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."

Death took him.

[JeanPaulBob]

And I'm pretty sure it wasn't Moridin.

What really happened

[Anonymous Coward]

God finally finished Book 11, said "Are you fucking kidding me?", and whipped out the Smite Stick.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[stoolpigeon]

Card? It must really have gotten pretty bad.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[Rei]

"In the spirit of the man, friends and family of the deceased have requested that his eulogy be tedious and poorly written."

Grammar Fascism

[Anonymous Coward]

whomever picks up the story

Whoever is doing the picking, and is thus the subject and not deserving of the 'm'. If you want to sound fancy try whosoever, but better yet if you don't understand when to use whom, just don't use it at all.

I apologise (sic) in advance, if you belong to a subculture to whom the rules of normative grammar do not apply.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[Drawkcab]

If Card took the helm, 60% of the final book would involve Olver as the protagonist, and Rand would become a thinly veiled allegory of Joseph Smith.

Once again

[goldcd]

we see the inherent disadvantage of 'close-sourced' authorship.
People relying on Robert's output have now been left high and dry, without any guaranteed access to the source-notes.
If only people had followed the clearly superior 'open-authorship' model - i.e. a few thousand people simultaneously planning, writing, editing model - then this could all have been avoided.
When will we learn not to rely on this out-dated system of 'author' and 'reader'??

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[davester666]

There are thousands of people who have hung on for 17 years to reach the end of the tale

The curse of buying from a supplier with a single-source. If you're smart enough to buy a plain beige box made of parts from 30 low-bidders, that can run a variety of operating systems, you should be smart enough to buy novels written the same way. That way, if once of the writers dies, any number of other low-bidders can just pick up where he/she left off

Honestly, buying a novel from a series written by a single writer is like buying a Mac. Sure, the writing might be a little better than if it were written as a collaboration, but it's TOTAL VENDOR LOCK-IN!

Never buy a book from a series unless it has at least 3 authors!

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[Xiaran]

I agree with you. I just cant decide if that would be better or worse :)

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[NerveGas]

And there's be naked boys wrestling in a steamy shower.

Ten years ago, I said...

[the grace of R'hllor]

Ten years ago, I said that if he were to die before he finishes the series, I'd kill him. Suddenly, I am seeing logistical difficulties.

My thoughts go out to those who have lost more than a good author.

Not long ago...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I went out on a first date with a girl who read all of the previous books (it came up during a conversation about our favorite authors). She told me about this guy's illness and how she was going to be really upset if she slogged through the previous 11 books only to have him die before he finished writing the concluding volume.

She went on to very rudely not return my calls or emails after that instead of being honest enough to admit to me that she wasn't interested. In light of that, all I can say about this news is... HA HA! You're not getting closure, either!

Re:heh

[TheRaven64]

To be fair, Slashdot has reported Stephen King's death almost as often as it's reported BSD's death.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[vondo]

These books were kind of like the literary version of Zeno's Paradox. In every book, less happened than in the previous book. And extra plot lines were introduced all the time. At that rate it would have never finished. Things started to pick up a bit later, but I too stopped reading. And when I heard he was sick I vowed I wouldn't read anything else until he was done with it.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[Psmylie]

Rule #1 of reading Tolkien: Skip the poetry.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[spiderbitendeath]

Robert Jordan being a monopoly? bah, Piers Anthony maintains a much higher market share with 27 books in the Xanth trilogy. That's a monopoly if I've ever seen one. That series needs to be broken into three different series, so as to provide competition in the literary world.

Re:Kevin J Anderson and Brian Herbert

[spun]

Obviously, in Robert Jordan's case, you do NOT need to wrap it up. You can keep stringing people along until you pass away. You've got more stamina than I do, I stopped reading by book seven. It's not even the interminable and unchanging plots, it's his amateur command of the English language. I read one too many sentences describing a woman smoothing the front of her damn dress, flipped out, through book seven against a wall and haven't looked back.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[Anonymous Coward]

"I learn knew words..."

Time to learn their homonyms, too.

Re:a blessing on readers of Wheel of time

[DarrenBaker]

Hey, dammit! I've only read up to page 193 of Book 9! Thanks for spoiling page 194 for me.

Please, people, consider the spoiler content of your posts!