Actually, now, as I am writing, I am reminded of the best at this, Terry Pratchett. You don't even have to read the books in order. He really is a genius at making every book completely self-contained, yet having them still sit in a larger story line. In many of his trilogies I have actually read the second or third before the first, and it made complete sense.
There are two author's that I have almost all their books: Terry Pratchett and Lois McMaster Bujold. Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles books (http://www.baen.com/author_catalog.asp?author=lmbujold) aren't usually as funny as Terry Pratchett, but if you are into space opera scifi at all you can easily pick up any of the Miles books and be enjoyed without having to worry about entire back stories of characters. Oh, the books are much better if you have read them all and do know all the ins and outs of the backstories, but you can lend any book of the series to a friend and usually get them hooked.
But there's a difference between writing multi-volume epics that cover multiple story lines and padding out the books with ad-nauseum descriptions of camps/jewellery/men and women arguing.
Robert Louis Stephenson once wrote that his motto was "Death to the optic nerve" meaning that he wanted books where the situation of the protagonists were presented as the story went along, doing away with the need for large chunks of descriptive exposition.
Jordan wasted his story-telling abilities with huge (try 11 pages of description of walking from one side of the camp to the other) tracts of petty details and description that did nothing to further the story or enrich the characters. This was the blatant padding that pissed of so many people that were huge fans of the first 5 or so books and then became disenchanted with the rest. It wasn't the multiple story lines or the massive number of characters - it was this repetitive (here's a camp description, here's another camp description, and here's another camp description) rubbish that polluted the later books. Winters Heart could probably be replaced by a 20 page synopsis and the first 400 pages of Crossroads at Twilight is just the rehashing of the last (admittedly important) chapter of the previous book. This isn't a stylistic style but a a plea - don't waste my time and my money.
It is a great shame that he is no longer with us but I wonder how successful the series would be if a real editor was let loose on it? It would be condensed to about 6-8 books and may well be the greatest piece of sci-fi fantasy ever written.
Ahh, come on. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the "Wheel of Time" series...If you didn't figure that out by the 9th book, when he was STILL ADDING NEW GODDAMN CHARACTERS...
I liked the first three a lot. I liked 4-6. I read 7 and 8. I read the last chapter of 9 and 10 just to keep track of what was going on. I didn't even read the last chapter of 11.
There is a reason why there is no word other than "Series" to describe a collection of more than 6 books. You have GOT to wrap it up at some point.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I know you're not unique in your opinion -- however please hear me state the opposite side too. There's no author other than Tolkien that has given me sentences that stick to memory like some of the following: "These staves he spoke, yet he laughed as he said them. For once more lust of battle was on him; and he was still unscathed, and he was young, and he was king: the lord of a fell people." "Feanor was made the mightiest in all parts of body and mind, in valour, in endurance, in beauty, in understanding, in skill, in strength and in subtlety alike, of all the Children of Illuvatar, and a bright flame was in him." Passages like these combine extreme simplicity with extreme effectiveness. They stick to my memory. That must mean something concerning, even though his prose is not of such a kind that appeals to *you*. His prose may not flow easily to some readers -- and yet many other readers find that his words don't easily flow *away* from them.
I would much prefer George R. R. Martin, although he's still busy with A Dance with Dragons. He seems ideally capable; he also manages a large, sprawling fantasy series with many characters, and actually manages to have them do something. He does have some experience with "dragons", after all.
Plus, he's not afraid to kill or maim any of the main characters, which would probably lead to a very happy end for some of Wheel of Time's more disenchanted readers such as myself. ^_^
Although, to truly end the books in the way Jordan himself would, we need someone else who started a fantasy series incredibly, and then ran it into the ground with equal aplomb. Think Terry Goodkind will take the job?
In all seriousness though, it's sad to see any artist pass away. He will be missed.
Books 6 through book 10, certainly, but things really started to move toward the conclusion in the most recent one. He resolved a number of plot threads that had been hanging around for as long as 5 books, and was clearly moving pieces in place for the endgame.