Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

... Then my partner and I went to get a bite, thinking we'll make it to the Opening ceremony in time. Wrong. We got back after Martin had spoken. Apparently, Jordan made a short speech when he was introduced. You all should ask Trebla or Gareth to report it, since I wasn't there. But it's funny.....

.... The interview was held at 2pm on Saturday. We went to that one after lunch. Martin introduced Jordan, and he repaid Jordan for his quip during the opening ceremony. I'll post both parts since Trebla hasn't come on to post yet.

In the Opening Ceremony, Jordan got up and he started saying that his mother had had some mental illness issues with manic depressive disorder. He went on to say that he had inherited her depressive mood swings and that he's been fighting it on and off for years now. Once in a while, when he's in the depressed mood, he'll write and later on, publish the work under the pseudonym of George R R Martin (because his real name is actually George B B Martin, of course). Hah.

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

So in the interview session, Martin got up and said that it's true that he didn't write the Song of Ice and Fire, that it was actually Jordan who wrote it. That's why Jordan didn't have time to actually write the WoT, and instead, the WoT was written by David Eddings. Muwahahahahah.

RJ had an opinion on Eddings at least five years before this point. It was probably something he and GRRM had discussed over beer.

rj on reading

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lol

Okay, so the interview went on. The interview was about Jordan. I mean, it was all him. Very little Martin. So I don't think I'll repeat the majority of it.

The pertinent part is that Jordan said he had planned the WoT series to be 5 books (I did a good job not to scoff), but the story has its own mind and can't be contained (again, I didn't laugh). Martin said that he had the same problem. He had originally planned that Game of Thrones and Clash of Kings to be one book.

how many more books?

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rj on writing

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grrm

Other than that, it was about Jordan. Not even mostly about his series. Just himself.

The highlight is that he served in the Vietnam war and he was, apparently, quite an efficient soldier. It did a job on his psyche, it seems. One thing he mentioned was that there was a picture that his friend took of him, where he was sitting on a log eating his ration, with 3 or 4 dead bodies around him. One of them was a guy with half his brain blown off by a grenade or something. Quite gruesome.

RJ told this story on his blog in 2007.

rj on life

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vietnam

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military

At the end, Jordan said there's a poll on Motley Fool (not sure if he's making it up or not) asking:

Which event will take place first?

1. Robert Jordan finishes WoT series
2. GRRM finishes Song of Ice and Fire series
3. Obscure reference I didn't catch
4. Heat death of the universe

and the poll has #4 leading 5:1 to all other choices.

fandom

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how many more books?

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lol