James Oliver Rigney, Jr., aka Robert Jordan, has died..

I’ll admit, I was never really a fan of his work. I can’t speak to its quality, because the first book simply never grabbed me. I know that a lot of people (including many of my friends) enjoyed his work immensely. I feel a sense of attenuated loss, a kind of echo. Despite not being affected by the man, or the stories, in any measurable way, I feel this strange sorrow. I fear it isn’t an altogether flattering empathy with humanity, or anything of the sort. My knowledge of the man and his work is purely academic, but I feel a certain amount of respect for him, simply because he affected the number of people that he did.

Every post I’ve seen by a fan has had this furtive undercurrent of “what will happen to the Wheel of Time?” Each of them feels that it is inappropriate to mourn the loss of the writer in this, the loss of the man. But I think in large part, this is the best tribute to the man. He spent a large proportion of his life creating the Wheel of Time, and though he did not finish it, that it has affected his readers enough that they are (in no small measure) mourning the loss of the word, the story… It is a tribute to the work. I am, a bit selfishly, glad that I never did get into it, because I don’t have to suffer this loss as keenly. However, it is also a tribute to Jordan’s fanbase that the “what will happen” mentality is being treated as inappropriate. Despite their love of the words, each and every one is entirely aware that a man was also lost.

Farewell, Mr. Rigney.