Werthead's WorldCon Wheel of Time Panel Report (Wheel of Time Companion Information!)

[GreyPilgrim]

So the Werthead made a report on the WoT-centric panel he moderated at WorldCon. I am not officially really excited for the Wheel of Time Companion book. 350,000 words!?!?!?!?!?!? Heck yes! (Don't read the report if you haven't finished the series.)

[WeiryWriter]

It is definitely nice to get a tentative release date for this.  I've been meaning to do a complete series reread now that all the books are out so I might hold off until closer to the release.  (Of course I did recently pick up New Spring, which I haven't read yet and if I start that I'll want to do the entire series, and then there's River of Souls... Wow there's a lot of WoT stuff I haven't read...)

 

I am somewhat excited that Red Eagle sold the movie rights, gets us that much closer to a visual adaptation since they never really did anything.

[GreyPilgrim]

Honestly, my reaction to the whole thing was

[kaladamSB]

I will be buying this. I already have the series so I might as well.

[Topomouse]

Honestly, my reaction to the whole thing was

My thought exactly.

[GreyPilgrim]

My thought exactly.

Alas, we shall have to wait another year and 3 months.

[Relytdragon]

can i read the report if i'm on the last book?

[Argent]

Here's the safe portion:

 

• The Wheel of Time Encyclopedia is dead! Long live The Wheel of Time Companion as it will now officially be called.
• The book will be 350,000 words long (comparable to several of the novels in the series; the longest, The Shadow Rising, is 389,000 words).
• The book will feature a lot of new artwork, arranged by Irene Gallo at Tor.
• Publication date likely to be November 2015.
• The book will feature all of the already-published maps and also some new ones, including one of Thakan'dar.
• The book will have a large vocabulary of the Old Tongue, with a minimum of 1,000 words.
• The book will feature character profiles and sketches for almost every character in the series. Even Bela has her own entry.
• The book will be written from a post-AMoL POV. It will have spoilers for the entire series.

 

In addition to info on the world book, Harriet revealed some more details generally about the series:

 

• The series is finished and done. Tor offered a lot of money and tried to persuade Harriet into doing more, but Harriet put her foot down and said no. The Wheel of Time ends with A Memory of Light and the companion volume.
• There were several unfulfilled contracts when Robert Jordan passed away, including for the Seanchan trilogy. Apparently the money involved was massive, worth many times the value of Harriet's house. Tor worked with the estate to re-write the contracts to substitute the companion book instead.
• Robert Jordan wrote one line about the planned Seanchan trilogy: Mat Cauthon playing dice in a grubby alleyway in Ebou Dar (not verbatim). That was it.
• Harriet named about 75% of the chapters in the series.
• Jordan tried to protect Maria from spoilers in the work he had her do for him. She eventually persuaded him she could handle them. Almost the first thing he then gave her was Verin's full backstory. This was somewhere around the time Path of Daggers came out.
• The oddest research request was Jordan asking how babies feel when they are born. This was eventually used in the bonding scene in Winter's Heart.
• The movie/TV rights situation is beginning to become clearer. Red Eagle sold the film rights on to Universal and it now looks like the rights could return to the Jordan Estate at some point. There is apparently interest from other companies in the rights given the success of other fantasy projects on TV and in film at the moment.

And a small bit that will spoil the Biggest Question - does Bela survive A Memory of Light?

• Harriet vocally re-enacted Bela's death-whinny from AMoL.
• The panel spent an intense five minutes arguing about Bela's death. When I tried to suggest that we talk about the human characters who died, no-one was really interested. It was all about the horse.