The Wheel of Time, briefly
The Wheel of Time began in 1990 with The Eye of the World, written by Robert Jordan — the pen name of James Oliver Rigney Jr., a South Carolina native, Citadel-trained physicist, and two-tour Vietnam veteran. What Jordan pitched as a trilogy grew into one of the most ambitious epic fantasies ever published: fourteen volumes plus a prequel, following Rand al'Thor and his companions from the Two Rivers into a war spanning continents, ages, and the fabric of reality itself.
Jordan spent seventeen years building a world of Aes Sedai, the One Power, and a Wheel that turns Ages the way a loom turns thread — all building toward a prophesied Last Battle against the Dark One. In 2006 he was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder, cardiac amyloidosis. He kept writing and dictating notes for what he intended as the series' final volume, but died in September 2007 with the book unfinished.
His wife and longtime editor, Harriet McDougal, chose fantasy author Brandon Sanderson — then best known for Mistborn — to complete the series from Jordan's notes, outlines, and dictated scenes, after reading a eulogy Sanderson had written for Jordan. What was planned as one final book became three: The Gathering Storm (2009), Towers of Midnight (2010), and A Memory of Light (2013), closing the fourteen-book series six years after Jordan's death.
In 2021, Amazon Prime Video began adapting the series for television, with Rafe Judkins as showrunner — introducing Jordan's world to a new generation of fans, and giving this whole corner of the internet (including this site) something to keep arguing about.