Canon, almost canon, non-canon, and cannons

[szilard]

Canon: The Wheel of Time®

the main storyline including

The Eye of the World
The Great Hunt
The Dragon Reborn
The Shadow Rising
The Fires of Heaven
Lord of Chaos
A Crown of Swords
The Path of Daggers
Winter's Heart
Crossroads of Twilight
Knife of Dreams

New Spring: The Novel is still canon, but if there is any contentious issue, then Book 1-11 > NS.

Almost canon:

I am an unequivocal supporter of the view that the text must speak for itself. Nonetheless, we are lucky, because we have guiding marks/stars. RJ's blog, interviews with him, notes etc. While these things are very important, life proved that fans often can come up with 'better', 'more believable' explanations than the Creator himself.

Not to mention the reception theory...

Non-canon:

The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time
Estate-authorized fanfiction (books by sanderson)

Cannons: RAFO
 

[Sabio]

I would say the BWB is almost cannon since some is accurate, some is inaccurate by intention, some is vague and some mistakes that were an accident. Some of the mistakes were intentional as the beginning of the book says the information is from manuscripts, fragments of history etc... So it was meant to be as a historian put it together but some of the sources they used were wrong.

 

So why is nothing BS did canon?

 

For instance if I remember right the section that described the forsaken/dreadlords, RJ said was wrong and it was a mistake that slipped through on accident.

[szilard]

Iirc, RJ denied BWB. I hope that I will find the exact quote somewhere.

 

So why is nothing BS did canon?

 

Because he's not the Creator.

 

So many errors plagues his works (not to mention minuscule things like http://www.theoryland.com/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=209049&postcount=85), so many controversial stuffs, that we cannot accept any work of him.

 

Characters, societies, armies etc do not act as in previous books, and there were so many holes in RJ's notes (who lives, who dies, who does what), that sanderson's writings cannot be accepted as canon.

 

(I like fan theories like http://www.theoryland.com/theories.php?func=5&rec=131&theo=2372 but, in the end, they remains fan theories. Speculations.)

[Vambram]

Some readers and fans of the WOT can not accept the words written by Sanderson as the final 3 books of the WOT. However, for me,((and probably the vast majority of fans of the WOT series) when RJ's wife and also editor of every novel that Jordan himself wrote not only accepted, and was very influential in the writing of those books, and also EDITED TGS, ToM, and AMOL; then those books very, very, very, very, clearly become canon in the WOT series, instead of being negatively described as fan fiction.

[wotfan4472]

I agree. BS books are canon. Plus, I enjoy the reads, and they seem to fit together, for me at least. Knife of Dreams feels like a bridge to those books.

[wheeloftimetv]

 instead of being negatively described as fan fiction.

 It's not a negative to state a fact. It's fan fiction because

1. Jordan did not write it(even the small parts he did were rewritten/altered to match Sanderson's style more). 
2. Sanderson is a self confessed fan boy of the series.
3. Sanderson made stuff up to fill in gaps left in the notes.

Just because Harriett was the editor does not negate the above facts. So i'm with Szilard on them not being canon.

 

It's a negative when you call the last three books sloppily written rush jobs riddled with errors and bad characterization.   

[Sabio]

Since his wife worked and he did have notes, I think what BS did has to be cannon.  Since he did have help from people who worked with RJ.  Now River of Souls isn't canon.

 

Iirc, RJ denied BWB. I hope that I will find the exact quote somewhere.

 

So why is nothing BS did canon?

 

Because he's not the Creator.

 

So many errors plagues his works (not to mention minuscule things like http://www.theoryland.com/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=209049&postcount=85), so many controversial stuffs, that we cannot accept any work of him.

 

Characters, societies, armies etc do not act as in previous books, and there were so many holes in RJ's notes (who lives, who dies, who does what), that sanderson's writings cannot be accepted as canon.

 

(I like fan theories like http://www.theoryland.com/theories.php?func=5&rec=131&theo=2372 but, in the end, they remains fan theories. Speculations.)

I know RJ said there were errors in the BWB that weren't intentional and some mistakes in there that were.  So that's why to me, the BWB would fall in almost canon.

[wheeloftimetv]

You can't have it both ways. Either everything Sanderson wrote and released under the Jordan Sanderson name is canon or none of it is. All of it was approved for release and edited by Harriet and it is no different to any of the other stuff Sanderson made up and included in his 3 books.

[Vambram]

All who believe the last 3 books published by Tor in the WOT series .. TGS, ToM, and AMOL.... can certainly believe if they want to that those books are fan fiction. But those who do so, are ignoring real facts and also ignoring 3 very enjoyable books. Would those books have been better if James Oliver Rigney had been able to write all of those books himself??? Of course, without any doubt in my mind, the answer to that what if question is extremely clearly a YES. Are those books written by Sanderson perfect and without significant errors? No, they are not. However, I am certain that those books are indeed Canon. I have absolutely ZERO doubts about that.

[szilard]

On BWB: we have not found the quote yet, maybe I just misremembered it (but I swear to Rand that there was a QA regarding that question)

 

Are you going to put out an updated Guide? The old one's becoming increasingly out of date.
Robert Jordan: Well, probably not until the series finished. But I do think it would be a great thing to do then. I have some notes for it.

 

—The Strike At Shayol Ghul was written from the perspective of a scholar trying to attract funding for a more complete version (i.e., grant money) and was his first piece of short fiction. /(Paraphrased)/

 

She (Teresa Patterson) explained that the Guide was written with deliberate inaccuracies. One of the reoccurring themes of the series is that people don’t necessarily know all they think they do, but still have to make decisions based on what they know. They decided the book would be written from the point of view of a historian who had good, but not necessarily great information on a variety of subjects. So Jordan withheld information from her while she was writing the book, or he would tell her things, but then ask that she not include it.

It looks like that Sabio was right, but I do not like two things: co-authorship, the deliberate inaccuracies.

 

And a 'funny' tidbit:

 

 

a question about the artwork in the guide.

 

Robert Jordan:

Well, the difficulty with the pictures was something that I did not discover until far too late, the artist who was hired to do the pictures... see, this was done by a packager. Someone who came to me, and done guides before, and came to me and said, "I would like to do this, and here is one I did for Marion Zimmer Bradley, and here's the one I did for Bob Silverberg, and here's the one I did for Jack Vance, and would you, you know..."

I said alright, this looks good, and I called up these people and they said that things went well, but my publisher...the artist was hired to do a certain number of black and white drawings. And as soon as this guy got the package together he went to my publisher, my ... who said yeah, I'd like to publish this. And my publisher said, "No, I'd like to have color drawings, not black and white, and you want to do x number of drawings, but I would like five times as many illustrations."

And that was all good, except that the artist contract...what I did not know was that the artist contract called for a flat fee. And the man who put the package together did not increase the amount of money that he was going to pay the artist. The artist was then asked to do five times as many drawings, in color, instead of in black and white for the same amount of money. His enthusiasm dwindled. [laughter] Now if I had known about this, I would have given the artist some money out of my own pocket, to get better pictures. I couldn't understand why the man who had sat in my study, and drawn such wonderful sketches just from my off-the-cuff descriptions, was suddenly making drawings that seemed very...not very good. But, that was the reason.

 

 

 

 

[Sabio]

You can't have it both ways. Either everything Sanderson wrote and released under the Jordan Sanderson name is canon or none of it is. All of it was approved for release and edited by Harriet and it is no different to any of the other stuff Sanderson made up and included in his 3 books.

 

As far as  I know, the River of Souls was all BS.  I might be wrong but it sounded to me that this didn't come from notes, or Harriet etc.  So it's not canon if true.  The other stuff was part RJ, notes, Harriet, and BS.  So that's canon since he had official sources to use.

[szilard]

 It's not a negative to state a fact. It's fan fiction because

1. Jordan did not write it(even the small parts he did were rewritten/altered to match Sanderson's style more). 
2. Sanderson is a self confessed fan boy of the series.
3. Sanderson made stuff up to fill in gaps left in the notes.

Just because Harriett was the editor does not negate the above facts. So i'm with Szilard on them not being canon.

 

It's a negative when you call the last three books sloppily written rush jobs riddled with errors and bad characterization.   

 

 

Yes, he had to: the 'extensive' notes are 50-60 pages long

 

they are interviews, completed scenes see the prologues (not the full prologues!) in the fan fictions,

 

a lot of these are fragments of scenes,

a paragraph here and there,

or a page of material that Jordan expected to be expanded to a full chapter,

 

plus the notes are contradictory...

 

 

And all of this comes from sanderson's mouth...

[szilard]

OFF

 

Vambram, look, this is a forum, not an echo chamber. Even if we do not agree on anything, I'd really like to hear your opinions. The more the better.

 

I do not want to turn this thread into another bashing thread, but I have to quote Mr Ares:

 

Perhaps it's because we're more critical? Perhaps it's because we have paid more attention to some of the problems the book has - things which aren't hugely noticeable in a lot of cases (such as timeline issues), but because we're in contact with other people with which to discuss, and many of us look into these books in great depth, we see a great many flaws. There's so much there that most people won't pick up everything, good or bad, but as we discuss with others we get a more full picture of what was there and what wasn't.

An individual isn't necessarily going to pick up on everything, maybe for a lot of people things like Mat's interactions with Min don't ring alarm bells because it's been so long since they read the books they just accept things. Then someone else picks up on the problem and shares it, so someone who at first didn't see a problem now does - and it is a problem, even if it is one that won't necessarily cripple your enjoyment of the book. This can go both ways - minor world building details, answers to questions, solutions to problems, these things can be shared as well, and enhance the enjoyment of the books.

I don't think we're asking too much, though we are asking a lot. We're asking for something tightly written and well thought through. For the characters to act and sound as themselves, and for what they do to make sense in that context. AMoL could have been so much more than it ended up being. That's the biggest disappointment - it's not that we set our sights too high to ever be met, but we set them very high all the same and they weren't reached. Had we lowered our expectations we would have been less disappointed, but I think we would be selling BS, Team Jordan and the series short, not to mention RJ's memory. I don't see why we should be satisfied with mediocrity, not if we love this series. Frankly, I would have been more satisfied with this book if I cared less about the series.

ON

 

[Sabio]

We will always disagree on this then.  I consider All the books canon, BWB almsot Canon, and River of Souls since that was 100% BS not canon.

[wheeloftimetv]

, and River of Souls since that was 100% BS not canon.

 On that basis the following aren't Canon either:

 

Hinderstap: "We needed a Mat section—I didn’t want him absent for the book—so Hinderstap was my creation," - Sanderson

 

Which also means the part they played in the Last Battle is also not Canon.

 

Parts of the epilogue: "One thing in these notes was the ending. (This became the epilogue of A Memory of Light, though I did add a couple of scenes to it.) - Sanderson

 

Everyone assumes the ending was all Jordan given he always stated he new what the last scene was. As we don't know which parts Sanderson added....not canon!

 

Perrin's entire story arc: "Of all the major plot sequences in the books, Perrin’s was the one where I had the most freedom—but also the most danger of straying too far from Robert Jordan’s vision for who the character should be. His instructions for Perrin focused almost entirely on the person Perrin would be after the Last Battle, with little or no direction on how to bring him there. Perrin was fully in my hands, and I wanted to take extra care to guide my favorite character toward the ending." - Sanderson

 

Underlined section say's Sanderson made it "almost entirely" all up. Perrin = not canon!

 

Androl: The Wheel of Time Retrospective: A MEMORY OF LIGHT: The Black Tower

 

Those are just the ones we know of. There would be a lot of other stuff entirely made up given there was only 200 pages of notes left by Jordan.

 

Oh and Sanderson seems to think "River of Souls" is canon.

 

 

This was a 17,000-word sequence (and it ended with the Ogier rescuing Perrin and his company from the Black Wind, driving it off with their song). I love the sequence, but unlike the sequence with Bao (the deleted scenes named “River of Souls” and included in the Unfettered anthology) it is not canon. It couldn’t happen for a multitude of reasons, and got trimmed.

[wheeloftimetv]

All who believe the last 3 books published by Tor in the WOT series .. TGS, ToM, and AMOL.... can certainly believe if they want to that those books are fan fiction. But those who do so, are ignoring real facts and also ignoring 3 very enjoyable books. Would those books have been better if James Oliver Rigney had been able to write all of those books himself??? Of course, without any doubt in my mind, the answer to that what if question is extremely clearly a YES. Are those books written by Sanderson perfect and without significant errors? No, they are not. However, I am certain that those books are indeed Canon. I have absolutely ZERO doubts about that.

 Who's ignoring three enjoyable books? I enjoyed them and disliked them for what they are, Authorized Fan Fiction. The facts are Sanderson had to make a lot of shit up to write three books from just 100 pages of finished scenes(which he altered) and 100 pages of notes that didn't give much detail if any.

[Guest]

 

 

 Who's ignoring three enjoyable books? I enjoyed them and disliked them for what they are, Authorized Fan Fiction. The facts are Sanderson had to make a lot of shit up to write three books from just 100 pages of finished scenes(which he altered) and 100 pages of notes that didn't give much detail if any.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Can you provide proof that there was really so very little material for Sanderson and Team Jordan to work with for the final three books of the WOT?

[wheeloftimetv]

The Wheel of Time Retrospective: The Notes

 

 

 You see, as I’ve explained before, the “notes” aren’t what people assume. I was handed two hundred pages of material by Harriet, and this is what I read that first night.

 

The other retrospective posts are also worth a read. 

[szilard]

Plus this:

 

The problem is, the notes weren't as extensive as we were led to believe. For example, Brandon said in the tour that while RJ had said the LB would be long, and take up a significant portion of the book, he didn't leave many details. Except for incorporating a few things RJ had suggested, the entirety of the battle sequences in the last book, from strategy to execution to length, were not from RJ's notes. Brandon apparently had RJ's assistant Alan (who's a war buff), and Bernard Cornwell help him in coming up with the overall strategy. Then the portrayal is all his own. So I don't quite see where RJ can be blamed for the tiresome, repetitive nature of the battles in this book. We know it is totally not his style. We also know that he didn't leave many notes on it. We've been told that everything from Siuan's death to Bela's were up in the air. For certain, none of the One Power stuff was from RJ. All of Androl's part was all Brandon, though he did say that RJ had planned to have various Asha'man do various things in the Black Tower, and he decided to take all these things and give them to a character of his creation. So how can RJ be blamed for Androl?

Brandon has also revealed that the battle between Rand and the DO wasn't exactly spelled out either. He said that the notes seemed to make it more like a "last conversation", and that Harriet later sent in a suggestion that maybe Rand and the DO could battle it out by creating many possible worlds.

We have also been told RJ had specific numbers for the turned Aiel channelers in the Town (we'll know that number soon enough). We saw all of four, so unless that actually was the number, its pretty clear they were a severely underutilized resource. The numbers of the Aes Sedai, the Wise Ones, the Windfinders, etc. were also completely wrong, and the Black Ajah was totally absent. All these were Brandon and Team Jordan's choices, not RJ's. So again, I don't see how he's the blame for these issues.

 

The bolded part is not true. RJ said that while there will be fighting in the last book - more than one chapter long -, based on all of his suggestions we were lead to believe that the physical part will be minimal.

[Animus.Tesseract]

I settle on the side that all books released within TWOT are canon for me. Different author maybe, but it is still an official release within the same narrative.

 

As for continuity errors, I think that would also happen just with one author. It is quite a complex world after all. :)

 

P.S.: I need to polish up on abbreviations here. Took me a while to realize that BS does not mean bulls**t. Changes the overall theme quite a bit.

[Guest]

The ending three sections of Sanderson's retrospective concerning the Wheel of Time very clearly show that Brandon used more files and notes from RJ than the original couple of hundred of pages of notes that Harriet gave him the first day he was there at her home.  http://brandonsanderson.com/the-wheel-of-time-retrospective-the-notes/

[wheeloftimetv]

Did you read the last paragraph?

 

 

Maria and Alan had spent months meticulously combing through the notes and pulling out anything they thought I might need. This was the last chunk of my two hundred pages of notes, though I was free to spend time combing through the larger grouping of files—and I did this quite a bit.

 

Everything relevant to writing the last book(which became 3) was part of the 200 pages. The rest was just stuff Jordan had used for writing the previous books and is what is in the encyclopedia.

[Guest]

Yes, I did read the last paragraph. I read the entire article word for word. I interpret Sanderson's words to mean that he used far more pages and notes from RJ's files to write the last 3 books than merely the initial 200 pages of notes that were given to Brandon at the very beginning after he was hired by Harriet. I have also finished reading the rest of Brandon's retrospective posts on those three books and have found those blog articles to also be very interesting and informative.

[wheeloftimetv]

 I interpret Sanderson's words to mean that he used far more pages and notes from RJ's files to write the last 3 books than merely the initial 200 pages of notes that were given to Brandon at the very beginning

 

The files other than the 200 relevant pages for the future story were all historical. I assume he would have used them to make sure what he was writing didn't conflict with what RJ had written previously and to fill him in on what characters had done in the past.

 

Sanderson turned 100 pages of written scenes and 100 pages of notes into 2500 pages. The notes themselves did not cover everything needed to write every major character arc let alone the minor ones. Sanderson admits this and clearly states that he wrote the characters stories how he wanted them to be. That's fine. RJ wanted the book finished, Sanderson got the impossible task and I applaud him for giving it a go. I just won't accept that 1. He did a good overall job and 2. That what he had to make up to fill in the massive gaps RJ left him with are Canon.

[Guest]

*shrugs*

 

Clearly, there is nothing that anyone can say that disagrees with the opinion that the last 3 books of the WOT are Canon is going to change the mind of the dissenters. How one feels about books, plot lines, character development, world building, and actual quality of any set of books is all up to personal and subjective choice, feelings, and interpretations as to whether or not the books are good.... or  not.