James Oliver Rigney Jr. (October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007), better known by his pen name Robert Jordan,[1] was an American author of epic fantasy. He is known best for his series The Wheel of Time (finished by Brandon Sanderson after Jordan's death) which comprises 14 books and a prequel novel. He is one of several writers to have written original Conan the Barbarian novels; his are considered by fans to be some of the best of the non-Robert E. Howard efforts.[2] Jordan also published historical fiction using the pseudonym Reagan O'Neal, a western as Jackson O'Reilly, and dance criticism as Chang Lung. Jordan claimed to have ghostwritten an "international thriller" that is still believed to have been written by someone else.[3]
After returning from Vietnam in 1970, Jordan studied physics at The Citadel. He graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree and began working for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer.[7] He began writing in 1977.
On March 23, 2006, Jordan revealed that he had been diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis and that, with treatment, his medianlife expectancy was four years.[12] In a separate weblog post, he encouraged his fans not to worry about him and stated that he intended to have a long and creative life.[13]
Jordan died on September 16, 2007,[16] from complications stemming from multiple myeloma. His funeral service was on September 19, 2007.[17] He was cremated and his ashes buried in the churchyard of St. James Church in Goose Creek, outside Charleston, South Carolina.[18]
Jordan published 11 books of 14 in the main sequence of the Wheel of Time series. Reviewers and fans of the earlier books noted a slowing of the pace of events in the last few installments written solely by Jordan owing to the expansion of the scale of the series as a whole.[20] Because of his health problems, Jordan did not work at full force on the final installment A Memory of Light (later split into three volumes beginning with The Gathering Storm), but blog entries confirmed that he continued work on it until his death, and he shared all of the significant plot details with his family not long before he died.[21] He maintained that in doing so the book would get published even if "the worst actually happens".[22] On December 7, 2007, Tor Books announced that Brandon Sanderson had been chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series. Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow, chose him after reading Mistborn: The Final Empire.[23]
Completed by Brandon Sanderson,[26] epilogue by Robert Jordan.[27]
–
Totals
22 years, 11 months, 24 days
11,898pp (PB) / 10,173pp (HB) 4,410,036 words
19d 5h 25m
All paperback (PB) page totals given are for the most widely available mass-market paperback editions. The page count for the hardback (HB) editions does not include glossary or appendix page counts.
The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time is an encyclopedia for the series about the unnamed world where the plot takes place, which is often referred to by fans of the series as the World of the Wheel. It is published in the United States by Tor Books and in the United Kingdom by Orbit Books. The bulk of the text was written by Teresa Patterson based on notes and information provided by Jordan, who also served as the overall editor on the project. While the information in the guide is broadly canonical, the book is deliberately written with vague, biased, or even downright false (or guessed) information in places, as Patterson felt this would reflect a key theme of the series (the mutability of knowledge across time and distance).[28]
Jordan was one of several writers who has written Conan the Barbarian stories. When Tom Doherty obtained the rights, he needed a novel very quickly, so Jordan's wife Harriet McDougal recommended him because she knew he had written his first novel, Warriors of the Altaii, in thirteen days.
So he thought I could write something fast, and he was right, and I liked it. It was fun writing something completely over the top, full of purple prose, and in a weak moment I agreed to do five more and the novelization of the second Conan movie. I've decided that those things were very good discipline for me. I had to work with a character and a world that had already been created and yet find a way to say something new about the character and the world. That was a very good exercise.[29]
.jpg){kind=small}
