In his new guide Origins of the Wheel of Time, historian Michael Livingston explores the real-world myths and legends that Robert Jordan used to assemble his epic fantasy sequence The Wheel of Time. Those influences embrace characters and motifs from Europe, West Africa, the Middle East, and Japan, amongst others.

“He’s not confined in any way,” Livingston says in Episode 532 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “He has no guardrails. The world is his oyster, because literally everything can be a part of The Wheel of Time. It’s an incredible sort of thing to try to do.”

Livingston lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and teaches at The Citadel, which supplies him a leg up relating to researching Jordan, who attended The Citadel and lived in Charleston for many of his life. “Living here, and working at the place where he went to school and that meant so much to him as an alma mater, certainly was a huge advantage,” Livingston says. “When I’m reading the books, and I read the name of an inn, I’m like, ‘That’s that pub next to his house. I know that place.’”

As The Wheel of Time expanded to greater than 10 volumes, Jordan was usually accused of intentionally padding out the sequence. But Livingston discovered nothing within the writer’s voluminous notes to counsel that that was the case. “I get that cynicism, but it’s not really fixed in reality,” he says. “They weren’t, then or now, trying to milk more dollars out of the fans. He wanted to tell a story, and he wanted to do it right, and he had the success that he could do it the way he thought was best.”

Origins of The Wheel of Time has already been a success with Jordan followers, however Livingston hopes the guide will attain a wider viewers as nicely. “What I’m talking about is biography, how he did what he did, his relationship to Tolkien, and just seeing how an author developed as a writer and developed a project,” he says. “Just to see an artist at work—I hope anyway—has a connection point to anybody.”

Listen to the whole interview with Michael Livingston in Episode 532 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And try some highlights from the dialogue under.

Michael Livingston on Origins of the Wheel of Time:

We pitched it to the property, to Jordan’s widow and former editor Harriet. I despatched the e-mail anticipating no—”No, you possibly can’t do that”—and as an alternative it was like, “I think it’s a great idea. You’re the only person who can do it, and I’ve already talked to the head of Tor Books, they’re expecting it.” It went from zero to 100 actually fast. And yeah, at that time all people was engaged within the factor. It was actually wild to have that have of a totally licensed [project]. I might take a look at something I needed, I might speak to anyone I needed, and there was such a heat, welcoming openness from all people on that facet, and at Tor. The copy editor that replicate edited The Wheel of Time books was my copy editor. We did all the pieces we might to make it so that everyone who would find out about it had touched it.

Michael Livingston on Robert Jordan’s desk:

Here in Charleston we had a guide signing. It was the one actual official guide signing we did, and a bunch of individuals got here from actually all around the world—we had someone from England who flew in for the guide signing—and I gave a little bit lecture, right here on the college. I used to be like, “Man, you guys came so far. Do you want to come see the desk?” And they mentioned yeah, they actually would love to try this. So all of them got here up—it should have been about 20 folks in the end crowding the hallway, attempting to get photos of it. They had been like, “Can we sit at the desk?” “Yeah, you can sit at the desk. I do it every day.” … It’s not an on a regular basis prevalence as a professor that you’ve got folks lining up within the hallway to take photos of your workplace. It’s a little bit bit like, “I need to keep my office cleaner than other people, I think. It’s a museum now.”

Michael Livingston on Thermopylae:

It’s a wierd space geographically, and in reality has undergone enormous modifications to the panorama consequently. Where the shoreline was in Leonidas’ day, once you go there, you possibly can hardly see the water. It’s kilometers completely different, the place the shoreline is. The floor that he was preventing on is means beneath your toes. This isn’t only a meter down—the Middle Ages are a few meter down, the traditional world a pair meters—it is a dozen or extra meters down, due to the bizarre geography of that place. And that bizarre geography is why it was this place of battle for thus lengthy, as a result of that geography made it a form of choke level. So yeah it’s radically completely different at present. You should get via a reasonably sizable quantity of labor to attempt to reconstruct that as finest we will, to attempt to perceive what occurred.

Michael Livingston on J. R. R. Tolkien:

He says in a letter at one level—I’m paraphrasing—however he says, “As for where I got the word ‘hobbit,’ I’ll leave it to future students, I don’t want to deprive them of the fun.” It’s form of like he threw down this gauntlet, and everybody simply ignored it. … Tolkien cherished making these linguistic jokes that solely those that noticed behind the linguistic constructions would get. Like the truth that it’s “Theodin King.” That’s the pinnacle of Rohan, “Theodin King.” Well “Theodin” means “king,” so his identify is “king king.” Or “Bree Hill.” “Bree” is the phrase “hill” in Welsh, in order that’s “hill hill.” He knew that, and he simply thought that was hilarious, he thought that was a riot, that most individuals couldn’t see that, however he might see it. And the identical I believe is true of “hobbit” and “Bilbo Baggins” and a lot of different issues.

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