Monday, September 17, 2007

The wheel weaves as the wheel wills

I was a fan of the Wheel of Time series back in my high school days, though I stopped reading after about book 8, in part because of my concern that Robert Jordan would die before completing the series and leave his readers stranded. Today I heard news of his untimely passing, just as he was working on the 12th book. Many of the books run 500+ pages, so what you basically have here is an immensely long fantasy epic, full of foreshadowing and stagesetting for a climactic final battle... and no ending. Yikes.

I don't even have an intuitive sense of what to say about truth and falsity about incomplete fictional works. Will Rand al'Thor die in the final battle? Before, we thought that question had a correct answer, though we didn't know for sure what it was. Were we right to think it did have a correct answer, or does Jordan's death make it the case that we were wrong? If it did have a correct answer, does it still?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nobody likes you. You have very few comments, and the commentors probably just felt sorry for you.

At least a smart liberal can make an argument that is provactive enough to get comments, although it doesn't take much thinking to obliterate the liberal argument.

You are a dumb, angry liberal.

Anonymous said...

People who live in "provactive" houses shouldn't throw "dumb"s.

Anonymous said...

"the commentors probably just felt sorry for you."

......

"People who live in "provactive" houses shouldn't throw "dumb"s."

By the way, can't make a rational arguement 'dumb' and spelling errors 'dumb' are pretty far apart.

How many Katrina victims or sub-prime mortgage victims has John Edwards forclosed on this week?

Two Americas, indeed.

Mary said...

My son, who has been reading The Wheel of Time series since middle school (he has just started grad school), IM'd me a couple nights ago to inform me of Jordan's death. No greeting, just jumped right into it. I tried to compare his frustration to what I felt when they did the fade-to-black thing on the last episode of The Sopranos, but he informed me there is no comparison.

I would have to go to parent-teacher conferences when he was in 7th and 8th grade and hear about how he was blowing off his work to read these books. He would also try to get me to read them, but I'm just not a fantasy fan. He spent his entire adolescence obsessed with this series, though, so I can appreciate the grief and frustration his fans feel.

He told me had he known Jordan was going to die before finishing, he would have paid more attention to his GPA. Sounds like you planned ahead, Neil.

Anonymous said...

If the author made a decision, it has an answer, altough we will never actually know what it was.

Anonymous said...

I’ve heard that Roberd Jordan recorded his thoughts for the last 2 books and someone else is going to write them. It wont be the same but at least we'll have our end.

Helane said...

The Series is being finished by a wonderfully imaginative author using all of the late Robert Jordan's notes..and in exactly the same way Robert wished to end the series.

Brandon Sanderson is ...well...
just the best..and
you..

obviously are not.