Tuesday 18 September 2007

Pic of the day: The sun has set in a land of wonder. (Screenshot from Oblivion.)

Robert Jordan passed away

It was yesterday that I read that Robert Jordan was dead, though I understand he died on Sunday, the 16th. James Oliver Rigney, Jr as was his real name, was a prolific writer but rose to fame with the high fantasy novel Eye of the World, which started the acclaimed and widely read Wheel of Time series. This was also how I came to become familiar with his writing, and eventually with other readers, among them some of my best friends today.

Eye of the World was true high fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, but unlike many inferior works it was not blatantly copying the classic. It did start with what looks like a subtle homage to the rustic style of Tolkien's novels, but was based on a completely different premise. Whereas Tolkien's world was linear and progressed from a well-described creation toward our own age, Jordan's world existed in circular time. Ages come and go but come again when they are forgotten. In the novels, our age is reduced to only a few heavily distorted myths, but the events in the books are eerily similar to some of the oldest myths of our own age.

With this wonderful rationale, Jordan had free reign to use any and all myths from around the world, and he did. What is more, he melded them together into one continous world of truly epic scope. Few before him have aimed so high. Unfortunately, it proved beyond even his skills. As the series dragged on, it slowed down, and the complexity caused all but the most ardent fans to lose track of who was where at any given time, or why. I find it easy to forgive him, for the vision is always more clear to the author. This cannot be helped. And it was a grand vision. But while I understand him (being a writer by inclination though not by career), I could not make myself continue to read his books. I stopped at ten, I think.

One reason why I stopped was also the conviction that he was not going to complete the series. In the jargon of his own books, you may say that I had a Foretelling. At some point I looked at a picture of him - this was many years before his passing - and I just felt this deep conviction that he was going to leave this world before the usual measure of days, and shortly before completing his works. All this came to pass.

In his latest books, he sped up the pace somewhat, or so I have heard. I have not bought them yet. Perhaps I will. He came so far on the last book that it is scheduled to be completed by someone else, based on his notes and the plot he has told his wife Harriet, who also happens to be his editor. (With all due respect for them both, I think in principle this makes for unnecessarily long books. The job of an editor is cruel slaughter, while most men at least don't consider this the job of their wife. I am not sure what the wives think.)

***

In the Wheel of Time books, there is a concept that some people are chosen by the Wheel, by fate, to be "Ta'veren": They affect the people around them with their sheer existence and by the things they casually do, without meaning to and without any control over it. It just happens. Highly unlikely thing become highly likely around them, and the other way around. Most notably, they "pull" other people and tie them together. Ironically, it seems to me that this happened to Robert Jordan.

The books caused my first experience with the Internet. At the time, the Web was barely begun expanding from the USA into allied nations such as my native Norway, but less machine-intensive applications such as Usenet were more available. (Universities had had them for a while.) E-mail already existed in various forms outside the Internet proper, such as between BBS (bulletin board systems). It was one such small BSS (ironically named Manhattan, unless I misremember) that first let me connect to Usenet via e-mail. And the first group I subscribed to was rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan, a newsgroup dedicated to the Wheel of Time books. At the time the first books were just become available here.

At the time, I was more or less resigned to the fact that people were less intelligent if they were not my close blood relatives. I had met a few intelligent people, but not many, and even most of those did little with their IQ except earn money. There were painfully few who were curious about the world and the great questions in life. Conformity was considered a good thing. Well, not by the "Darkfriends" as they ironically called themselves, the hardcore fans of the WoT. Overall I guess they were a bit darker than I, but then again at the time even I thought I was a pure soul. I certainly did not expect to meet so many gays, pagans and socialists among otherwise intelligent people. It caused me to seriously reconsider how I looked at other people.

Among many of those other people, there were more drastic effects, including several marriages. And even when not, friendships were formed that have lasted to this day despite great distances, and some of which will probably last for life. I see from other sources lately that this was not specific to rasfwrj, but seems to have happened to many people around the world.

But even the Ta'veren are not immortal. And so a dreamer and maker of dreams has left this world. The Light shine on you, Robert Jordan, and the Creator shelter you in the palm of his hand.