Robert Jordan

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Robert Jordan
Robert Jordan.jpg
Jordan in 2005
Born James Oliver Rigney Jr.
(1948-10-17)October 17, 1948
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
Died Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist.
Charleston, South Carolina, U.S.
Occupation Novelist
Education The Citadel (BS)
Genre Fantasy
Notable works The Wheel of Time
Spouse Harriet McDougal (m. 1981)

Signature File:Robert Jordan signature (cropped).jpg

James Oliver Rigney Jr. (17 October 1948 – 16 September 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 some of the best of the non-Robert E. Howard efforts by fans.[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]

Early life

Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He went to Clemson University after high school, but dropped out after one year and enlisted in the U.S. Army.[4] He served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War as a helicopter gunner.[5] He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with "V" and oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm.[6]

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.

Personal life

Jordan was a history buff and enjoyed hunting, fishing, sailing, poker, chess, pool, and pipe-collecting. He described himself as a "High Church" Episcopalian[7] and received communion more than once a week.[8] He lived with his wife, Harriet McDougal, who works as a book editor (currently with Tor Books; she was also Jordan's editor) in a house built in 1797.[9]

Illness and death

On March 23, 2006, Jordan disclosed that he had been diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis and that, with treatment, his median life expectancy was four years.[10] 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.[11]

He began chemotherapy at Mayo Clinic during early April 2006.[12] He participated with a study of the drug Revlimid, which had been approved recently for multiple myeloma but not yet tested for primary amyloidosis.[13]

Jordan died on September 16, 2007,[14] and his funeral service was on September 19, 2007.[15] He was cremated and his ashes buried in the churchyard of St. James Church in Goose Creek, outside Charleston, South Carolina.[16][17]

Jordan's papers can be found in the special collections of the College of Charleston.[18]

Selected works

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The Wheel of Time

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Jordan published 11 books of a total 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 scale of the series as a whole.[19] 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.[20] He maintained that in doing so the book will get published even if "the worst actually happens".[21] 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.[22]

No. Title Date Length Audio Notes
0 New Spring 6 January 2004 334pp (PB) / 334pp (HB)
122,150 words
12h 31m Prequel set 20 years before the events of the first novel.
1 The Eye of the World 15 January 1990 782pp (PB) / 702pp (HB)
305,902 words
29h 32m  
2 The Great Hunt 15 November 1990 681pp (PB) / 599pp (HB)
267,078 words
26h 08m  
3 The Dragon Reborn 15 October 1991 675pp (PB) / 545pp (HB)
251,392 words
24h 31m  
4 The Shadow Rising 15 September 1992 981pp (PB) / 891pp (HB)
393,823 words
40h 31m  
5 The Fires of Heaven 15 October 1993 963pp (PB) / 684pp (HB)
354,109 words
36h 34m  
6 Lord of Chaos 15 October 1994 987pp (PB) / 699pp (HB)
389,823 words
41h 37m Locus Award nominee, 1995.[23]
7 A Crown of Swords 15 May 1996 856pp (PB) / 635pp (HB)
295,028 words
30h 31m  
8 The Path of Daggers 20 October 1998 672pp (PB) / 591pp (HB)
226,687 words
23h 31m  
9 Winter's Heart 7 November 2000 766pp (PB) / 533pp (HB)
238,789 words
24h 18m Prologue released as a promotional eBook in September 2000.
10 Crossroads of Twilight 7 January 2003 822pp (PB) / 681pp (HB)
271,632 words
26h 03m Prologue released as a promotional eBook on July 17, 2002.
11 Knife of Dreams 11 October 2005 837pp (PB) / 761pp (HB)
315,163 words
32h 24m Prologue released as a promotional eBook on July 22, 2005.
12 The Gathering Storm 27 October 2009 766pp (PB) / 766pp (HB)
297,502 words
33h 02m Completed by Brandon Sanderson.
13 Towers of Midnight 2 November 2010 864pp (PB) / 843pp (HB)
327,052 words
38h 17m Completed by Brandon Sanderson.[24]
14 A Memory of Light 8 January 2013 912pp (PB) / 909pp (HB)
353,906 words
41h 55m Completed by Brandon Sanderson,[25] epilogue by Robert Jordan.[26]
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 do 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 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 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).[27]

Conan the Barbarian

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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.[28]

  1. Conan the Invincible (1982)
  2. Conan the Defender (1982)
  3. Conan the Unconquered (1983)
  4. Conan the Triumphant (1983)
  5. Conan the Magnificent (1984)
  6. Conan the Destroyer (1984) (adaptation of the movie of the same title)
  7. Conan the Victorious (1984)

They were packed into two separate volumes par Conan the Destroyer:

Jordan also compiled a well-known Conan Chronology.

References

  1. "Robert Jordan" was the name of the protagonist in the 1940 Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, though this is not how the name was chosen according to a 1997 interview he did on the DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat.
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  19. Cannon, Peter. CROSSROADS OF TWILIGHT (Book). Publishers Weekly; December 23, 2002, Vol. 249 Issue 51, p.50
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Further reading

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External links