Are you afraid of Sanderson been unable to finish Cosmere?

[equinox]

10 hours ago, ZenBossanova said:

I can't see the bar on my phone at all. I have to use my laptop if I want to see it. 

On my phone, I can't see the drop-down button, but it is right there on the top. A click on Spensa's forehead does the trick.

(Though it was just a bug on my phone specifically. Otherwise I would have explained it right away.) 

[Philomath]

On 1/13/2019 at 2:47 PM, galendo said:

I'm not sure that worry is the right term, but I do take it into account.  The primary way I do so is by never recommending the Stormlight Archive to people Brandon's age or older, even if it would be right up their alley.  The reason is that if Brandon has a 70% chance of living to finish the series, and the person Brandon's age has a similar 70% chance of living that long, then the overall probability that a person Brandon's age or older is able to finish the series is less than 50%.  I can't in good conscience recommend a series with under a 50% chance of completion.

But think of all the good stuff they are missing out on. I think Dalinar’s arc in OB alone makes this series worth it regardless of the ending. Not to mention all of the other fantastic parts. So while there may be frustration in wondering if you’ll live to see the end, there will also be so much joy in the journey for having started. Life before Death after all. 

[equinox]

If you want to make sure that you can read the finale of a book series, you would have to wait until the last book is published before you start reading. In this case, many book series - especially from young, less known authors - would not be finished as publishers won't bring the second book to the shelves if the first didn't sell. After what happened to certain other series, I can fully understand that people hesitate to start an unfinished series. But I trust Brandon Sanderson that he doesn't just abandon his fans. Also, SA is a 2x5 books series. I expect some closure in book 5, which is not decades away. And most importantly: as @Philomath already said, the single volumes contain many interesting story archs that can stand on their own. Journey before destination indeed.

[galendo]

11 hours ago, Philomath said:

But think of all the good stuff they are missing out on. I think Dalinar’s arc in OB alone makes this series worth it regardless of the ending. Not to mention all of the other fantastic parts. So while there may be frustration in wondering if you’ll live to see the end, there will also be so much joy in the journey for having started. Life before Death after all. 

Maybe I'm projecting too much of my own likes and dislikes onto others, but for me the ending of a book/series is generally the most important part.  I end up liking books I thought were quite poor while reading that pulled off a solid ending and disliking books that are page-turners but whose endings peter out.  I can't ever recall having really liked a series that lacked an ending due to author disinterest or inability (though to be fair the sample size here is something like four or five).  The Stormlight Archive is good, but none of the books really stand on their own.  They aren't meant to.

9 hours ago, equinox said:

If you want to make sure that you can read the finale of a book series, you would have to wait until the last book is published before you start reading. In this case, many book series - especially from young, less known authors - would not be finished as publishers won't bring the second book to the shelves if the first didn't sell.

This is what I normally do, given my druthers.  I wouldn't have started The Stormlight Archive if I hadn't seen books one and two at the library and thought, "Didn't this first come out upwards of a decade ago?  I remember it sounded interesting at the time.  I'll bet it's finished now.  Let's give it a shot."  At the time I had no idea that it would be a ten-book series and that those two books were the only ones released.  Part of me still wishes I'd known better.

The idea that someone has to be an early adopter is only true if an author's first work isn't a series of unbounded length.  For instance, Brandon's first published novel was Elantris, which was a stand-alone.  His second was Mistborn, which was also a stand-alone (the fact that it's also the first in a trilogy doesn't effect its nature as a stand-alone novel).  And just to be clear, I don't have a firm dislike for starting incomplete series.  It's not my preferred method, but I certainly do it with some frequency.  But there's a big difference between a series that isn't completed and one that isn't likely to be completed.  Sure, you never know for sure.  Maybe your fresh young author gets hit by a truck tomorrow, leaving his trilogy unfinished.  That risk, however, is small.

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I expect some closure in book 5, which is not decades away.

If there's enough closure in book 5, that may change my recommendation philosophy, but we'll have to wait and see.  It's hard for me to imagine we'll get true closure given that there's only two books to go and books 4 and 5 seem to be pretty closely entwined (not to mention five books to go).  But we'll see.

[Embrisk]

All you need is one desk, one pen, one chain and one Sanderson. That should solve all your worries.

[ZenBossanova]

8 hours ago, galendo said:

Maybe I'm projecting too much of my own likes and dislikes onto others, but for me the ending of a book/series is generally the most important part.

I can't speak for anyone else, but I started The Wheel of Time after it finished. It was too much. Reading, digesting and discussing Stormlight, I get far, far more out of it. I wish I had started Wot years before. 

[Winds Alight]

I don't know how I'd feel as an author when people were chatting about "but what if they die before they can finish the series". A bit uncomfortable maybe?

I'm not really worried about Stormlight and the Cosmere in general. Sanderson is fairly young and throwing books at us faster than many of us can read them. He got this.
I have several series (books, movies, manga) that I'm following and that aren't finished, and if I were to worry about every single author, actor or mangaka I'd never start anything new at all and couldn't enjoy any story.

I do get cautious if I had bad experiences with an author before, and I'm not going to touch another A Song of Ice and Fire book unless GRRM actually sits down and writes the rest of the series.

[CrazyRioter]

I think it's an understandable thing to think about, given that many of us (including me) are here because Robert Jordan died before he could finish the Wheel of Time series.

[Wander89]

It's a common thing to think, what with Rothfuss and Martin doing what they are doing, but I feel that Sanderson has this all planned out to an extent. He always talks about basic planning and iterations and I'm sure that he has plans in place should the inevitable happen.

 

I'm also sure that he might not want to do this for the remainder of his career but at the current rate he is pushing out both Cosmere and Non-Cosmere stories, I'm more afraid of a burn out than not finishing.

 

In Brandon We Trust.

[+Mistbreaker]

On 1/14/2019 at 5:38 PM, ZenBossanova said:

I think he would be wise to collaborate more in his writing. Imagine if he did the outlining for a book (for instance, Mistborn Era III) and co-wrote with someone else. He could cover a lot more ground this way. This might be similar to how White Sand or Death Without Pizza is being done.

Didn't he also said he was teaming up with one of his old students to finish the Alcatraz series?

[Ammanas]

5 hours ago, Mistbreaker said:

Didn't he also said he was teaming up with one of his old students to finish the Alcatraz series?

I think you are thinking about Dan Wells and him trying to "fix" the Apocalypse Guard series. I'm unaware of any collaboration with Alcatraz.

[Steeldancer]

6 hours ago, Ammanas said:

I think you are thinking about Dan Wells and him trying to "fix" the Apocalypse Guard series. I'm unaware of any collaboration with Alcatraz.

He is teaming up with an old student to finish Alcatraz, I met her this semester when she subbed for Brandon in his creative writing class. I can’t remember her name off the top of my head, though, but he’s working with her to get Bastilles voice right. 

[Scion of the Mists]

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Questioner [PENDING REVIEW]

I was wondering about how Alcatraz 6 is coming along?

Brandon Sanderson [PENDING REVIEW]

Its coming along really well. It's almost done. I've written my half, Bastille hasn't finished her half yet. Otherwise known as Janci -- A friend of mine that I'm co-writing it with so that I can blend the voice and make it sound a little more distinctive. It was sounding too much like Alcatraz, so I wrote a big chunk of it, and then I asked her to write a big chunk of it, and she is smoothing the voice together. I think she is near the last chapter of it, of the chunk she had been writing. It's going to be really cool. The ending that I have, it's really zany and it's really crazy, but it is great.

FanX Spring 2019 (April 19, 2019)

 

[Lightblood]

I think that he will be able to finish them if he stops making other books. Skyward is a great book, but if he continues on these tangents then cosmere will never get finished.