The Hugo Awards! The Wheel of Time! I feel like I have talked about this before!
Because I have. I talked about it back when I was advocating for the series to get nominated in the first place, and then I put together a big giant refresher post on it to boot. So this is not virgin territory to me.
However, given that the deadline for this year’s Hugo voting is fast approaching, it is probably meet that I should speak of it again, and talk about why I think the Wheel of Time deserves to win for Best Novel.
Because I think it does. Click the link to see why!
Ever since The Wheel of Time’s nomination to win Best Novel as a series rather than a stand-alone novel (and even before that, really), there has been a fair amount of controversy surrounding both the nomination in the first place, and beyond that, over whether the series merits the award in itself.
As a caveat, I have never had much to do with the Hugos before this year, so while I am familiar with its conventions (and peccadillos) in a general, osmosis-y sense, I can’t say that I am intimately acquainted with the ins and outs of why the books that historically get Hugo awards got them. With that in mind, I’m going to go ahead and say that I frankly don’t understand the resistance to the idea that a series of novels can be nominated as a single work. Because when I hear that, the only thing I think is, has everyone else on here been reading the same genre as I have my whole life, or am I losing my mind?
Because, seriously, the serial novel? The stupendous overarching story told in multiple volumes? That is speculative fiction’s jam, y’all. We didn’t invent the idea, but in my arrogant opinion we do it better than anyone else.
I don’t know about you, but the vast majority of science fiction and/or fantasy stories I have consumed in my lifetime have been serieses(eses) as opposed to standalone novels. C.S. Lewis, Roger Zelazny, Isaac Asimov, Anne McCaffrey, Robin Hobb, Katharine Kerr, Stephen R. Donaldson, Lloyd Alexander, Douglas Adams, J.K. Rowling, Lois McMaster Bujold, Neil Gaiman, George R.R. Martin—just to name a few—are all known or best known for their series of novels (or graphic novels, in Gaiman’s case). This isn’t to say that I haven’t read many wonderful standalone SF/F novels, by these authors and many others, but what I remember as a child, hunting in my tiny neighborhood library, was the joy of discovering that there were whole shelves of books, all written about the same wonderful/scary/fascinating world, for me to eagerly consume one after the other. That was a huge part of the appeal for me—the fact that the breadth and scope of these imaginary fantastical worlds were so breadth-y and scope-y that they irresistibly sprawled and spilled over the boundaries of one measly book into three, or five, or fourteen, or two dozen. It was an embarrassment of story riches, and I reveled in it.
Now obviously not everyone’s experience of SF/F has been exactly like mine, but I seriously can’t imagine that anyone could last long as a fan of the genre without harboring at least some love for the serial novel format. And yet it seems that that format, which is so fundamental to the SF/F genre in my opinion, is wholly disdained by the Hugos, which purport to be the highest award possible for works of science fiction and fantasy, and yet inexplicably have no category for Best Series.
This is just bizarre to me. I see the logistical problems there for a yearly award, true, but still, it seems like that could be worked out if you tried.
(Assuming there wasn’t an inherent prejudice against the series format as opposed to standalone works, of course. I’ll just leave that thought there for more knowledgeable folk to debate.)
But okay, fine, we work with what we’ve got. And thus it came to be that The Wheel of Time as a whole got nominated for Best Novel. Is it a little nonsensical? Perhaps, but surely no more so than awarding Best Novel to a book that’s only one part of an ongoing series, which seems to be totally okay. So frankly I’m a little skeptical of the whole controversy, honestly.
And perhaps this is because it is The Wheel of Time’s power as a series which (in my opinion, obviously) makes it worthy of winning what is, for better or worse, the SF/F equivalent of the Oscars.
Because, The Wheel of Time is not perfect. Not even close to perfect, really. It stumbled along its way, there is no doubt, sometimes badly, and no one knows that better than me, considering how much time I’ve spent dissecting and discussing those stumbles on this very site. But as I’ve said before, anyone’s who’s holding out for perfection in this world is going to be waiting around a good long while, because ain’t no such thing, honey.
The important thing about The Wheel of Time is not that it wasn’t perfect, but that it wasn’t perfect and did its thing anyway. It was in many ways the quintessential example of what epic fantasy is, and I mean that in both the good and the bad ways. It was all the tropes, all the themes, all the clichés even, all the elements of reaching for a scope perhaps outside of its grasp (or anyone’s grasp, really), and it was all of those things unabashedly. Which is something you don’t see all that often anymore.
There are a lot of books out there that want to deconstruct speculative fiction, or parody it, or comment upon it, or rejigger it to be something else, and those are all great things to do. But I feel like maybe in all the coolness of being self-reflexive and meta and post-modern about stories that sometimes we forget that sometimes, maybe people just want to be told a story. A huge, sprawling, messy, awesome story that excites them, and moves them to discuss it extensively, and influences others to write their own stories. I mean, isn’t that why we’re all here in the first place?
I think so. And I also think that that deceptively simple achievement—telling a story that people love, and love so much, in fact, that they’re willing to wait twenty years to hear the end of it—is worth recognizing once it finally achieves its goal. We’ll see soon enough whether anyone agrees with me.
Happy voting!
Leigh Butler is a writer, blogger, and opinionator for Tor.com, where she conducts the currently on-hiatus The Wheel of Time Re-read and the currently not-on-hiatus A Read of Ice and Fire. She currently lives in New Orleans, and has used the word “currently” way too many times in this bio. Seriously, it doesn’t even look like a word now. What? Bye!
Leigh,
I am with you. The story is something special and that I waited for the end and then got it against all odds. It has my vote.
Thank you Leigh!
The people who say “I’m not even going to consider it becasue it’s too many books”, just make me sad. And a little mad. There is no “Best Series” category. So until there is, we have to work with what is presented.
The WoT is one story.
“But I feel like maybe in all the coolness of being self-reflexive and meta and post-modern about stories that sometimes we forget that sometimes, maybe people just want to be told a story.” – Yes, this. I mean, I love stuff like Game of Thrones too, but I also like un-subverted stories, which, nowadays, almost seems to be a subversion in and of itself. This is kind of why I want grimdark and gritty realism to keep its grubby hands off of Star Wars ;)
As for the controversy (and I don’t and never have voted in the Hugos so I have no real dog in the fight), I love WOT, but I think I ultimately, by a hair, feel it wasn’t appropriate. Not enough to feel it’s a gross injustice, but…I’d probably vote against the decision. I LOVE big epic series. I don’t complain when they get too long. Heck, even classics like War and Peace or stuff like that were published in this way. But there is a definite difference between the way you write one of those, and the way a self-contained novel works. So I really think there needs to be a ‘series’ category.
That said, I WOULD be excited if it won, just because…yay :)
It surprises me that in something so prestigious as the Hugo Awards there is not something like a “Lifetime Acheivement Award” For, as much as we all love WoT, I think what many of us would really like to see is Robert Jordan recognized for his fantasic piece of fiction. And Harriet, Maria, and Alan, too. :)
You could read The Eye of the World as a standalone and be saisfied with it… and arguably The Great Hunt and The Dragon Reborn are almost as self-contained. But after that? No. Its one long book broken into multiple volumes, like the Lord of the Rings on steroids, or (dare I say it?) L. Ron Hubbard’s Mission: Earth series.
Sometimes, in those later books, there isn’t even a discernable plot arc. This may make them bad novels, but viewed as a whole, they are excellent chapters. Its the reason why so many of us old-timers from the early 90s complain about how bad Crossroads of Twilight and Path of Daggers are, but people relatively new to the series (say, 2004 and beyond) don’t feel anywhere near as strongly about them; they didn’t have to wait years for a new volume, then wait years more for the next one.
The Wheel of Time, truly, can only be appreciated as a whole (outside the first three volumes). It has more in common with the serialized TV of today than it does with other long “series” such as Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga. The only thing I’ve read like it is the two serials listed earlier, and A Song of Ice and Fire. Of those three, only ASOIAF was published the same way as The Wheel of Time. Both the Lord of the Rings and Mission: Earth were written completely and edited before the first volume was released. Most other long series are like the Wheel of Time started out to be; somewhat self-contained plots that progressed a larger plot.
And maybe that’s a better format; I don’t know, that’s up for each reader to decide. I just know that format wasn’t going to work for the story Robert Jordan wanted to tell, so he apparently abandoned it early on. What proceeded was messy; it was also, really, the first work of its kind. If for no other reason than that, it should be honored with at least this nomination.
First, of course WoT can be on the ballot. People voted and the Hugo voting committee decided it belonged. Thus it belongs. That being said, people are now allowed to use any criteria they wish in determining where (or if) to place WoT on their final ballot. That’s how the voting works.
Here is my novel voting order:
1. Ancillary Justice
2. Neptune’s Brood
3. Parasite
4. Wheel of Time
I left Warbound off my ballot as I did not think it had high enough quality to be on my Hugo ballot.
For WoT, I reread the first four volumes and as I recalled they were a decent enough story. Then, I re-encountered the middle books. They had not gotten any better than I recalled from twenty years ago. So, essentially the middle volumes caused me to place WoT into the fourth place on my ballot.
Perhaps, some of the more knowledgeable WoTer’s here could fill in some background info for me.
If someone has thoughts (or actual info) on why the middle books are like they are, it would be interesting to me. If no one knows, that is fine. And, of course, maybe no one but me thinks there is a problem with the middle books–they are the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Some background from me:
Twenty or so years ago when book 6 or 7 came out, I read it and decided the series had gone completely into the weeds. It took about 3 hours to get through and was mostly composed of long examples of how the world was statically repeating and men and women just couldn’t possibly understand one another. I decided I wasn’t going to buy any more and even sold the hardcover copies I had (that is a drastic step for me and is why I’m unsure which book I last had).
At the time, it seemed that Jordan was either (again, completely my impression from what I recall and it could, of course, be completely wrong):
1) Really determined to point out the wheel nature of the world and that things were broken and that readers really needed hundreds of pages of this to understand the point.
2) Writing what he wanted without adequate editorial control.
3) Filling pages while he tried to figure out a plot.
Or, it could have been something completely different and I don’t intend to be mean, but those were my impressions at the time.
Thanks.
Frankly, I find Butler’s arguments in favour of the Wheel of Time’s nomination fatuous. Yes, its an incredible accomplishment to complete a series that runs for twenty years, but to seriously argue that fact in and of itself deserves an award is simply superfical. Especially if it has a real dry streak in the middle—arguing that away as “perfection is unattainble” is disingenuous, since you can excuse anything by that argument. Being tasty is not the same thing as being nutritious.
A large part of the backlash can be understood as asking why the whole series is being nominated, with no other reply than “just because its awesome,” which comes across as self absorption and disrespect for the Hugos. Quite a lot of good books came out this year, and the Wheel of Time has been out for awhile. It has a lot to prove.
“A huge, sprawling, messy, awesome story that excites them, and moves them to discuss it extensively, and influences others to write their own stories.”
This, I believe, is why Ancillary Justice is a lock for the awards, since it accomplished all those things in one volume. I also believe that given the fact that prospective voters will have to read through fourteen novels (and I doubt many will have that much time or stamina, however well intentioned), will hear by word of mouth for when the series enters the doldrums, and from readers who burned out of the series foretells a poor showing on the ballot (though if Larry Correia by some miracle comes within striking distance of winning, I’ll be pulling for it).
Look, I freely admit that I have my own biases: I find it very difficult to take cyberpunk or epic fantasy seriously. And I will say something nice about the whole episode. It’s a warm hearted gesture, and given that the Hugo Ballot this year was sullied with the Sad Puppy shennaigans, I’m not unopposed to an act of kindness. Arguing for a Special Achievement or Best Series Hugo and advocating for Wheel of Time winning that strikes me as a better idea, or nominating the last book and letting it be a legacy award for the series. Perhaps we can get the momentum going for a Best Series award as a result. The controversy around Wheel of Time’s nomination shows how limited in appeal and flawed in approach the idea of nomiating the whole fourteen book series is.
I’m voting WOT. I love the story, but more and more over the years I’ve come to love the ambition of it. There are so many levels on which the story can be read: the straightforward adventure tale, the mythic and real life parallels, the puzzles it presented with prophecies and predictions, and all the levels of symbolism (http://13depository.blogspot.co.uk is great on this). Finally I love to stand back and admire the pattern, the variations of stories, the internal structure which means events in the early books parallel and foreshadow events in the later books. To me it is like a gothic cathedral. Not always perfect, as Leigh says, but grand and inspiring, crazily big and full of beauty.
WOTs been a part of my life for a long time -19 years! So I’m proud to vote for it in the hugos this year.
@7 the point isn’t that WOT should be any sort of exception to a long standing rule, it’s that the rule in itself is inherently flawed. Take “In Search of Lost Time” by Marcel Proust, it is generally considered the longest novel ever written. Although the total of many series have been far shorter than it, and it is also pretty much exclusively published in several volumes, it has eligability for an award that only components of stories that are marketed as “series'”, and are produced over long periods of time are never considered for. Like with “In Search of Lost Time”, WOT is too long to put between two covers, and serializations are a long standing tradition accepted in and out of genre, look at “Starship Troopers”, so arguing that anything important other than the way they are marketing distinguishes them just doesn’t hold up. The Hugos, while having its own rules, is a fundamentally democratic system, and if the usual tropes can’t be put aside there in view of a good work, where can they?
IANC5@7 – I don’t think Leigh’s arguments for Wheel of Time being on the ballot are silly at all. There have been a number of discussions about why WoT was ruled eligible for the ballot, but the point is that WoT is eligible. There have been numerous posts discussing this topic (I recommend Brandon Sanderson’s and John Scalzi’s posts; both recommend some critical thought by any potential voter, WoT fan or not) and I would encourage you to check them out.
So continuing to question whether/not The Wheel of Time should be on the ballot is rather pointless. Suggesting alternative options (Special Achievement or Best Series) is also not relevant nor applicable in this situation. The Wheel of Time is on the 2014 Hugo Awards ballot for best novel. Any argument against it being there at this point in time is what is really fatuous.
I’ve said it before somewhere.
Like many others, I have enjoyed reading WoT. But tbh, I only read the last books so I could find out how it ended.
I appreciated the fandom growing around it, but in my opinion this is just rallying votes like in the cagematch stuff. To show ‘look how WoT fandom dominates’. As I said, my opinion.
If WoT had been edited stronger (by a neutral editor) and it had ended in, say, 9-10 books it could have been better. But as it is now, as much as I like the series overall, I do not find it HUGO-stuff.
@KiManiak: IIRC, WoT is on the ballot because of online voting, which is possible to manipulate. Hence my deathmatch comment.
You can all start flaming me now.
And maybe next year Terry Goodkind gets nominated ;)
Fiddler – I would never get in a flame war with you. You have given me the gift of Malazan (well, at least a strong push to read the series, as well as help when I was stuck/confused), and for that I will always be in your debt, sir. :-)
WoT is on the ballot for the same reason that the other 4 nominees are on the ballot; totally a popularity contest by those who had the ability to nominate and equally susceptible to shenanigans. Whether you agree with it, Ancillary Justice, Neptune’s Brood, Parasite or Warbound being on the ballot or not is totally your perogative. I have no problems with any one’s belief.
I will however point out the problem when someone has the stones to call Leigh’s arguments for the placement of WoT on the ballot as silly/pointless even after WoT was “legally” placed on the ballot (and held up by one of the creator’s of the Hugo-nominating-rules, if I’m not mistaken).
And a popularity contest is the only way in which Moiraine could defeat Anomander Rake in a deathmatch competition. But that’s neither here nor there…
Yes, WoT is on the ballot. I’ve placed it below No Award. Since it’s in the novel category, I’m treating it as a single work, and as such, it drags too much in the middle half, and the ending doesn’t logically flow from its antecedents.
Sorry, but that’s how I see it.
anthonypero – Well said.
A series of novels and a novel in serial form are quite different things.
The Hugo rule makers said WoT was eligible. So let’s hear no more on that issue. If it’s “too big” or whatever and you don’t like it, then don’t vote for it. You needn’t parade your votes in front of us. What is the point of that?
Wow! The negative side is jumping to the fore! I’ve never cast a Hugo vote, and will not this time. And I have a somewhat cynical attitude toward awards in general: I frequently think the best motion picture does not win the Academy Award; I’ve won several awards and served on committees that select winners and know well the personal and political considerations that are always involved.
I also know that literary fiction (like movies) is judged by various readers in many ways using different standards. I’ll never forget hearing a professional novelist denigrate the work of James Michener, whose work I admire and respect. The novels were not very creative (this guy said), they were merely linear stories, the characters were not sufficiently complex. Maybe. But Michener’s work also outsold this guy’s work by about a factor of a thousand, and I think the guy was envious and jealous.
There is always tension between a work’s “artistic” quality, its popularity, its short-term and long-range impact, its influence on other writers, and more. In the case of WOT, surely no one would argue that the writing is Nobel quality. The middle books did drag. The ending was not completely satisfying. But the world-building was incredibly interesting. The characters were riveting. The metaphysics was tantalizing. The scale was impressive. The impact, short and (IMO) long term is major.
The Hugo is set up to be a popularity vote. I expect WOT to win, and hope it does. But it’s OK if it doesn’t.
I’ve already voted for WoT. As a complete series, it’s accomplished a great deal and I think it’s absolutely deserving of the Hugo.
I have no issues with its eligibility. Those are the rules — although I’d really love to see a series category separate to the novel category (where you can nominate after the series is completed).
I won’t be voting for Wheel of Time because I’ve tried at least four times to read it, and the furthest I ever got was about a third of the way into the first book.
The Wheel of time ended up second on my Hugo Ballot, after Warbound, I only gave out one no award in the best novel category
I already covered my voting preferences so won’t reiterate them here, but the WOT was nominated, therefore it is eligible. End of story.
I thought the series as a whole was a solid 7/10.
Nailed the start, wobbled a bit, gave a strong demonstration of intent, lost it for a while, but recovered at last and stuck the finish (with a minor foot fault or two). Good use of subs, and some tight editing meant the voice was still there.
WOT deserves huge credit for really driving the 90s boom in epic fantasy that Eddings and Feist and Brooks began, and showed that open ended multivolume works could sell, and sell well.
Heck, without WOT, it is unlikely that the more ambitious works like GOT or Malazan could even exist.
It also deserves a fair amount of brickbats for the obvious weaknesses shown in the late middle books, the turgid plot advancement, and the vagueness as to direction, which an idea that Terry Goodkind took and ran away with. Heavier editing may have helped, but I’ve been lead to believe that the works were already heavily edited, so it might simply come down to Jordan’s innate style being substantial waffle.
I just had fun voting for the Retro Hugos!
I’m still working on the current stuff, but WoT is still a strong contender for my one vote. And since it’s on the ballot; yeah, it’s eligible. Good enough? is the only question to worry about.
Given the combination of the nominated works I’ve read so far, and the complaints about what got on the ballot this year, I have to conclude that there’s a reason I’ve become so skeptical about books that have “Hugo Winner” stamps on the cover.
None of the excerpts of the single-volume novels was interesting enough that I cared to find the whole book. I’m still in the second book of the Grimnoir series, but it will probably go in second place behind WoT. The series are just more fun to read than idea-heavy novels with unappealing stories. Not all books that focus on ideas are necessarily bad (in the Campbell category Nexus was my clear favorite), but the ones in the novel category just don’t appeal to me.
I follow your argument but have a couple of my own.
1) There are practical problems with nominating a work so huge that an ordinary reader cannot read it between the time of nomination and the time the voting closes. I have been reading for the Hugos (and the Campbell) and I have managed, in two months or so, 11 novels, 4 graphic novels (to be fair, those were fast reads) and enough other material to make perhaps 2 books. That makes 13-ish books (and ordinary sized books at that) and I still have three more books to go in the Related Work section, and there are going to be categories I can’t vote on at all. If I had read the WoT series instead I wouldn’t be finished with it yet, and I wouldn’t have read *anything* else.
2) Please let’s not drag “inherent prejudice” into this. The rhetorical approach of the Sad Puppies is, I think, not something you want to imitate here.
3) The WoT is nominated in 2014, so I will be judging it by the standards of 2014, and the weird sexual politics–women torturing women and forcing them to walk around naked on leashes, and Matt getting raped and having it presented as being funny being just a couple of examples–are…problematic in 2014.
4) The books often drag and the plot becomes increasingly hard to follow, in my opinion.
5) On the other hand I recognize the huge influence it was on the field. While I hope the original nominators made their choice in the full knowledge of the obvious disadvantages, I am okay with them having nominated it, as long as they are okay with my having voted it down without having read beyond the fifth volume or so, and that twenty years ago.
@6. stevenhalter
Regarding your question as to why the middle books are seen by many as a slog. I remember reading somewhere once that Robert Jordan stated the slow pace in the middle of the books was intentional. It was meant to convey the Dark One’s increasing influence on the world and how it was his (the Dark One) intention to slow the progress of our heroes. The heroes were all (mostly) split apart, each with a seemingly never ending storyline that was moving forward at a snail’s pace, and it was meant to give a sense of hopelessness that they would be ready by the time The Last Battle came around.
Whether this was truly Robert Jordan’s intention, or a reason to counter criticism, I don’t know. But he didn’t seem like the kind of person to lie about it.
For myself, I only started reading the series 4 or 5 years ago, so I didn’t really have the problems people had with the middle of the series.
plum@24:Thanks! I appreciate the information. That’s an interesting angle if that is what he was doing.
I’m currently nearing the end of the I don’t know how many – fifth or sixth – WoT series re-read since I started them in 2007. This is my first re-read since AMOL. I was impressed by how little I was bothered by Boooks 8-10 and how much good stuff was in them. To me, it ties with viewing the series as a continuous story, with various sub-arcs that flow over multiple books. Taking any of them as individual books can be unsatisfying except for the books where there is substantial closure on the arcs (i.e., why Book 11 is so great – it ends nearly all of the mid-series arcs and tees up the final push to the last battle; and Book 10 is so unsatisfying on its own – there is no closure on any arc).
I am currently re-reading AMOL having read ALL of the nominated novels, novelettes, novelllas and short stories over the last 6 weeks, with the exception of ancilliary justice, nexus, Lives of Tao and to some extent the grimnoir trilogy, I found most of the work inferior.
I have cast my votes in all the categories in which I found the nominated works of sufficient quality
needless to say WOT gets my vote as the single most important and satisfying body of work I have read in the last 20 years, and even on the 3rd+ reread I still find it inspiring and thought provoking. Like many have already said, it is not perfect, but it still stands out head and shoulders above the opposition.
Surprisingly I preferred Naam to Chu in the Campbell award.
I did also try some of the other categories, but found them trite so I will not be voting in many of them
Mike
I find this argument problematic given that we’ve recently seen the poorly-written, very badly-researched Blackout/All Clear win, and the very slight and fluffy Redshirts won last year, not to mention books like Rainbow’s End and The Graveyard Books which seemed to be more about high-fiving the authors for previous achievements than because of the quality of those works.
The Hugo Awards are not solely about quality, and have not been for years. There’s a strong ‘industry recognition’ flavour to them, where the authors are honoured for past works as much as the individual novel itself. Given Wheel of Time‘s undoubted massive impact on the genre in marketing and publicity, it is a perfectly fine nomination, and a better one than many recent winners.
On the other hand, this is going too far. Both Martin and Erikson started writing those series in 1991, when WoT only had a couple of books out, and both authors intended shorter series (Martin a trilogy and Erikson a series of stand-alone novels, as Malazan indeed ended up being for its first half). There were also plenty of fantasy series around which were longer than the standard, although they tended to be less heavily serialised. WoT was important in popularising the heavily-serialised, much-longer-than-three-book series, but it didn’t create it and it certainly would have come into existence without it.
I agree with what a lot of the commentators have said about the strengths and weaknesses of WOT. I just think that ‘ WOT’s influence on the field’ should not be a consideration when deciding your Hugo vote – its not fair to other nominees. We don’t know what their influence on the field will be twenty years from now, if it will exceed WOT or not.
That may be the ideal, but I think it has been very much a consideration in past votes: Vernor Vinge, Connie Willis or John Scalzi winning even for subpar work because of their previous influence on the field and maybe for excellent work that had previously been nominated but not won (or even if it had won). The WoT vote, for me, has simply made something blatant that was previously very much a factor in the awards, just perhaps one that was not defined.
Werthead@28:While there are lots of rules about counting votes and the word count for a particular category and such, there are no rules on how people should actually vote.
You vote as to what you think was “best”. This is completely up to individual taste. Finding the definition of “best” like quality is apt to produce madness upon examination.
Note that the rules allow you to leave nominees off your ballot. If you wish you could leave them all off or just vote for No Award.
You get to vote however you want to vote.
@6: Another reason why it drags in the mind of fans is the Winter Heart’s / Crossroads of Twilight timelines.
At the end of WH you have Rand cleaning the Source. It’s a big major kick ass moment. Then CoT starts and we see what others have been up to, only to realize that the story is telling us what was happening to them when the BAE (big ass ending) of WH was going down.
So while it was great for a timeline check, and helps establish everyone’s overall place in the world/story. At the end you realize – Hey, we’ve only moved forward about three days!!!
RJ is on record for saying it was an experiment. That he feels ultimately failed, but that he was glad he did it. It works better now because fans are not waiting years for the next book. So Mat being gone for a whole book after ending on a cliffhanger does not register as much. Versus waiting 6 years.
But hey, maybe that is what gave GRRM the idea to split A Feast for Crows and A Dance with Dragons. Different characters the focus, the timelines match up. (Not a GRRM spoiler, Leigh already knows this.)
CoT – Released Jan. 2003
AFfC – Released Oct. 2005
@28: and yes, both series mentioned were started around the time of WOT. So not the best examples.
But we can also point to better examples, like Brandon Sanderson’s Stormlight Archives.
And GRRM does include two shootouts to Jordan in his ASoIaF. One as Robert Jordan and one as James Rigney. So yes, GRRM was influenced by RJ.
BT – as I think you know but it is not clear from your post, Mat is missing from POD rather than COT.
COT is the worst standalone book but works fine as part of a series read.
Thanks Braid_Tug. That’s good to know that he was doing the middle books on purpose as a style choice. I still don’t particularly care for the choice, but it is good to have a reason and I can respect that he made an attempt at something he wanted to do.
@32 – I thought the reason for the RJ shoutouts in ASOIAF was the cover blurb RJ gave for Game of Thrones when it was first published. As for the mid-series bloat of WoT, I always ascribed it to Jordan’s growing realization that he was approaching the endgame and he didn’t want to quit playing in the world he’d created. Basically, he was reluctant to kill his baby. Perfectly understandable, I suppose, but even now those middle books are a slog, particularly the Perrin/Faile and Elayne succession plotlines.
I never minded the Elayne stuff… but Perrin/Faile was a massive, well… Fail. Because, yeah, Faile sucked eggs. And Perrin, who was the most level-headed of the Tripod, really didn’t fit the bill as an angst ridden emo teenager.
Although I will say that his actual character arc was the most realistic. We don’t grow up evenly. We all regress as we mature, like Perrin did.
The middle books also suffered because they kept us out of Rand’s head, for the most part. And WAAAAAAY too much time was spent on Fain–in my opinion, the ending of this arc didn’t support the weight of what preceeded it.
@35: I can see that for the first one, since it’s along the lines of Jordan of House Tor. But I don’t know the full background.
The second one seems more personal, and it’s in a later book, so an endorsement from 15+ years back seems like a minor reason for one.
As for bloating it on purpose, I don’t think so. Based on the things Team Jordan has said about the notes RJ left behind, he had lots of things planned. Thus why they are working on the WoT Encyclopedia right now. But some of the story did run away from him. At book 4 it cracks open into a casts of thousands by heading to the Waste.
@34: You are welcome. And many of us agree with you. But still love the overall work.
@33: Ah yes, PoD. I do get confused, but the point of waiting still applies.
I’ll be casting my votes for what I like, which in the case of the Hugos are WoT and Warbound at the top of the heap. If that makes me “guilty” of “turning the Hugos into a popularity contest,” then, well, too bad.
At least I have the option for voting for books *I* like, rather than meekly accepting somebody else’s judgement.
Werthead@28:
I don’t think that saying The Wheel of Time is responsible for the publication of A Song of Ice and Fire or Malazan is unreasonable at all. Sure, Martin and Erikson started writing them when the Wheel of Time only had a few books out; a few books which were already massively popular bestsellers which clearly showed the format could work. They would have still wanted to write the stories, no doubt about it, but would they have ever been able to get those stories published? Even if they did, would they have been able to do so without massive editorial changes? There’s no way to say for sure, but it certainly is questionable.
Also, this is anecdotal of course, but in the case of Game of Thrones specifically, I know I only started reading it because of Jordan’s endorsement, and I know quite a few people who are in the same boat. And in the case of Malazan? It’s a highly out of the ordinary work by a brand new author. If there wasn’t already a clamoring in the market for huge doorstopper epic fantasy novels, I seriously doubt any publisher would have given him the time of day, at least not without a whole lot of demands to make it more easily accessible.
There’s a lot more works that were even more directly influenced by Wheel of Time, though. For better or for worse, The Sword of Truth wouldn’t exist if the Wheel of Time hadn’t come first, for one.
Additionally, do you really think a first novel the size of The Name of the Wind would ever have been published if The Wheel of Time hadn’t popularized the format? Admittedly, that one probably has the popularity of Game of Thrones to thank for its existence more directly than Wheel of Time, but if you accept my thesis that Wheel of Time was largely responsible for Song of Ice and Fire’s success, Rothfuss still owes Jordan a great debt.
Most importantly, though, think about what the Wheel of Time has done for Brandon Sanderson’s career. Personally I feel he’s the best thing in the fantasy field today, and while obviously that’s open for debate, it’s hard to argue that he’s anything other than good, and that his rise to relative stardom was a great thing for the genre. And it’s true that Elantris was relatively successful, so his career might still be going somewhere even if he hadn’t been picked to finish the Wheel of Time, but it wouldn’t be nearly as big as it is today. And even if it was, Jordan was such a major influence on his work that his style would be very, very different if the Wheel of Time had never been written. Mistborn, specifically, was written directly with the idea of playing with tropes and ideas from the Wheel of Time in mind. The core concept behind that series was “what happens when the Rand Al’Thor-style prophesized hero fails,” which was one of the reasons Harriet felt he was the perfect fit for finishing the Wheel of Time in the first place. And Mistborn was significantly more successful than Elantris. Even if he hadn’t been asked to finishe the Wheel of Time, where might his career be if his first novel didn’t have a strong follow-up? By his own admission, he never would have felt he was in a position to get the Stormlight Archives published if it weren’t for his work on the Wheel of Time.
Admittedly, most of the examples I’ve listed here are conjecture and opinion. Obviously it’s impossible to say precisely how the fantasy landscape would be different today if the Wheel of Time had never been published. But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the landscape would be very different, one way or the other.
Oh, and as for the “controversies” surrounding the nominations of WoT and (especially) Warbound: If Larry Correia and the late Robert Jordan can cause such sturm und drang, then I can’t wait for Tom Kratman to get a Hugo nom. The head asplosions will be glorious. Epic, even. It’ll turn the Internet into Scanners.
I should be stockpiling popcorn now, actually. Let the Hugo campaign for The Rods And The Axe begin…!
:P
@37 – I’m not sure, I just think I remember reading that somewhere. As for the bloat, I have no doubt that it wasn’t a conscious decision, that’s just how it felt to me. An enormous influx of largely superfluous worldbuilding at the expense of moving the overall story forward.
@Wert
I knew I should have written more on that point rather than leaving it as a throwaway line. It is an exaggeration, but there is a bit of truth there.
I know both aSoIaF & Malazan existed early on – GoTM was notably mostly written in 1991 but didn’t find a receptive home until 1998. Rather what I meant to say was that I think the sales boom of the WOT from around book 4 & 5 onwards would have made the big publishers much more amenable to open-ended doorstopper series, both to gamble on sales, and more importantly to finance the advances to the authors. The initial success of Goodkind in the mid 90s would have reinforced that – the first four books sold well, and he clearly had no idea what the next one would need in terms of setup until he got there.
Aside from the two quintets of Eddings I can’t think of any significant fantasy series outside the traditional 3-4 book structure prior to 1990, unless we go back to Narnia or the 70s while soon after we got both WOT and the Death Gate Cycle of 7 books, followed by Goodkind in 1994, aSoIaF in 1996 and Harry Potter in 1997. And more noticeably we got much *bigger* and more complex books as we leave the 90s – you could fit the whole of the Belgariad into the Shadow Rising and have room to spare.
aSoIaF is a different case to be fair – Martin was a well established author by this point, so the publishers were willing to gamble. Erikson though won an unprecedented advance for the full Malazan series based purely on GotM and I suspect a chunk of DG. I would think no publisher would have even considered tendering that 10 years earlier.
One thing I forgot to point out in my last reply:
It’s true that the overly long, heavily-serialised, much-longer-than-three-book, doorstopper fantasy series would probably have become a Thing eventually with or without the Wheel of Time, but would it have been popularized if time for series like Song of Ice and Fire and Malazan to come out when they did? I seriously doubt it.
I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to say that the Wheel of Time is the most influential fantasy story since The Lord of the Rings.
Mayhem@42:
The Black Company by Glen Cook — 1984
The Vlad Taltos books by Steven Brust — 1983 (Jhereg)
The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny — 1970 (Nine Princes in Amber)
The Earthsea Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin — 1968 (A Wizard of Earthsea)
to name a few major series.
@44
Earthsea was a trilogy plus some much later singletons in the same world.
The second Amber quintet is a good call, though I don’t know how well it sold – it wasn’t well known in Australasia until the combined 10 book editions but his .
Black Company I’ll give you, though it was initially a trilogy plus followups, same as the Riftwar or Shannara ones. Books of the South/Glittering Stone make it one long story though. Feist did at least try and come up with an overarching narrative for his world, but that didn’t kick in until the Conclave of Shadows in 2002. Shannara is a series of histories of his world, but at this point was just a trilogy and linked quartet.
Vlad Taltos I deliberately didn’t consider – Brust plays as many tricks with time as Bujold, making it more of a series of increasingly linked standalone novels than a broken-up long novel as the others are.
One I had forgotten about was Hugh Cook’s deranged and insanely ambitious Chronicles of an Age of Darkness, which got to 10 books of a proposed 60! before sales figures doomed it in 1992. Arguably that was a multistranded narrative told in linked novels.
The Amtrak Wars were arguably Fantasy enough to count as well, but they abruptly died in 1990.
All this makes me think even more we really should have some kind of category or award for long runners, whether serial or series.
So much solid work, even if individual works might be unspectacular, definitely deserves recognition.
Mayhem@46:I certainly agree with that. Exactly how to define things and periods of time is a tricky matter but can be done.
As you can see from our posts, even agreeing on what constitutes a series can be fraught.
Here’s a game: Define a series such that it could be used in a Hugo voting document.
@46 & 47:
One of the proposals I had was a “Best Series” Hugo, to be nominated and voted on every 5 years. So any series that was finished in the 5 year block would be eligible, regardless of if an individual component of the series had be nominated or rewarded as a previous Hugo winner.
I figured this would allow people time to read the books on their own, and for several series to be finished inside the time span.
The problem I have is that I will not be at this year’s WorldCon. And you either have to be there at the business meeting, or you have to get about 15 people who are not going to be at WorldCon, but are voting member to approve your submission. So, I have to write it up in full formal langue, and get people to endorse it. And hope that one of them will be able to propose it at the Hugo business meeting.
It’s a pity that Leigh basically spent this post defending WoT’s right to be in the category, not the merits that might make it worthy of an actual high ranking, because surely she’s in a good position to make that argument.
First, I do think that charges of dragging, at this point, only still count IF you reread the series and feel that it still drags. It was completely understandable, when we were all waiting 1 year+ for the next book, to be driven a little crazy by CoT, etc. However, in my opinion, this problem does go away on a full re-read that treats WoT as an immensely long serialized prose epic that just happens to be in separate books because it’s physically impossible to bind it together. One of the elements that makes AMoL effective and makes the “final battle” genuinely scary in an original way is that, in the end, ALL of the plotlines (yes, even the PLOD), turn out to be necessary to victory. It’s an original solution to the thorny problem of getting epic fantasy out of the shadow of Tolkien, and IMHO it works really well, especially in light of the Tolkien-inversion theme that Rand is not actually as central as he has been led to believe.
I think the biggest barrier to non-fans recognizing WoT as potentially award-worthy in its own right, and not as a consolation prize for past work, is not just its length, but the fact that it hides its thematic complexities under relatively simple language. (Parasite has the same problem, on its far smaller scale.) I respectfully disagree with (sorry, lost your comment number in the mess) that Ancillary Justice achieves similar things in the scope of one novel; I found its characterization and implied social worldbuilding to be seriously deficient on multiple levels. In the briefest possible language, my arguments that WoT as a whole is legitimately worthy of one of the higher spots on the ballot are:
1. I honestly don’t think the plot is out of control. Contrast (I know, flamebait), GRRM’s plot, which I do suspect is out of control and needs a heavy editorial hand (George, do we GENUINELY NEED the Chthulu-worshipping Vikings too?). The plot is playing with the trope of the Big Apocalyptic World-Ending Scenario but populating it with scheming little people who are out for their own gain and refuse to have crucial conversations for plausible psychological reasons. The extreme length isn’t bloat, it’s an inevitable result of that setup, and the frustration readers feel is intentional.
2. (Related) I do think intertextuality is a hugely important topic in fantasy criticism–comparable to its place in ancient literature rather than modern “literary” fiction–and WoT is brilliant intertextually. Starting from a premise of “What if I fake my readers into thinking this is an LOTR retread, except that Gandalf is a woman, the heroes are super-stubborn backwoods Americans rather than Brits who accept the class structure, etc. . .”, going through an endless string of prophecies that largely turn out to be trivial or faked, and ending with a mixture of Barclayan metaphysics and intensely Kantian ethics mixed with a really scary Last Battle that isn’t just a decoy–that is an extraordinarily effective and original contribution to the epic fantasy tradition that I find far more original and affecting than Grimdark.
3. The metaphysics are fascinating, if to some extent flawed in the ending by what I suspect is sloppy execution by BS and maybe some hard-to-read notes. I’ve written on this elsewhere, but it’s critical to try and piece together an accurate portrait of the fictional metaphysics rather than taking any character as a mouthpiece–because a huge amount of the conventional wisdom spouted by characters, such as that the Creator is a deist god, that the Pattern is somehow sentient or active, etc., is eventually shown to be the warped beliefs of a complacent and problematic society, not the real worldbuilding. In general, the demands that Jordan puts on the reader to work out his authentic world through the screen of lies and fakeouts are a fantastic alternative to the infodump, and have caused WoT to be a fertile discussion ground not just for sometimes juvenile theory-mongering, but genuinely provocative discussions in ethics and metaphysics, for decades. I don’t feel any of the other nominees can do that.
4. While the prose is less artful than the other nominees (not counting Hard Magic, which I don’t consider nomination-worthy), I do think that it should matter that the characterization is far better. Both Ancillary Justice and Neptune’s Brood in particular have an awful lot of cardboard characters–as in, nearly all the cast, in my estimation. In a work of its size, of course WoT will have placeholder characters, but the preponderance of important characters are layered, have arcs, and feel like living, breathing individuals. They wouldn’t piss us off so much otherwise! The intensely personal nature of some fans’ reactions to characters–especially ones that Jordan likes and the fan doesn’t–shows his effectiveness in this regard. In a perfect world, I’d like to have all this AND great prose, but nobody put MaddAddam on the ballot (and Margaret Atwood would have thrown a fit if they had). I do think tolerance of weak character writing in hard sci-fi is a real barrier.
OK, so this is really long. . .I think I better stop now and do some work. . .
Yeah, uh, that post got so long that I lost track and didn’t copy-edit. Please don’t judge those of us who seriously think WoT is artistically important because I happened to lose track of a long post and hit “post” before editing. . .I’m not really illiterate, just stressed out because my monster-in-law is arriving this evening for a whole week. . .
croc @49 – You do realize, don’t you, that Hard Magic isn’t a nominee? It’s included in the reader’s packet so that you have context for Warbound, the one currently up for a Hugo, but you’re voting only on Warbound itself.
The problem with @48 is what constitutes “completed?” The first three Shanarra novels are standalone, the Scions of Shanarra are four books telling one story, although the way the narrative is, they are relatively self contained… then there are several other trilogies, etc… Not that a Terry Brooks novel is a great example of a Hugo nominee, but… what constitutes completed in this case?
The Vorkosigan Saga…. when is it completed? They are standalone novels in a series. Episodic rather than serial, but definitely a “series” by any marketing definition.
Or here’s a good one: The Dresden Files. If Butcher sticks the landing at 20 books, you have 20 individual novels with completely self-contained arcs that tell one overarching, incredible, story. Then an “apocalypse” trilogy follows it. When is it eligible? After the 20 novels? After the trilogy? Is it eligible each time, and then once again for the whole 23 book arc?
That’s just off the top of my head.
And what about Brandon Sanderson? The Cosmere? All of his “series” are telling an overarching story in the background. Do we let marketing tell us what constitutes a complete series?
Its a really complicated subject.
@47–I believe that a series contains the following elements: being published in multiple editions greater than one year apart,[i] involving similar characers and theme, exceeding a minimum of three novels (60,000 words plus).[/i] Mentally, I am using Lord of the Rings as a benchmark, and while I concede that may be limiting, we need to draw the line somewhere or else insanity results. This standard could allow triologies to be nominated as a single work, which I think is reasonable. Fourteen novels is straining the bounds of credulity. @49–that is honestly the argument I would have liked to have seen for Wheel of Time’s inclusion.
@52 & 53
Yeah, I was thinking over how to make eligible incomplete serial works like Dresden or Vorkosigan or Garrett PI. Long running serials that are definitely worthy of recognition, but which show no signs of stopping soon short of Author Existence Failure. Hugo awards traditionally awarded completed works, but then you have the example of Dramatic Presentation, where we had Game of Thrones (Season One) win the Long Form, and The Rains of Castermere nominated for Short Form (at least making a change from Dr Who which appears to be the only short form worth nominating in the past few years). Both are ongoing series, and a potential example of what could be valid.
It’s not that I wouldn’t *prefer* a work be finished, but lets be reasonable, the Taltos serial for example has been going since the early 80s. That’s a hell of a lot of time to wait. Possibly set it as “eligible after a certain number of years”?
I would stipulate it as a certain minimum word count, and a certain minimum book count. So completed trilogies could say be classed as a single work a-la the regular awards, and four or more go into the series category. That also protects from pet-new-series-itis, where hypothetically say Scott Lynch gets nominated on the strength of the first two books because they were totes amazeballs but goes on to drop the ball with the rest.
I would also go with “over multiple years” rather than “more than a year apart” as some writers in the zone can churn out good work at a phenomenal rate.
@52 &53: That’s exactly the problem I run into in writing it up in a formal language proposal.
Set stories, like trilogies, are easy. GRRM’s ASoIaF, would be easy – when he finishes A Dream of Spring, so long as he hasn’t publicly decided that it’s going to take yet another book.
Bujold’s Vorkosigan and Butcher’s works are the harder sticking point. Where I guess the author would have to say “Okay, I think this is done now.” If they restart it a few years down the road, that’s their choice.
BTY, Bujold has said she’s done in Miles world. Which makes me sad, but I hope we get more Chalion from her. I like that world.
As for Brandon Sanderson, I think we should just take each Cosmere set as its own part. Because the Cosmere overarch has a very light touch in some of the works.
So the Stormlight Archives, he has said publicly is 2 sets of 5. Much like Eddings most famous works. So each set of 5 should be considered its own nomination set. Much like when he does the next set of Misborn books. The next set, is the next set. Not a true continuation of the first three.
Much like even in Pratchett’s Diskworld, you can find related sets. I’m guessing the authors and publishers would have to agree on what they want. Or the fans put in a call for the set to be recognized when they see a good stopping point.
There’s no way to address all the loopholes and possibilities. We can only try to address the major ones we see as of now.
@44- to add:
The Pern series (1967?)
The Dernyi series (1970)
The Swords series by Saberhagen (both of them) (1983)
The Fafhrd and Grey Mouser series (1939)
The Dark Tower series (1982)
The Cheysuli series (1984)
I read so many long series through the 70s and 80s and have followed some for decades!
And I think The Thieves World anthology series (1978) and others like that also could be included. It ran for about 20 books, with several threads continuing for the entire series.
GRRM and RJ corresponded regularly after RJ gave AGoT that cover quote and they did some joint appearances at conventions. They were friends (GRRM gave RJ a memorial on his Not-a-Blog). However, whilst RJ was a huge fan of ASoIaF, GRRM has not, to my knowledge, read WoT. The last I heard, he was waiting for it to be concluded and has many hundreds of other books to read first. His shout-outs to RJ were based on their friendship and some gentle fun-poking at the things fans say about the books (the female lead in The Sworn Sword tugging her braid and injuring herself is a third shout-out) more than WoT itself.
Certainly in Martin’s case: he was very well-known in genre circles and was a multiple Hugo/Nebula/World Fantasy/Bran Stoker Award winner by that point, and Wild Cards had been a pretty big seller. ASoIaF was also sold as a trilogy, before the size and scale of the series was clear, and it had a fierce bidding war erupt over it solely due to the advance manuscript that was handed around. WoT‘s influence may have been felt in the generic, “Big fantasy sells,” kind of way, but that’s true of other fantasy works as well.
Malazan may have had a bit more of an influence from the other direction: Bantam and Gollancz got into a bidding war over it as well, but Bantam won partially because of the money but also because they wanted a ten-book contract for ‘their’ WoT, which Erikson wasn’t really planning (or so I understand). He had to go off and restructure some ideas, and didn’t have time to rewrite Gardens of the Moon to include them all (hence the ‘GotMisms’ where the book feels different to the rest of the series).
This is certainly true :)
I think by the time of 17 years after EotW and 11 after AGoT, it’s too late to argue one way or the other.
Certainly The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, which started off as two trilogies but by 1990 were considered one six-book series. The same is often said of the first six Dragonlance books as well (two trilogies, but inextricably linked together). There’s also the Riftwar series, which after the stand-alone Magician evolved into a halfway house between stand-alone and serialised elements (Wild Cards as well, fittingly, although that was a somewhat different genre). There was also the underrated and half-forgotten Amtrak Wars, which was one single story published in six volumes, and Hugh Cook’s barking mad Chronicles of an Age of Darkness (ten volumes). ETA: I see you mentioned some of these later on: excellent!
Just GotM. Famously, Erikson got his deal, sat down to write what would become MoI, got halfway through and lost the whole thing in a hard disk failure. He was so annoyed he couldn’t start again, so wrote a completely different book – DG – instead, thus giving us the familiar Malazan structure of alternating continents completely by accident.
There was a Best Series Hugo in the 1960s, apparently created to honour LotR when it became huge (having been published in the late 1950s, it was ineligible for the regular awards). Worldcon attendees being contrarian, they voted for Foundation instead :) But that at least established the precedent of having one-off or periodic awards rather than awards that have to be voted on every single year.
It’s worth noting that Foundation won Best Series and then Foundation’s Edge won Best Novel when the series resumed 15-odd years later, so again that establishes a precedent of a series winning not ruling out later books and vice versa.
I think it would be hard to argue that for fantasy as a whole given the much larger sales, profile and fame of Harry Potter and Discworld. If you’re arguing for post-Tolkien epic fantasy specifically, then I’d probably agree.
All of these other examples of long series are missing the point; they have self-contained start and stop points. In some cases, every book. In the case of Pern, its a bit different. There are solo novels, and trilogies, and duologies, etc… But they are all separate STORIES. The Wheel of Time is most definitely NOT. It is like Lord of the Rings. It is one story. Not multiple self-contained stories with an overarching plot. Its like Mission: Earth. But those stories were all written in their entirety prior to publication. The WoT was unique for its time.
anthonypero@58:WoT is now defined to be a Novel and hence not part of any series discussion. The other examples are attempts at defining a series.
WertHead@66:I tried finding a copy of the 1966 Worldcon constitution to see how they defined best series but couldn’t find one. Anyone have a copy laying about?
Yes, I know. I’m responding to the posts regarding other long series that preceded the WoT, which are in response to a post about the WoT being unique and a genre-changer.
OK, lol, too many threads.
Yup ;)
@57, werthead: Thanks for the information about the 1960s. I will do some research and see how they worded things.
Makes me also wonder why it died. Guessing the politics behind the scenes.
But now seems to be a great time for a revival.
Braid Tug – I haven’t seen anywhere that she’s said she’s done with Miles. Source? In general, do you any info on what Bujold is working on since CVA? I haven’t seen anything other than her book of essays published last year and I’ve been looking.
I find it had to believe GRRM hasn’t read WoT. I think back 1-2 years ago to the Suvudu cage match between Rand and Jaime and GRRM wrote a hilarious piece of how Jaime possibly could win that showed pretty deep understanding of WoT characters. (Hint – Trial of 7 between WoT and all of GRRM’s characters – including several from his sci-fi stories.)
It would be good to know the background on the series. If you find the 1966 constitution Braid_Tug, do let us know.
In the current constitution, series are explicitly excluded:
I’m sure there was lively debate behind that at some point.
@64: She said it directly in a panel at last year’s WorldCon. It was in Texas, so I was able to make the trip, and visited all the panels she was a panelist.
She also talked about she was so busy, that she didn’t really have time or wasn’t inspired to write currently.
But felt Miles was complete. And that Chalion world was an incomplete pattern. But it was also not her best selling stuff.
@67. Noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But my other question remains – what the heck is she working on now. I check her blog and she’s chatting about her friend Pat Wrede’s blog, and translations of Vorkosigan books into other languages, etc., but nothing about any current writing project.
@58 Well OK, the Cheysuli series is, but her Sword Dancer series was one long story, 7 books in the same way WoT was. The Books of Lost Swords series was also one long quest covering 8 books. Each book focused on a sword, but it was all part of an over-arching story in which characters grew at each step.
The point is, publisher were more than willing to publish long series long before WoT came together. Universes with long interconnected stories such as those I and others listed made publishers realize that fans invest in long series. And that’s what made WoT possible.
@68, Robm: That’s what a fair number of us said too.
Well I rather wish Bujold and Pat Wrede would team up for a book or three. I love Wrede’s stuff even if it is more middle school.
At the same panel, Bujold said she had a hard time starting books, and Wrede had a hard time finishing them.
The idea that “influence on the field” should not be a consideration is just absurd!
“Influence on the field” is a major consideration in all serious discussions of art. That a painter or a sculptor or a writer’s work was influential to the artists who followed is one of the strongest testimonies of its worth.
Look at the nominees for the Retro awards. “Sword in the Stone,” for example, is chock full of ideas and passages that you see reflected in many many later works. Is the motion picture “Wizard of Oz” a great movie? Is becoming a part of the vocabulary worthy of note? Hell yes. “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore” is almost a universal reference.
After finishing “Lord of the Rings” the first time, I searched for years for a story that was so encompasing. It wasn’t until “Wheel of Time” that I found that story. Yes, yes. There are literally tons of wonderful books that came in the meantime, and I’ve read most of them.
Yes, “Wheel of Time” is a meaty story. It’s big, it’s huge, it’s satisfying. It has maps! I’ll take it any day over thin “treatments” like Dan Brown writes …or books based on video games.
I think the idea is that ‘influence in the field’ is something that is more fair to consider for something like a retro award or lifetime achievement award, since other novels that may be up this year just don’t have the ability to compete in terms of ‘influence in the field’, because they’ve only been around for a year.
But overall, I do agree that people can vote however they want, and I think ‘best’ is going to mean a different thing to everybody.
I’m going to take a different tack than most folks (don’t anyone die of shock).
In my analysis, there are three major reasons for people to dislike WoT. (There can be any number of minor reasons, so no quibbling, this is my analysis)
The commonly named reason can be reduced to the single word “Sprawl”. The scope, the number of named, distinguishable characters, the variety of plot threads, drive some folks away. Okay, fair enough, you didn’t have the sustainment of interest to stick with a story after it grew beyond a certain point. My personal response to this is to remind those who have bothered to read all of the volumes at least once, that an amazing number of those seemingly extraneous, valueless, “tacked-on” bits did indeed turn out to mean something of note as the conclusion approached. The story was never incoherent, and the ability of the author to weave those various threads together in such a scope was a previously unattempted.
The next notable reason for opposition to The Wheel of Time as worthy of consideration for a Hugo is the technical, that it is 14(15) books, not one, and should not have been nominated in the Best Novel category. Well, this has been settled by the committee, and argued quite adequately by Ms. Butler and others. Anyone who has read the entire saga knows for certain that this is one novel in many parts. The end is projected from the beginning, and though at varying speeds, all of the volumes move the plot inexorably toward that conclusion.
Finally, and most importantly, there is the opposition which is composed of all those judgements such as misogyny, misanthropy, and other personal, political, or social distaste for things that Jordan built into the story. To those, I have nothing of value to argue. The Wheel of Time is one of the most decent, human, introspective, and conscience-pricking stories ever written, if a person approaches it with their existing biases well in check. It was a major intention of the author to make people think about issues, and he gave us dozens to chew upon. He ground no axes; he gave us forges and grindstones. How an individual responded to those, speaks more about their sensitivity to and/or resistance to consider alternate viewpoints, than it ever could about the author’s sensibilities.
That the story became worth discussing for more than five years is literal proof of this. The story is worthy.
Amen!
And sometimes I think my criticisms are too harsh:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannarebolini/writers-throwing-shade
Frankly, and I say this as a WoT fan, I think only WoT obsessives can argue with a straight face that it deserves a ‘best novel’ nomination. The precedent is ridiculous. Yes, it was started with a end in mind and the books all built to that. You could say that about any number of series mentioned above, from Foundation to Malazan to Thomas Covenant. How is it right to put a 14-book series up against a single novel?
Doesn’t matter what rules fudging went on to justify the entry. Doesn’t matter the judges agreed. It’s a stupid decision, perhaps even a cynical one to drum up attention for the Awards.
By all means argue the case for a best series category. But arguing that WoT deserves a best novel makes fans look like a rather tragic bunch desperate for recognition.
As for quality, we could argue that until the moon turns blue and not convince each other. You can’t objectively judge art. I think WoT is good in many ways, great in some and poor in others. Overall I’d give it 7/10. It’s too repetitive and bloated, and while it has a lot of strong points (description, action, scale), it lacks the really top-draw characterisation, inventiveness and writing to be a classic.
As for WoT’s influence on fantasy, it is obviously a significant series – but I’d say it’s influence is relatively narrow, being restricted to epic fantasy. I don’t know a WoT reader that isn’t a big fantasy reader. It’s not transcended the genre and become mainstream pop culture, like LoTR or Discworld. My wife’s an example – massive reader, but not a hard-core fantasy fan. Loves Song of Ice and Fire and Harry Potter, no inclination to touch WoT.
As far as I can see, even in epic fantasy WoT’s impact has pretty much just been to allow the big to get bigger. In a genre already dominated by huge series (Eddings, Donaldson, etc), it opened the door for gigantic ones.
Correct me if I’m wrong as I’ve not read that much recent fantasy, but from what I see I don’t think the themes or style of WoT have had a wide impact on the genre.
The problem with anecdotal evidence is that its anecdotal; but for what its worth, here’s mine:
A lot of the people I know who have read WoT never read epic fantasy before starting the Eye of the World and became genre readers after. Many of these people I personally introduced to the series, of course.
It’s worth noting that Foundation won Best Series and then Foundation’s Edge won Best Novel when the series resumed 15-odd years later, so again that establishes a precedent of a series winning not ruling out later books and vice versa.
Vice versa is ruled out. In the current Hugo rules, a series is not allowed to be nominated if one book in it was nominated before. So, ASOIAF, for example, can’t be nominated as a series when (and if) it’s completed because A Storm of Swords (book3 ) was nominated back in 2000. I don’t like the way the rule is written nowadays, since it benefits series that had bad books in the middle instead of those that had good books. For example, if book 4 of WoT (The Shadow Rising, the best book of the series IMO) was nominated back in 1992, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion, since that would make WoT uneligible by the current rules.
Well, for starters, while I agree that The Shadow Rising is the most dramatic and impactful installment of the story, The Eye of the World remains the most engaging segment of the story, IMO.
I agree with your closing scenario, except to point out that The Shadow Rising would never have been nominated on its own, precisely because it cannot stand on its own. One must already know about the main characters, some sense of the One Power, the Aes Sedai, the various cultures of the main continent which had been visited to that point, etc. If you didn’t know about Baerlon, or Shadar Logoth, or Four Kings, the Blight, Portal Stones, Whitecloaks, etc., the contents of the fourth volume would be disjointed. More than any others epic series I’ve read, The Wheel of Time depends upon the interconnectedness of thousands of scraps across the ten thousand pages.
Perhaps the best example is Knife of Dreams, a marvelous work with tremendous plot lines and individual scenes (Egwene undermining the Tower through force of will; Mat patiently escaping Ebou Dar, finding the Band, and launching a multi-front war while Tuon looks on with a mix of admiration, love and horror; Perrin battling all of the disparate elements of his army, finding common ground with the Seanchan and launching a clever and nearly blood free takeover of a town protected by tens of thousands of soldiers and 400 channelers; Rand and his team escaping Semirhage’s trap at the cost of a hand and moving on to prepare for the Last Battle; Elayne battling enemies and the Black Ajah to finally take the Queenship of Andor; etc.) Almost too full of great stuff to count. But virtually none of it stands on its own. It is the culmination of 3-5 books worth of detailed plotting and set up. Who would care about Tuon’s realization that Mat is not a fool but actually a lion loose on the high plains if one hadn’t seen him patiently putting up with foolishness on all sides dating back two-and-a-half books to Winter’s Heart? .
Yeah, at the end (or in its, say, 2nd act) of a regular novel you’ll get a climax of 30-50-80 pages where the plot(s) come to resolution or new twists occur.
Knife of Dreams is one giant climax in one giant 10 000 page book. Whilst really great book, the change of pace actually felt pretty jarring the first time I read it, after the previous few books and the time waiting. But if read in one go with the others, it trully feels like the pay-off part of much larger story.
KOD is the reason I think readers who are pessimistic of RJ’s ability, had he lived, to finish the series within reasonable number of books and time are wrong. The guy never lost it, despite over-fluffing in some respects like some extra descriptions and scene or two…
For what it’s worth: I was just in the online catalog of the Denver Public Libary. Of the 12 available copies of The Eye of the World, 7 are currently checked out. Pretty good, I’d say.
I wholeheartedly agree with Leigh.
I have read the series several times and will read it again. I have recommended it to many friends.
Individually they are not my favourite book (some are close) but as a series it is and I believe that it should be honored for what it is, “A Breath Taking Series”.