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Hidden Things in Map of Roshar?


RShara

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When did we get confirmation that the moons are artificial?

 

Also I just figured that it's a cool shape that Brandon thought would make for a fun world map, so he used it and thought it'd be a neat Easter Egg for mathematicians.

 

Peter said it here:

I expect the moons were put in their current orbits artificially, but by whom or what I do not know. On astronomical terms, these are not stable orbits, but astronomical terms means millions of years. A few thousand or even a few hundred thousand years are no problem.

 

By the way, I minored in astronomy while at the university, for expressly science fictional purposes.

 

Not quite confirmed, but the next best thing.

Edited by Moogle
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Oh. What sort of math does one perform to get a julia set?

 

I guess at this point I'm just being lazy and not asking a mathematician in real life....

It involves iterating a complex function and seeing how quickly it goes away from zero. The Julia set for a function is the border between the ones which "escape" and those which don't. The specific image which Roshar represents is actually a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional cross-section of a four-dimensional Julia set. It probably has no in-world significance.

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I'd be surprised if it had no in-world significance. Brandon doesn't tend to do things like that just because. Apparently he specifically told the artist to draw the map based on it.

 

I don't think the answer is important in a plot-centric sense, but it does hint at interesting things regarding the creation of Roshar.

Edited by Moogle
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I'd be surprised if it had no in-world significance. Brandon doesn't tend to do things like that just because. Apparently he specifically told the artist to draw the map based on it.

 

I don't think the answer is important in a plot-centric sense, but it does hint at interesting things regarding the creation of Roshar.

I think he just thought it looked cool. It's far too contrived to have any real-world reason, especially as it's directly from an animation on Wikipedia. It's too arbitrary (a 2D image of a 3d cross-section of a 4d set) to have simple meaning, and it's not arbitrary enough to have subtler meaning. If it was simply a two-dimensional Julia set, or if it was a cross section of a three-dimensional Julia set, or even if the animation wasn't on Wikipedia, I might believe that it has some sort of meaning. But it's arbitrary in all the wrong ways.

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  • 3 months later...

 

A handful whisk us away into believable worlds populated with characters we care about, and if they manage to sustain the pace through to completion they are lauded as masters in their field. However, atop them stands one man, waving a Shardpen and pushing the boundaries of storytelling into dimensions we didn't even know were there.

Emphasis mine.

 

As proof of that, even this tidbit of a beautiful dedication to Brandon has part of a quote from Hoid. 

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  • 1 month later...

 

 

 

 The most impressive thing is Sanderson's creations are inhumanly brilliant. I don't even have the words to express exactly what it is that impresses me. He puts so much thought and effort into his work it's amazing. He threads together his stories like a master weaver, so that here we are months and years later finding new treasures with every new warp or weft we investigate. Then we find that the tapestry of each book is but a smaller part of something larger and our minds get blown anew. His dedication to the social aspects of his job, the interactions with fans seem to give him genuine pleasure. The way he adapts to the levels of his readership from Alcatraz through to the Stormlight Archive. The moments of realization you get when everything starts to fall into place and your mind races backwards and ahead at the same time trying to put everything together, so each book culminates in a race between your eyes and your brain that doesn't even end after the pages run out, the first lines of tWoA "I write these words in steel..." you know he writes with a cheeky grin on his face every time he drops a clue surreptitiously into an innocuous paragraph ("is it the heart of a beetle?"). The speed at which he does all this, releasing books ceaselessly all the while looking at adaptations into other media without compromising on quality while Rothfuss, Martin and Brett plod along with a book every few years (if we're lucky) is astounding. I want to talk about the characters like Jasnah, Marsh, Rashek, Kaladin but where to even begin, their depth, growth and realism is staggering. 

 

I don't like to bad mouth other authors but the truth is that readers have evolved, we're much harder to please than we used to be and many writers struggle to even escape the stagnated Hero's Journey or Monomyth. Many create original and entertaining stories which can entertain as long as you don't ask too many questions. A handful whisk us away into believable worlds populated with characters we care about, and if they manage to sustain the pace through to completion they are lauded as masters in their field. However, atop them stands one man, waving a Shardpen and pushing the boundaries of storytelling into dimensions we didn't even know were there.

 

Seriously I've been at this post almost 2 hours and i'm just struggling to convey all the awesomeness into words, if someone with more eloquence than I would care to explain what so special about Brandon I'd love to read what I really mean, if you know what I mean.

 

I would upvote this a thousand times if I could.

 

Props to you, Maffu17. You're awesome.

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