Template:Short description {{#invoke:Other people|otherPeople}} Template:Use mdy dates Template:Infobox writer James Oliver Rigney Jr. (October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007), better known by his pen name Robert Jordan,<ref name="origin">"Robert Jordan" was the name of the protagonist in the 1940 Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, though this is not how the name was chosen according to a 1997 interview he did on the DragonCon SciFi Channel Chat.</ref> was an American author of epic fantasy. He is best known as the author of The Wheel of Time series, which comprises 14 books and a prequel novel. He is one of several writers to have written original Conan the Barbarian novels; his are considered by fans to be some of the best of the non-Robert E. Howard efforts.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Jordan also published historical fiction using the pseudonym Reagan O'Neal, a western as Jackson O'Reilly, and dance criticism as Chang Lung. Jordan claimed to have ghostwritten an "international thriller" that is still believed to have been written by someone else.<ref name="theoryland2005">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Early lifeEdit
Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina. He went to Clemson University after high school, but dropped out after one year and enlisted in the U.S. Army.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War as a helicopter gunner.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross with oak leaf cluster, the Bronze Star with "V" and oak leaf cluster, and two Vietnamese Gallantry Crosses with palm.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
After returning from Vietnam in 1970, Jordan studied physics at The Citadel. He graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree and began working for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer.<ref name="untitled" /> He began writing in 1977.
Personal lifeEdit
Robert Jordan was a history buff and enjoyed hunting, fishing, sailing, poker, chess, pool, and pipe-collecting. He described himself as a "High church" Episcopalian<ref name="untitled">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and received communion more than once a week.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Politically, he described himself as a "libertarian monarchist".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> He lived with his wife, Harriet McDougal, who works as a book editor (currently with Tor Books; she was also Jordan's editor) in a house built in 1797.<ref name="torbio">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He listed John D. MacDonald, Jane Austen, Louis L'Amour, Charles Dickens, Robert A. Heinlein, Mark Twain and Montaigne as his favorite authors.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Illness and deathEdit
On March 23, 2006, Jordan revealed that he had been diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis and that, with treatment, his median life expectancy was four years.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In a separate weblog post, he encouraged his fans not to worry about him and stated that he intended to have a long and creative life.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
He began chemotherapy at Mayo Clinic during early April 2006.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He participated in a study of the drug Revlimid, which had been approved recently for multiple myeloma but not yet tested for primary amyloidosis.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Jordan died on September 16, 2007.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> His funeral service was on September 19, 2007.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was cremated and his ashes buried in the churchyard of St. James Church in Goose Creek, outside Charleston, South Carolina.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Jordan's papers can be found in the special collections of the College of Charleston.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Selected worksEdit
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The Wheel of TimeEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Jordan published 11 books of 14 in the main sequence of the Wheel of Time series. Reviewers and fans of the earlier books noted a slowing of the pace of events in the last few installments written solely by Jordan owing to the expansion of the scale of the series as a whole.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> Because of his health problems, Jordan did not work at full force on the final installment A Memory of Light (later split into three volumes beginning with The Gathering Storm), but blog entries confirmed that he continued work on it until his death, and he shared all of the significant plot details with his family not long before he died.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He maintained that in doing so the book would get published even if "the worst actually happens".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> On December 7, 2007, Tor Books announced that Brandon Sanderson had been chosen to finish the Wheel of Time series. Harriet McDougal, Jordan's widow, chose him after reading Mistborn: The Final Empire.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Template:Book table
All paperback (PB) page totals given are for the most widely available mass-market paperback editions. The page count for the hardback (HB) editions does not include glossary or appendix page counts.
The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time is an encyclopedia for the series about the unnamed world where the plot takes place, which is often referred to by fans of the series as the World of the Wheel or less formally as Randland in reference to the main character. It is published in the United States by Tor Books and in the United Kingdom by Orbit Books. The bulk of the text was written by Teresa Patterson based on notes and information provided by Jordan, who also served as the overall editor on the project. While the information in the guide is broadly canonical, the book is deliberately written as an in-universe work with vague, biased, or even downright false (or guessed) information in places, as Patterson felt this would reflect a key theme of the series (the mutability of knowledge across time and distance).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Dead link</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> This ~300-page encyclopedia was published in 1997, when only half of the main series had been published. The book is commonly referenced as the "Big White Book (of Bad Art)" in reference to the printed version's substantially larger height and width compared to the books of the main series. This name is also in reference to the various artworks printed in the book's fourth section which is titled Some Narrative Paintings of Questionable Authenticity.
The Wheel of Time Companion (often referred to simply as "The Companion") is a more comprehensive encyclopedia published in 2015, more than two years after the completion of the main series. It was compiled by Harriet McDougal and Jordan's assistants Alan Romanczuk and Maria Simons using Jordan's notes. This ~800-page encyclopedia is more comprehensive than The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time and consists almost entirely of entries describing particular characters, locations, items, and concepts from the series. The Companion is not written as an in-universe work and is generally written from a more objective, authoritative perspective than the earlier encyclopedia. As a result, information from the Companion is generally considered more reliable than information from the Big White Book.
Conan the BarbarianEdit
{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} Jordan was one of several writers who have written Conan the Barbarian stories. When Tom Doherty obtained the rights, he needed a novel very quickly, so Jordan's wife Harriet McDougal recommended him because she knew he had written his first novel, Warriors of the Altaii, in thirteen days.
So he thought I could write something fast, and he was right, and I liked it. It was fun writing something completely over the top, full of purple prose, and in a weak moment I agreed to do five more and the novelization of the second Conan movie. I've decided that those things were very good discipline for me. I had to work with a character and a world that had already been created and yet find a way to say something new about the character and the world. That was a very good exercise.<ref name="theoryland2003">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation
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- Conan the Invincible (1982)
- Conan the Defender (1982)
- Conan the Unconquered (1983)
- Conan the Triumphant (1983)
- Conan the Magnificent (1984)
- Conan the Destroyer (1984) (adaptation of the movie of the same title)
- Conan the Victorious (1984)
They were packed into two separate volumes par Conan the Destroyer:
- The Conan Chronicles
- The Further Chronicles of Conan (The Conan Chronicles II in the UK, different contents)
Jordan also compiled a well-known Conan Chronology.