James Oliver Rigney Jr. (October 17, 1948 – September 16, 2007), known by his pen name Robert Jordan, was an American author of epic fantasy. His The Wheel of Time series, which comprises 14 books and a prequel novel is among the highest-selling book series of all time, with 90 million copies sold.
In his earlier career he was one of several writers to produce original Conan the Barbarian novels. Jordan was the best-known of several pen names he used, adopting different monikers for different genres.
Jordan was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on October 17, 1948, to James and Eva Rigney (née Grooms). His father James was a World War II veteran and served as a police officer before working at the Charleston Naval Shipyard. He taught himself to read at the age of four years, because his older brother did not finish reading White Fang to him and Jordan "wanted to know what happened," and at five was reading Mark Twain and Jules Verne. He went to Clemson University, where he played football as a lineman, but dropped out after one year and enlisted in the U.S. Army.
He served two tours of duty during the Vietnam War as a helicopter gunner, from 1968 to 1970. He supported Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopters, and was deployed to Saigon and later Bien Hoa. Asked about his experiences in 2003, he stated that they flew in "Zone C, The Phu Rieng Rubber Plantation, down to Cu Chi in the delta, over to Nui Ba Dinh, Black Virgin Mountain, and we were flying into Cambodia long before the Parrot's Beak". He survived a helicopter crash aged 19, which affected his views on mortality. During his time in the military one of his nicknames was "Iceman", in reference to an incident in which he intercepted a number of PAVN troops crossing a river. Jordan strongly disliked the nickname. In a 2007 blog post, he stated that he "strangled that SOB, drove a stake through his heart, and buried him face down under a crossroad outside Saigon before coming home, because I knew that guy wasn't made to survive in a civilian environment." He preferred the nickname Ganesha he attained, as "the remover of obstacles". 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.
After returning from Vietnam in 1970, Jordan studied physics at The Citadel Military College of South Carolina. He graduated in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree and began working for the U.S. Navy as a nuclear engineer. He designed tests and overhauled nuclear reactors for US naval vessels. In 1977 he fell during a walk between the dry dock and his office and faced a serious knee injury, followed by a life-threatening blood clot and an extended hospital stay. He found that he was bored by the work of other writers while in hospital, and believing he could do better, decided to begin writing himself. According to McDougal, Jordan physically threw the book across the room and said "I can do better than that."
Jordan began writing in 1977. His first writing project was a fantasy novel entitled Warriors of the Altaii which was written by hand over three and a half months and then typed up when he returned to work. He contacted Donald A. Wolheim at DAW Books and immediately received an offer, but after attempting to negotiate a minor detail the offer was rejected, citing his "excessive demands". Despite the lack of a publishing deal, he tendered his resignation from his nuclear engineering job, confident that he could write full time.
A local bookstore owner put Jordan in touch with the editor Harriet McDougal, who read Altaii. Instead of editing this early work she asked for a new story, which led Jordan to write The Fallon Blood, published in 1980 by McDougal's personal imprint, Popham Press. Jordan began dating McDougal and his late-1970s Dungeons & Dragons game with her son Will would serve as inspiration for The Wheel of Time.
Jordan wrote three books in the Fallon saga and planned it to be a longer series chronicling the history of the United States from the time of the Civil War to the Vietnam War. While the works sold fairly well, Jordan became bored after the third one and decided to explore other avenues. Jordan stopped using Popham Press in the early 1980s as he was aware that it was owned by McDougal and he was about to marry his "only source of income". With this in mind, his future books would be published by other companies while McDougal would continue to edit his works. He also wrote the western Cheyenne Raiders around this time, his only book to use a different editor.
Tom Doherty at Tor Books obtained the rights to Conan the Barbarian and needed a novel very quickly. McDougal recommended Jordan because she knew he had written his first novel, Warriors of the Altaii, in a very short timespan. Jordan initially turned down the offer because he was concerned about writing in an established fictional universe from another author. He later accepted and enjoyed the project, though he found it difficult to be creative within the strict format rules of the books. According to McDougal, Jordan was "brooding" at the time about the Soviet–Afghan War and these thoughts were present in his writing. He would go on to write seven of these from 1982 to 1984.
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.
On the back of the successful Conan books, Doherty asked if he had any other book ideas, and Jordan discussed his plans for an epic fantasy series, of up to three books in length. Jordan's work on The Wheel of Time began in 1984 and ballooned in scope from the initial three book vision. The series would occupy much of his writing time for the remainder of his life. He completed 12 books in his lifetime, including the prequel New Spring. 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.
Diagnosed with a terminal heart condition in the mid-2000s, he became concerned that he might not live to complete the series and compiled additional notes beyond those he already had so that another could finish the "final" book, A Memory of Light. He shared all of the significant plot details with his family not long before he died with this in mind. He maintained that in doing so the book would get published even if "the worst actually happens". After Jordan's death in September 2007, Brandon Sanderson took on that role. Sanderson completed the story across three volumes from 2009 to 2013, the last of which bore Jordan's title A Memory of Light.
Robert Jordan was a history enthusiast and enjoyed hunting, fishing, sailing, poker, chess, pool, and pipe-collecting. He described himself as a "high church" Episcopalian and received communion more than once a week. Politically, he described himself as a "libertarian monarchist".
Jordan's favorite authors were John D. MacDonald, Jane Austen, Louis L'Amour, Charles Dickens, Robert A. Heinlein, Mark Twain and Montaigne. He was a prodigious reader, reading around 400 books a year in the early 1990s, and his home library had over 14,000 books at the time of his death.
As a younger man, Jordan was in a consensual non-monogamous relationship with two women. D’Silva, an academic writing for Reactor, compared Jordan's experiences to modern polyamory. This inspired the relationships seen in his writing, and he was open about the topic in interviews.
I had two girlfriends simultaneously, who arranged my dating schedule between them, who was going to date me on which night. They chipped in together to buy me birthday presents and Christmas presents. You know, they just sort of shared me between them, you know. And they had been friends before, and I am not quite sure whether or not they made the decision they were both going to date me or not, on their own, before they first met me, it just came about.