No joke this time.

After his longstanding battle with primary amyloidosis with cardiomyopathy (cardiac amyloidosis) he died on Sunday afternoon

Personally this comes as a blow. I've been reading his works (starting with the Wot) since I was 12 years old. My thoughts certainly go out to his friends and family.

However, a huge part of me is extremely worried that the Wheel will never be completed. Hopefully his wife or someone else will take up where he left off and finish that last book. To me having the Wheel unfinished would be like Rowlings having died before she finished the last Potter (poor comparison, but you can identify).

[Edited on September 19, 2007 at 10:35 AM. Reason : ;]

9/19/2007 10:30:26 AM

9/19/2007 10:34:26 AM

yea i saw the other mention of this. sad im only a few books into the WoT series now and I cant decide if I want to move on. Its a great story but it also is definitely feels like its going to be longer than it needs to be. And now with him not writing the last book trying to decide if its worth it

9/19/2007 10:37:44 AM

you know whoever published his books will hire someone to finish them, they'd be losing out if they didnt.

9/19/2007 1:52:28 PM

well of course. i know theyll do that, but its not the real story which is the bummer

9/19/2007 1:55:57 PM

he was more than halfway through the last book, and he left notes and dictation for his wife (who has been one of his editors all these years) so i'm sure the last book will be fine

9/19/2007 3:10:04 PM

what is a woot book?

9/19/2007 8:01:42 PM

I read that he had something like a dozen writers that would be working to finish it and had given out notes and direction on how the storylines would be completed. But his wife will undoubtedly be the primary person to make sure the end of his dream is realized how he wants it.

9/19/2007 8:11:08 PM

god, i hope for you fans that it doesnt turn out as shitty as herberts books, the 'new ones' have been bastardized

9/20/2007 12:40:49 AM

For those that are confused, Robert Jordan wrote the Wheel of Time (Wot) fantasy series of books. He's like the geek's Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Here for general info on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time

9/20/2007 1:01:17 AM

A friend of mine is related to him, said he was the biggest jerk ever. Which isn't really surprising, most good writers are crappy people. Does anyone think he was ever going to end that series anyways? I figured he'd just keep writing them as long as people were still buying the books, guess we'll never know now.

9/20/2007 8:33:45 PM

actually ive heard the extreme opposite about him. he regularly responded to fans letters and emails etc too.

and yes he also has said for awhile that the last book in this actual story would be the 12th book with possible side stories or prequel stories after he started working on his next book series.

9/20/2007 8:39:25 PM

He noted he was planning on doing a Mat / Tuon series set +10 years after Memory of light, and a few more series unrelated to WOT. He really had many more years worth of material to write.

From what I have read he was a really awesome to his fans. He did many signings, attended cons, regularly updated his blog and did a question of the week series where he would take the time to answer pretty detailed questions about almost anything people could come up with here http://www.tor.com/jordan/questions.html

9/20/2007 9:25:49 PM

I had an ex-boyfriend give me one the first WoT book as a birthday gift.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

9/21/2007 12:22:10 AM

It is unfortunate to see such an iconic figure of the fantasy genre pass away.

Fortunately, there are many people who will be involved in completing the series as he wanted it to.

Let's just hope George R.R. Martin stays alive long enough to finish a Song of Ice and Fire. I've been waiting for so long for a Storm of Swords to come out... it easily takes 4+ years for him to write the next book.

9/21/2007 11:13:19 AM

^that's how I feel about RR Martin and Terry Goodkind. If either of those people die without publishing the last book I'm gonna be really pissed and hope that they publish at least some of whatever had been written.

9/21/2007 12:23:00 PM

at first i felt real selfish about being mad over the fact that someone else suffered and died and all I cared about was they didnt finish a book in a series.

Then I realized, the fact that he did something that impacted so many random people's lives in such a way that that many people WERE bummed when he died because he couldnt keep doing it. thats actually pretty cool in its own way.

9/21/2007 12:32:46 PM

^ & ^^

jordan, martin, and goodkind are my top 3

[Edited on September 21, 2007 at 2:15 PM. Reason : .]

9/21/2007 2:12:57 PM

My understanding from reading his blog at dragonmount.com was that he knew the whole rest of the story and even recited it to his brother/cousin (?) and wife (I think). So it's been decided, it just needs to be put to written words. Hopefully he left good notes!

9/21/2007 5:03:19 PM

Jordan said from the beginning of the series that he had the final scene firmly in mind. Given the centrality of this to his entire vision for the series, I suspect that the person(s) that finish the project will be particularly sensitive to the denoument.

And, of course, will the murderer of Asmodean be unambiguously revealed?

9/21/2007 5:34:22 PM

im going to go out on a limb and say the end is just like first few pages of the first book. cant stop that wheel from turning much like stephen kings dark tower

9/21/2007 5:41:53 PM

There's no doubt in my mind that someone will finish the 12th book, but to my mind there's a difference between finishing the book and completing it. Jordan had a writing style that seemed very poetic and a vernacular cadence that will be hard to immitate, and if someone doesn't at least stay true to that writing style then the last 1/2 (or however much they have to write) of the book could stand to cusk.

Now I am getting anxious about RR Martin though...they say deaths come in threes....

9/21/2007 6:00:08 PM