Argent

Haven't read anything in a few weeks, but now I plan to make my way through this list of the best fantasy books of 2014. The ones I've read, I agree with, so the rest might fit my taste just as well.

Could be in the same boat as Chicago - TBD.

You just brought the Christmas spirit hard. I can wait until March.

On a side note, I now want him to publish a book called Unfinished Secret.

Shush. I was tricking people into hype.

Brandon just published an essay on io9 about Why Superhero Books are so Hard to Get. It has some tour dates at the end. All of them say "Not Chicago, IL"

Can we talk about how there are close to thirty books Brandon has worked on, on some scale, in 2014?

Using the Cognitive Realm should make finding other inhabited worlds fairly easy, if not trivial. It may be possible to hop into Shadesmar (or the local version of it), find another massive area of cognitive aspects, pop in there, figure out where in the Cosmere it is located, go back, and fire up the rockets.

The question in the first post was from the recent SLCC transcript, yes.

I think I said something similar in the thread we used to discuss the released Jasnah chapter a while back, but Perpendicularity made me think of an object, or location, or entity perpendicular (in the metaphysical, cognitive, or spiritual sense of the word) to the realm it sits in. So if the Three Realms are (using a massive oversimplification) layered on top of each other - I've always imagined the spiritual one on the "bottom", with the cognitive "above" it, and the physical "above" that - then a Perpendicularity would be something perpendicular and (potentially) intersecting to all three, much like a traffic sign is perpendicular to the ground underneath it. Or, better yet, like an elevator shaft is perpendicular to the floors it passes through. I am confident there is a way to extend this metaphor to apply to interplanetary travel, with Shardworlds (and their aspects in all the realms) stacked "on top" of each other in the fourth dimension, and the Perpendicularity intersecting them all, it being a 5D object. Just think in five dimensions, guys (well, six if you add time), it's easy

Excellent shows: Sherlock An amazing adaptation of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in modern day London. If you've read Arthur Conan Doyle, you'll recognize some of the characters and plot points, but not all - the show is not a translation, it's an adaptation. It's only three seasons, three episodes each, about 90 minutes per episode (so very unusual format), with a fourth season coming sometime in the future, but it's absolutely the first thing you should watch. Then, if you are suffering from the common Sherlock withdrawal, you could try watching Elementary; I haven't seen it myself, but I hear it's another solid (though not quite as solid) adaptation of Holmes' cases. Fringe If you want to watch something that's over instead, Fringe is one of my all-time favorites. It's 5 seasons, and they all tie into one big plot in the end (though some episodes / seasons feel out of place until you've seen the entire show). It's a classic, and one with a fairly few shaky moments. Good shows: Arrow & The Flash While (mostly) independent shows, I am putting them together because they are very similar in quality and themes. Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and (soon) Marvel's Agent Carter If you like Marvel's movies, Agents of Shield should be a fun watch - seeing a few familiar faces, hearing some familiar names, things like that. If you didn't like the movies... well, this is still a solid show, Marvel doesn't try to shove its mythos down your throat, it's mostly trivia Gotham I mostly watch this for all the namedrops - seeing a ton of Batman characters before they become who they became (the Poison Ivy, for example, is a creepy kid that lives in a house that's more vegetation than house). It's fun if you don't poke at its plot (and some characters) too hard. Avatar: The Last Airbender & Avatar: The Legend of Korra TLA is much more geared towards kids (though I enjoyed much of it), but TLoK definitely dances around the YA border. The show tackles some really annoying problems with TV shows these days, and it tackles them well (while not explicit about it, Avatar is really good at painting a world where equality is a thing). I plan to buy copies of the entire show, abduct kids, and force them to watch it so they become good people when they grown up. Alright shows: Grimm I've always liked the idea of taking a classical story (the Grimm Fairy Tales in this case) and adding a twist to it - putting all of the Grimm monsters in a modern setting, for example. It's not quite good enough to rank to escape this list and climb to the one above, but it doesn't need much The Librarians The first episode of this struck me as a little Whovian in its tone, so you might like it more than I do (I have a number of beefs with Doctor Who...). It's a very light, casual kind of show - it doesn't try to be serious very much, and there is certain charm in that. I really want to recommend Orphan Black, because it's an amazingly brilliant show, but it's not quite clean enough for the entire family. There is some bad language and the occasional butt and (mostly implicit) sex scene.

Some more from Barnes & Noble: Jan 5: West Jordan Jan 17: El Cerrito Jan 24: Newnan I must confess, I am mildly worried by Chicago's absence here. It's possible that B&N just won't be Brandon's host for Firefight in Chicago (a hypothesis supported by the low number of B&N events total), or that those events are just not in yet... but I am going to be one sad chull if I don't get my annual dose of Brandon in January.

I loved many of the ideas of the series (so far), but much of the execution fell short, in my opinion. The prose was neither transparent, nor beautiful - it was a thing that got in the way. Another extremely annoying thing is that you can pretty much tell who is a main character by figuring out who had been raped in the past. All in all, I will probably finish the series, but I wouldn't get too excited over them.

The SLCC transcript partially confirms your idea

I was thinking Bigger Bad.

That would be intracosmere travel, by the way. We are talking about travel within the same cosmere (read: galaxy), not between multiple ones. Grammar nationalism aside, I fully expect big crossovers down the line. The sci-fi Mistborn trilogy (and maybe prequel / sequel short stories a la Wax & Wayne) pretty much has to show us other Shardworlds, and we might even have a WoB somewhere about it touching worlds we have seen before. Depending on Brandon's plans about the "big cosmere epic," we might see a story about heroes from multiple Shardwords and / or Shards fighting against some Big Bad. It's a little cliched, but I think Brandon can pull it off if he wanted to.

Honestly, this is a sign of the Sanderbots growing out of control. He's given them too much power, too much freedom to write.

This is all not so much about the "brick thinking it's a part of a wall" - the cognitive realm is definitely influenced by the physical, by how humans perceive things, so a big of what makes a brick a "part of a wall" is that we, the people (hurr hurr), look at the whole thing and go "this is a wall" instead of "this is a collection of bricks that forms a wall". You can't extrapolate from walls to a room because the room is a far more complex construct and while we often overlook the individuality (if you will) of each brick, I at least can't look at a wall and not see it as a single entity. Not to mention that rooms usually have other things that comprise them, not just walls - and that different brick walls are much more similar than different rooms. This, if you are curious, actually touches on the idea of "increasing complexity" - more complex a system is (generally), the more advanced it is. I am waving my hands a bit here, but if you take any system (a collection of things), the more constituent elements it has, the higher its potential to be more complex (e.g. a blob of neurons is less complex than a fully functional brain, because - in part - of the connections missing from the blob; the blob needs to increase in complexity to reach brain-level). And, naturally, a more complex system would have a more sophisticated cognitive aspect, and so it would be more difficult to Forge. It's also probably why there is no such thing as atomspren or electronspren on Roshar - it's too basic of an element.

Because this wasn't proof enough? Also, it's Sanderbots.

I've never heard it being referred to as a trilogy (unless you count The Emperor's Soul). The State of Sanderson 2013, for example, says "Elantris sequel"

So Brandon pretty much accidentally wrote a book. He keeps up, he is going to get to the point where people will invite him to participate in anthologies and he is just going to literally sneeze a few thousand words in there.

Hmm. Going to guess... some kind of reference thing? I wish for a Cosmere Encyclopedia, but that's too big and too soon - so maybe some kind of smaller resource? With sciency magic? That's along the lines of "of course you did that"

Not really - Newan got a RAFO, zas678 got an outright "no".

And stand by insisting you change or delete your post. Forums are organized in threads, topics, that should follow a single main idea. This one's won't be any surprise to you - it's about mapping the cosmere. Your reply is completely and entirely off-topic and therefore should not belong in this thread. And neither should my previous reply to you, for that matter. @Geekrituque, this is shaping up pretty nicely. I should point out, however, that Roshar (the continent) is located entirely in the southern hemisphere of its planet - which is a bummer, because I don't want you to have to redo all that coloring =\ The Final Empire too is in a weird spot - close to the north pole of Scadrial, I believe. That probably doesn't affect your map as much though.

There is absolutely no reason to bring this kind of comment in this thread.