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Is Calamity actually a worldhopper?
Calamity, I didn't write this as a part of the cosmere. The main distinction is I didn't want Earth to be in the cosmere, I want it to be distinct. Once I stick Earth in, the cosmology and things doesn't work. The cosmere is a dwarf cluster, and it's a dwarf galaxy, it's a cluster of stars. It's a specific place, and Earth's not part of it.
I really wish the Rithmatist books was on a Shardworld where...
It started as one... I just decided I didn't want to canonize Earth into the cosmere, it was too much.
What was your decision not to make The Reckoners series part of the cosmere? Because, without giving away too many things, I can see a Shard affecting that world.
Yeah, I made the decision based on two things. Number one, the fact that I don't want Earth to be in the cosmere. And so all the books that are referencing Earth, I don't put in the cosmere. Number two, the mythological source I was using as the--I can't give away spoilers--foundation for all of this, is a very "our-world" mythology, not a very "cosmere" mythology.
What came first, Pattern or Chalklings?
Pattern was before Chalklings, good question. For some part of its existence, The Rithmatist was in the cosmere, until I finally decided I just don't want Earth in the cosmere at all, even a bizarre sort of version of Earth.
I'm asking why they have chickens.
...They were carried with them.
So is Earth...
Earth is not. There are several Earth analogues. I go with a default, we're gonna make it easy on myself. Those planets have, kinda, Earth analogue for plants and animals. And then you can assume that they have Earth creatures until I start doing ecology really quite weirdly.
Hi! I just finished Warbreaker, and I caught my mind that they have animals that exists on Earth (at least by the name, like monkeys, panther, and so). Is this a common thing in the all the planets of the cosmere?
It is common on many of the planets, though it is more likely to happen on a planet (or an ecosystem on a planet) created by Shards, as they're often basing the animal life on creatures they've seen before. That said, some planets with life predating the splintering had Earth-like ecosystems too.
The writing answer is that this was a way for me to control learning curve in my series, so that I could have some (like Roshar) that take a lot of effort to get into, and others that are a little more easy to get into. This lets me save the really crazy worldbuilding for a few specific series.
Someone from Earth is about to be sent off to the cosmere. They've read your first Stormlight book, but they've never really taken time to really dig deep and find out about how it sits in the overall "cosmere", so they're totally unprepared. What basic concepts regarding shards, magic systems and world hopping do you think are most important?
The first, most important thing to say to the person who's being sent there is to enjoy the story you're in. All of the cosmere stuff, the interconnection between my books and all these wonderful little things, are right now mostly Easter eggs. Which means that if you spend the whole book only worried about that, you're going to miss the beauty and fun that is the book that you're part of. I often say to people, don't worry if you read them "out of order," because it's all Easter eggs right now. Don't worry and stress if you miss something about the cosmere, because while someday that might be important, you first need to enjoy the book that you're part of. But the primer I'd give to this person is that the worlds are connected. If you show up on a planet and there's a guy named Hoid around, then be very afraid, because you're someplace very dangerous.
In Arcanum Unbounded, you have gravity ratings for different planets. Is one like Earth?
An Earth analogue, yes.
I heard a rumor that the universes of all your books are interconnected?
Yes. Most of my books, not all of them. If a book mentions Earth, it is not connected to what I call the cosmere, I kind of made this decision early on. So for those of you who don't know, my epic fantasies are indeed all connected. There are characters who cross over between them. I've been planning this for twenty years so I've got this intricate thing going on. There will eventually be big crossover books but for right now I don't want people to feel like they have to read everything in order to understand what's going on, and so for right now each of the books are only cameos. But you will be able to notice characters crossing between and there will be big crossover books eventually.
Talking about physics and cosmere... Is the gravity on each planet the same as on Earth? It shouldn't.
And if it isn't? How does the changes affect things like Coinshoting or Surges out of Scadrial/Roshar?
They are not all the same. And you'll have to wait and see on how that affects things. :)
So, uh, we know that the charcoal creatures are afraid of coins.
Yes.
So are the white chalk creatures, which I think are called Shadowblazes…
Yes.
Are they also afraid of coins?
Are they also afraid of coins? To a much lesser extent. Um, I can give you guys some backstory on this. What’s going on here is that the place these things come from, um, linear structure and things like this are frightening to them, like they come from a non-linear location. Time does not move linearly where they come from. When they come into this world, structure and linear time progression, is bizarre to them. And there are some who have embraced it, and been like, “This is cool and different!” and there are others that are still terrified of it, as a representation of what is so alien from the world they came from. So that’s why we’ve got this whole clocks, and even structure, as a metaphor for, um, something that is terrifying to them.
Uh, Rithmatist started in the Cosmere. The magic shares a lot of its roots, then, in Cosmere magic worldbuilding. I split if off because I wrote the whole first book with it being in the Cosmere. I split it off, saying “No, I don’t want Earth to be in the Cosmere.” Even an alternate version of Earth. It just raises too many questions about the nature of Earth being involved in this. I want the Cosmere to be its own dwarf galaxy of which not even a dimension of Earth is involved. And when I made that decision, I broke Rithmatist off. That’s the only one I had written that didn’t belong, but it still has, so, it means that the magic is going to feel very familiar to you, uh, it’s going to feel like the magic of a, um, of the Cosmere. And Cosmere magic is based around, usually, human beings making a symbiotic bond with an entity made out of the magic. This is, kind of, one of the origins of Cosmere magic, and Rithmatist has, therefore, its roots in that. I’ve done some things since I’ve split it off in the outlines to distinguish it, but it’s going to have the same roots. So you’ll notice some things like that, that are similar.
Uh, before you split The Rithmatist from the Cosmere, did the Shadowblazes come from the Cognitive realm?
Yeah. Yeah, the Shadowblazes were in the Cognitive realm, they’re--you know, well, they’re more Spiritual realm. They were Spiritual realm, sorry. They were Spiritual realm entities that got pulled in, uh, to the Physical realm. And the Spiritual realm has no time, um, it exists independent of time and location, all times and all places are one, and so, uh, when something that’s from the Spiritual realm got pulled into the Physical realm, it was like, “This is so weird!” Um, and there are very few things in the Cosmere that exist only on the Spiritual realm, which was a really fun thing I could do with this book, was show that. Cause most things exist on all three realms. Um, so, yeah. So, yeah, I mean if you’ve got, if you’re a Cosmere, uh, theologian--not theologian, magic, uh, what do you call it? Uh, they call that, uh, I have a word for it in-world. But anyway, if you’re a realmatic theorist, you can kind of pick out how the Spiritual realm beings were related, originally, to the realmatic theory.
Have you ever written something else that you pulled into the cosmere?
You know, I don't do that very often. In fact, I'm trying to think of one that was outside the cosmere that pulled into it, and I can't think of one. I have pushed stories out of the cosmere very frequently. And the reason I do this is because I don't want to be setting things in the cosmere just because of the cosmere. I want to be setting things in the cosmere because they work and advance the story of the cosmere in a way I want it to be. And I want to be sure that I'm not just saying "Well, we'll shove this in the cosmere." So I very frequently try things out in the cosmere, and then pull them back. One of the main reasons I pull them back is I don't want any connection to Earth in the cosmere. So if a book needs a connection to Earth, or for some reason I like how the connection to Earth works, I will pull it out of the cosmere. The only thing I can think of that was out and went in was Dark One. But then it went out again.
Hi Brandon I don't know if you will answer, but. Did "earth" ever exist in the cosmere? There seems to be humans on all the planets. so where did humans come from? or even the idea of humans?
Earth did not exist in the cosmere. Humans existed on Yolen (and other planets) before the shattering of Adonalsium, and it is assumed Adonalsium created them.
From a writing perspective, stepping back, I feel like other book series (like the Wheel of Time, Pern, Shannara) really covered the idea of, "This is Earth and/or earth people in another dimension/after an apocalypse/or far in the future." It's been a common enough theme in fantasy that I felt I wanted not to touch on it. So there are no plans to connect the cosmere to Earth in any way.
How much do you plan in the cosmere? There were a few things in Rhythm of War [that went in] a different direction, like anti-Investiture, that black sphere Gavilar had in the prologue being anti-Investiture, and Testament and Shallan, were those always part of the plan or options?
Those were always options. Anti-Investiture has been pretty core for a long time, there are a couple reasons for this. Number one I need to get certain resources into the cosmere for use in the future, and anti-Investiture is one of those. Another reason is I want to push Stormlight Archive more towards magic-tech, because I'm pushing Mistborn more towards Earth analog with Earth technology and then some cool fantastical things thrown in, but when you're using the technology. When you're using a radio on Scadrial, it's a radio. You know what a radio is. It works based on radio principles, and maybe you can do some wacky things with weight, but an airship is kind of an airship to them where as I want Roshar which is on the opposite end of that spectrum. Where an airship on Roshar is not an airship like you would imagine. Its not being propelled in normal ways it's working off all these weird magical things. And anti-Investiture was an important thing to get into the series for the future for that reason.
From book one I knew I needed magical healing for Roshar, [for] the stories I wanted to tell to work. And I needed some really powerful magical healing. Particularly for the Knights Radiant, because of the stories I wanted to tell, this meant I was going to be very much under cutting the danger of physical violence in The Stormlight Archive as we move forward as the characters became Radiants. It is really hard to kill a Radiant in combat and there need to be foils to that.
Beyond that from the first chapter of the first cosmere novel Elantris, death has not been the end. [hosts laugh] We start the first book with someone being resurrected. That's one of the main themes of the cosmere is a second chance at life. This is Raoden's story, this is Lightsong's story, this is Kelsier's story, this is a major theme of the cosmere, and I needed to be introducing into the cosmere a "dead is dead" mechanic. And I considered Shardblades for that for a while, before I even released Stormlight. No, it can't be Shardblades, because I can't have every battle - once lots of people have Shardblades then there's no purpose to the magical healing. So I needed another tool for the late part of the cosmere, when people have figured out Cognitive Shadows; How do you destroy a Cognitive Shadow? Well there are ways, but throw some anti-Investiture at them and that's guaranteed, you are gonna kill that Shadow, and I'd been pushing towards where to get this in, and this book felt like the right place. It was either this book or book five, and where it settled into this book is where I finally made the decision that I was gonna let Navani be a main character, which she had been pushing to be for a while, and I'd been pushing back. No, I deserve to have a scientist, an actual straight up scientist main character in The Stormlight who can dig into some of this stuff. I can self-indulge by doing that, as long as I balance it with Kaladin behind enemy lines fight sequences and things, for a more traditional structure. Because Navani's scenes do not have a traditional structure. They're like "we're going to do science now! But we're making up the science also?!"
Vinuarch
Yes, one of the months of the year is named after Vin. There are twelve months, one after each member of the crew, with a few tweaks. (The days of the week have different names too, but we ended up not using any in this book.)
By the way, Scadrial—the world of Mistborn—is the closest Earth analogue in the cosmere. I did this intentionally, as I wanted one planet where technology and the like progressed similarly to what we have. There are distinctions, of course, but generally we've got a lot of similarities. Even in the original Mistborn, we referenced plants and animals by Earth-style names. You can assume that on Scadrial they have horses, dogs, cats, sparrows, and the like. There are twelve months, and a twenty-four-hour day. Gravity is earth gravity. Things like this.
There's no hidden meaning there—no tie back to Earth, at least not in any important way. The cosmere is entirely separate from Earth. This one planet, however, has creatures that were developed along the same lines as Earth. (Well, it's not the only one, but to say more would be to give away too much.)
I've got a question about Hoid. Now that he is a [worldhopper], he's been in quite a few books, do you have any plans or is it possible that he may windup jumping realities into a universe that, as you write more books that are outside the cosmere, or do you just kind of plan of having him--
Good question. So the question is am I going to have Hoid, who has appeared in many of my books, jump between universes as I write more outside the cosmere. The answer is actually no. I have a distinct story that I'm telling in the cosmere and it's less about the fun of connecting all my works, which is fun, but it's less about that and more about the actual story. Part of the reason I'm actually doing this thing with Hoid is I like the idea-- playing with the idea, of what is an epic. An epic that spans many many years is really cool to me, so I have hidden that amongst my books, and it'll eventually come out in a much more direct way. I actually had to make this choice pretty early in my career, when I was writing The Rithmatist was the first one. You know, the Alcatraz books are just goofy and zany, so I didn't have to think about it as much with those, but with The Rithmatist I was like "what am I going to do with this?". Because it had originally been planned as a cosmere book, and then I decided I wanted to set it on Earth and I didn't want to do a lot of these sort of political things on Earth in the cosmere, I wanted it to be a far-off and distant place. And that's when I made the break, I said "no I'm not going to put him in this". And that made it easy when people were like "hey, you going to sneak him into The Wheel of Time?". Nah nah let's move along there. A lot of people were expecting me to sneak him in.
Assuming I could travel anywhere in the universe, could I eventually find the Cosmere. In other words is the Cosmere in our universe/dimension, or in a different universe/dimension.
Good question. The answer is no - there is no path through our universe to the cosmere. It is another universe, another dimension, where the laws of physics are different from our own. I don't intend to ever connect the cosmere to Earth or our universe - in fact, one of the big decision points so far in determining if a project is going to be the cosmere or not is whether or not I want to link it to Earth in any way.
For those of you who don’t know, when I was writing these thirteen books. I started working on them and I loved the big epics but when I sat down to write Elantris a lot of the advice I had heard from editors said “Don’t write a big series in the beginning. You want to write a standalone book with sequel potential. So when you sell that you can then write the sequels to it, but if you don’t sell it you’re not locked into spending all of your time writing these.” The idea was if you’re going to write five novels, write five first novels as opposed to one book and four more so if you can’t sell the first one the others you can sell somewhere. And that’s decent advice, it’s not the only advice. Naomi Novik who writes the Temeraire books, if you’ve read them they’re quite good, she wrote the whole trilogy right off. She ignored that advice and when she sold the first one she had the other two ready and they bought those too and they released her books one at a time one month after another. I think the Iron Druid guy did that too. It can allow for a really explosive start where you’ve already got shelf space, you’ve got three books there. Instead of being a nobody with one book, you’re a nobody with three and suddenly you look more important.
Anyways I heard this, and I really do like jumping to a lot of different projects so this is what I tried but in the back of my mind I did love the idea of the big epic. It is what got me into this, I love the Wheel of Time and things like this. So I started writing a hidden epic so I embedded into Elantris hints of a character I had been developing for years which was a guy who went from world to world in a fantasy universe investigating the different magic systems. I started embedding this story behind the story using an outline I had used for my very first book that I had never actually finished as a background for all of this. So I was basically writing a sequel to that book but on a different planet, with different characters. I started writing my next book each had these same hints and allusions hidden behind with different characters crossing between the worlds and sharing.
I eventually published Elantris and decided this is something that I thought was cool and wanted to do and I’ve seen people do it. Stephen King connected all of his worlds. And other authors, Terry Brooks eventually combined a bunch of his worlds together and I thought that what they did was really interesting and I had never seen anyone do it from the get go though right? Like when Asimov linked the Robot books and the Foundation books it was something he did later in his life where he’s like “I’m going to blend these two together and make one universe out of them.” I hadn’t seen anyone do it from the start, and again I have an advantage on Isaac Asimov and Terry Brooks and people because I’ve read them. I’ve been able to see what they did and say “Well I’m going to do this from the get go, to see if I can tell this cool hidden epic behind the stories.” So that’s called-- I called that the cosmere, it was my name for it when I was sixteen. It now seems almost a little silly to me but I’ve kept with it because, you know, it is one of those old remnants that I have from my teenage days. There are characters-- There is a character that has shown up in all of my epic fantasies, things like the Rithmatist are not part of the cosmere, Earth isn’t so if it references Earth you know it’s not. But they show up, and there’s like an underlying, fundamental laws of magic. And there’s a story that happened long in the past and a lot of these people are reacting to this and things like that. The thing that I want you to know though is I do it in such a way that you don’t feel like you have to have read my whole body of work to read one. Like you don’t have to have read Elantris to read Mistborn. You don’t have to read Mistborn to read Way of Kings even though there is a character from Mistborn in Way of Kings. You don’t have to do that, it’s all behind the scenes and it will never take over a series. You will never get to like book 8 of the Stormlight Archive and be like “Wow, now its all about the cosmere, its not about--” It’s not going to happen happen like that. I will write books about the cosmere but I will be upfront from the beginning about this is going to be the cosmere series. If you don’t know the different magic systems you’re going to kind of be confused because they are going to interact with each other and things like that. Eventually that will happen but for right now, you don’t need to worry about it. They are all easter eggs, you can read them in any order and you can piece them together and stuff like that.
Let’s say that the fires of industry keep progressing in Middle Earth, and someone builds a spaceship, they get in it and go up. What do you think happens?
In Middle Earth? I think it is heavily implied by the time that happens that Middle Earth has changed to a place where there is no magic, so I think it works just fine.
[Follow-up on if Middle Earth is in the same universe as the cosmere]
You’re not talking to a Tolkein scholar here.
[...]
Yes, the cosmere takes place in a place where there is another branch of physics that is investiture, and that is the big change.
Do you ever run into problems with that, does it break physics?
Oh, yeah. If you look too deep in a fantasy book we are breaking the laws of thermodynamics and we are breaking causality. Those are the two big ones. And those are very important things to be… very dangerous things to be breaking. And you could probably write a fantasy novel that didn’t break those two things. Maybe? I don’t know. The way I avoid breaking laws of thermodynamics is by saying, we’ve got investiture that things can transfer into as well. We’ve got matter, energy, and investiture, I’ve added something to the tripod and therefore it looks like I’m just bending the laws of thermodynamics.
When you actually get down into the nitty-gritty, it starts to break down. It just has to. Causality is the big one. Once you have people teleporting and things like this, run the train experiment. I mean, you just have to say “It’s magic” at some point in a fantasy book. For most of them. I think you could do it, but in mine, with a grand scale magic system I want to do, we just have to say, “at that point it’s magic.” And this is how I think a fantasy writer differs from a science fiction writer.
A SF writer takes today and extrapolates forward. I take what is interesting and extrapolate backward. Usually. For instance speed bubbles. “I want to have speed bubbles. This is how they work. Peter, tell me the physics.” And we work it out together. We work out physics and try to hit the big trouble points and build into the magic why certain things happen. But that doesn’t stop us from making speed bubbles where there is time passing differently without using mass or whatnot to create time dilation, and it causes all kinds of weird things to happen.
What cosmere location has the best tacos or equivalent? And is Hoid a regular visitor to that location?
It depends on how you feel about Soulcast meat. For people who are vegan, Soulcast meat involves using gemstones to make meat. Also, I would say that Soulcast meat has a certain flavor that is not bad, but it is acquired. And so, for some people, chouta is going to be, probably, the best street food in the cosmere.
But otherwise, like most things, if you want to default to "What has the most Earth-like of X," it is going to be Scadrial. Scadrial is the one that I intentionally kind of keep closer to Earth-style cultures and things. For various reasons; like, for instance, the fact that I want to do a computer programmer as a protagonist in an upcoming sequence, there are things like that that I've built Scadrial to feel more Earth-like.
Are you ever gonna make a book that's based on Earth, but in the cosmere?
No. The Rithmatist started that way, and I pulled it out of the cosmere, because I didn't want Earth in the cosmere. So, that happening tells me pretty surely I'll never do it.
Out of curiosity, what Shard would have been on Rithmatist?
I will RAFO that for now, because it didn't get far enough that I had even really settled. Like, it was when I was designing magic, and doing the worldbuilding. When I started asking questions like this is when I kicked it out. I didn't even write any chapters of it before I kicked it out.
Hi Brandon, just to double check my understanding of things, Odium is still mostly bound on Braize right? Just that he can influence things on Roshar because of proximity?
I treat Braize, Ashyn, and Roshar as if they were almost one entity for a lot of Identity/Connection related issues. It's more than proximity, though proximity leads to it. We on Earth, I feel, would consider the moon and even Mars to be "ours" so to speak, part of our family of planets. Odium's binding, and that of the Heralds/Fused encompasses Roshar and Ashyn. There are some subtle distinctions, but for the most part, being bound on Braize is the same as being bound on Roshar.
So Shadesmar is only from Roshar or from the three planets??
You can reach all three through Shadesmar, with a much shorter trip than to other systems. But the map we provide so far is only Roshar.
Have you come up with a name for their star? It'd be easier to refer to all three by calling it the [???]ar/[sol]ar system instead of the Rosharan/[Earth]an system like we do now.
By people in world, it's being referred to as the Rosharan system. This is kind of confusing to us, because we focus on the suns to orient what makes a system. But in the cosmere, they travel directly to planets, and so the biggest trading planet becomes the source of naming conventions in most places. I agree it's a little confusing for us, but I believe it's the way it would naturally arise for them.
On the topic of the Rosharan solar system, do we get to learn about the significance of the 10 gas giants? We’re they there before the shards ever made their home there? Is that the ‘origin’ of the significance, in the context of the cosmere's natural laws?
RAFO, I'm afraid.
Switching topics, your battle scenes are completely epic. Do you have to do a lot of research learning different battle stances and techniques?
I've done a lot of that in my life up to this point, so I draw on that. I write the scene and then I go to the experts. I read through sources and try to look for where I've done it wrong. I can usually do it right enough on the first write because of my experience, so that the first write is not fundamentally flawed, it's only flawed in little places.
I do a lot of reading of tactics and things like The Art of War, which was a very big help. A great place to get this type of thing is from good historical novels, but there are some good pop culture books as well. There's one I'm going to look up and email you about because I always forget the author, that you can read to give you an idea how different cultures have approached war.
It's sitting on my shelf--I can picture the cover, but now the name escapes me. Guns, Germs, and Steel is a famous one that is very good, but there is a better one on the history of warfare. I'll have to send the name of that to you later. [Confirmed later: it is A History of Warfare by John Keegan.]
Anyway, the pop science, pop history books I look at are more accessible than straight history books. They're written to be readable, for a mass audience, and they give me just enough to write the basics, and then I can polish the edges by going to an expert.
Not one where you have to read through the dry crusty pages.
Yeah, and really what you are looking for is the concepts. How different cultures fund a war, how they treat a war, and then you really only need some basic tactics. What are the different types, why would people use cavalry and what was the importance of cavalry. You get that from reading the history of warfare. I remember when I read how important the stirrup was as an invention, being able to fire bows from horseback, and why that changed warfare.
Suddenly I could construct a battlefield where I could say oh, okay, now that I understand why the stirrup is important, I see why this unit is important, why having a cavalry is important. I can now have them enter my battlefield in a way that undermines what someone else is trying to do, because I know the importance of the stirrup. Learning just a few fundamentals like that is essential. What the difference was between the way the Romans approached war and the way a medieval army approached war, and why the introduction of peasant warriors was so important, and things like that.
As well as the importance of stirrups, and how they can support the huge magical armor.
I still needed magical horses for that armor, but it's nice that I can have magically enhanced armor and make it all work together. The other big thing people have to remember about Roshar is it's point-seven gee, which helps a lot with things like this. 70% Earth gravity.
Yeah, I feel like it might be a big more difficult with our gravity.
It would be definitely more difficult. In fact when they get off the planet it's going to be a different experience for them, going to something like Scadrial where they have Earth gravity.
So is that something we are going to be seeing?
Eventually, but not for a while.
Because I was thinking when the Cosmere starts concluding, just multi-Cosmere world battles kind of things...or?
These are in the works.
No worming out information by coming up with theories on the spot?
You may come up with all the theories you want, but I'm not giving you any information.
Something noteworthy about your work is the massive interconnectivity. Is Skyward connected to any of your universes or continuities?
It's connected to a novella I wrote, which explored an interesting premise in faster-than-light travel. I prefer not to publicize which one, because the spoiler at the end of that story related to a twist near the end of Skyward. This isn't connected to my big epic fantasy universe, the Cosmere, for several reasons. First, the way space travel is possible here doesn't work with that setting. Also, this incorporates lore from Earth, and I try to keep Earth and the Cosmere very distinct and separated.
When a Feruchemist stores their charge in a metal, where is that going? Is that going into molecules, is that going into the Spiritual essence of the metal, is that sort of a Cognitive - what is that?
It is charging it in...in cosmere terms, more on the Spiritual level, but there are connections to the Physical as well. It's not 100% on the Spiritual.
It's not changing the molecular structure?
It is not going to change the molecular structure. If you brought that metal to Earth, somehow, and tested it, you wouldn't be able to tell any difference. Because we just don't have that element.
You can't test for Investiture on Earth
Yeah. In the cosmere, you can.
but one kingdom (led by a mysterious figure who knew far too much)
Did this evolve into or influence the Ishar/Tezim situation at all? Or maybe the latter is a parody even of that idea.
The mysterious figure was [Aronack] (though I don't remember how I spelled it) one of the original figures planning to kill Adonalsium. Back then, before the cosmere fully formed, they were demigods--but I later decided it was more interesting for the Shards to have been (mostly) ordinary mortals before the shattering. So he's no longer canon.
He was basically breaking the agreement between the others of his kind by giving rapid technological development to his people. This was, in part, because I was intrigued by the idea of a single highly-advanced (in technology) culture among a group of bronze age peoples. An idea you see play out in science fiction (with advanced aliens among modern cultures on earth) but not often in fantasy. (Except in some versions of "Old world meets new world" style recreations of what happened on Earth.)
(mostly) - translation: dragons?
Well, at least one Dragon. And at least One Sho Del.
Is [Aronack] (though not necessarily with the same name) still one of the original Vessels in the current version of the Cosmere? If so, does he have a different name in the current canon?
RAFO, I'm afraid.
Are there cats anywhere in the cosmere?
Yes there are cats in the cosmere. There are lions in Mistborn, and have been mentioned numerous times, so you can assume, extrapolation, that there are also cats in the worlds somewhere. Scadrial, the Mistborn world... is my Earth analogue. When I was designing I'm like, I'm gonna design this one in such a way that I can-- because I knew I was going to be doing 1900's fiction, and 1980's fiction, I wanted it to have some sort of parallel societal evolution and so I put in a lot of parallel cultural things, and things like that. So you can make an assumption that, unless I say otherwise, on Scadrial they have basic Earth ecology, particularly now after events that I can't talk about because they're spoilers.
Have you published any books that were in the Cosmere that you pulled out?
Yeah, The Rithmatist is the most obvious example. The Rithmatist started in the cosmere, and the magic is still very cosmere. And if I were going to have had one in the cosmere, it would have been Rithmatist, because of the way the magic works. I eventually decided I just did not want to canonize that Earth is in any way, shape, or form related to the cosmere and I pulled it out, and I'm glad I did that, but the magic still has a lot of cosmere remnants to it. Steelheart was never in the cosmere.
Along the lines of BioChromatic Breath being akin to a person's soul, how would a Shardblade react to someone who does not have any Breath, would it cut them like an inanimate object?
No. Remember, one of the things with Breath is I consider Breath to be a part of someone's soul, but it is the extra part that the Cosmere has that non-Cosmere doesn't have. I don't know how far I want to lean into this, but there is definitely a part of me that thinks that Drabs, people who have given up their breath on Nalthis, are just like people from our world. That's what they are, that if we went to the Cosmere we would all be Drabs. Even on planets that aren't Nalthis, where you can't take part of that and give it away and things like that, people are invested. They are invested generally more than here.
Why do I do this? There's a couple reasons. One, it's really convenient for some narrative reasons. A lot of books I'm writing are these kind of action-adventure stories, and can human beings actually take the punishment that is delivered, let's say to Adolin in the end of Oathbringer? *noncommital negative sounds* He doesn't come off well from that, but could a human being really take that? I go back and forth. Humans are capable of some pretty incredible feats, particularly with adrenaline driving them, but my kind of blanket answer is everyone in the Cosmere has got a bit more Investiture; everyone's got something like Breath. Nalthians have something kind of extra special because they can use it in different ways, but everybody's got something like that.
It's leading to the fact that for instance, I highlighted this in the books, this part is canon: There are things about Rosharans that make it so that a lot of diseases have trouble getting a foothold. You do not have the bubonic plague on Roshar. You could maybe say this is because they are not living in close enough proximity to mammals for diseases to hop species as happens on our planet, which is a pretty valid point. Things that affect a horse or a cow (a lot of different diseases from cows come to us), things that affect a cow are much more likely to be able to affect a human than something that affects a chull being able to affect a human. Totally valid, but I also think that there is something more going on here.
This allows me to do fantasy stories where... In Warbreaker we don't have to be worrying about the next outbreak of smallpox, which legitimately they probably would have to be worrying about. It means that, while this is kind of a trope that people, trope is the wrong term, but that people in the past did not have as bad as teeth as we assume that we do because they did not eat the levels of sugars and starches that we do. Investiture also in the Cosmere means that you're not going to... Dalinar probably would not have a full set of teeth, even without being punched in the face and stuff, if he were a human from Earth. But on Roshar he's got just a little bit extra vitality, a little bit extra something, just like everyone on the planet, that is making him a little tougher and making him a little more disease resistant and some of these things. It makes the stories more fun for me to tell and also gives us some suspension of disbelief on some of these things. You do not have to worry about smallpox outbreaks on most planets. You do have to worry about catching the curse of the Elantrian disease and being thrown into a prison city, but smallpox, not as big of a deal.
Yeah, but you don’t have to worry about that too much anymore.
No, but I'm saying you could have to worry about things like that. Magical diseases, totally on the board, but the big plague they're dealing with in Roshar is the common cold that got brought across by some of the members of Seventeenth Shard, and that's going to die out pretty quickly. They will get over it and their immune system is... The common cold has come over multiple times before for reasons like that, colds just from another planet. Roshar, they've got three Shards. Basically if you want something like this to happen you go to a planet that's not quite as highly Invested where they might have a few more diseases, you pick one up, you bring it, and it spreads a little bit but then it dies off. That sort of thing happens a lot in the Cosmere. You do not have to worry about during the space age that people are going to be bringing lots of diseases across planets.
How do you decide whether or not a story is part of the cosmere?
There's a couple dividing lines. If it mentions Earth, I'm not gonna put it in the cosmere, because I don't want any sort of relationship there. At that point, the dividing line becomes, does the magic fit the cosmere, and is the story one that fits the cosmere, right? I made the decision very early on, I wasn't gonna try and force everything in. So if it's a natural outgrowth of the stories I'm telling in the cosmere, then I will go that way. I'm usually more finicky about pulling them out than putting them in. There are very few stories I've put into the cosmere, and I've pulled a ton of them out.
It is, frankly, a bit of a miracle that this [Secret Project Five] manifests in the middle of Stormlight Five. And it only did because I had a little bit of momentum on it from a number of years ago. And you'll find out once that is once we do more of the reveals. But it's something I've been writing on for maybe seven, eight years.
I wrote a bunch of this in Hawaii last year. I took some time and relaxed; I actually had two trips to Hawaii last year, one with the whole family, and then one with just myself and Emily. And that's where the bulk of this was written, was during those two trips.
Secret Project Five is much shorter and more compact. It's got, I think, really only two POVs.
Something else I wanted to talk about with this. You mentioned High Cosmere Connectivity; I worked forever trying to figure out how to write that phrase. Because it had to fit in, like, two or three words on the screen. And it had to explain... and I'm not sure if people will understand, even still, what we're getting across. Because what I really wanted to say is: this book isn't intended for first-time Cosmere readers (though if you are a first-time Cosmere reader and you understand that, you'll probably have a good time). The rest of you probably should read a few Cosmere books before you pick this one up, then you will really enjoy it better. That's what I wanted to write; that's not three words.
If they know they're jumping into future era where there's a lot more cosmere connectivity... but, the story reads just fine on its own. There are plenty of people who could read this book, not know anything, and enjoy it quite a bit. It doesn't require you to have read other books to understand. But...
And some people don't like a lot of cosmere connections. And this one does have them. It's got characters from multiple different planets; some you've seen, some you haven't. And it's taking place, kind of dealing with future era sort of stuff. I think most readers will enjoy it, but I do want you to be aware of that, right? There are some people who are just like, "I just want to read Stormlight Archive, and I don't want to worry about the larger mess." And this is probably not something they would like.
One of the things, as I was reading it (because I was keeping this idea in mind of how accessible is it to new readers), in a lot of ways I think... Imagine Lord of the Rings, except it starts after they've already left the Shire. So you don't actually get to see the homeland of anyone in the Fellowship. But you hear about their homeland, and they brag about their homeland to each other. That still works, right? It's very Guardians of the Galaxy; other than Earth, you don't really see anyone's homeworld. But you can accept, "Okay, these are all the adventurers that have come together to do the thing."
Are lightyears or AU a more appropriate method of measuring distance between shardworlds?
Because an AU is (correct me if I'm wrong) based on an Earth scale, I'd use light years.
Light years are also based on an Earth scale (year = the time it takes the Earth to go round the sun).
Suppose you're right, but we have planets with an earth similar year (like Scadrial) in the cosmere, and likely also ones with a similar distance to the center of their sun, so I guess it's sixes of one, half dozen of another.
With all the planet-moving, which era of Scadrial's year are we talking about?
Funnily, Peter once came to me with this exact same question. :) We'll canonize this eventually, with actual measurements. I think I'll wait until we have the charts ready to give any definitive answers on the size of orbits and the like.
In 2014, Brandon said First of the Sun - the planet in Sixth of the Dusk - is a minor Shardworld, in that it does not have a Shard present (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/103-salt-lake-city-comic-con-2014/#e1010). However, we've now gotten a WoB saying that Patji - the Father island - IS a Shard (https://wob.coppermind.net/events/256-oathbringer-london-signing/#e8606). Patji was a Shard, but isn't during SotD? Or did we finally get confirmation on that elusive "Survival Shard"? What do you guys think?
I stand by them. Though, as always, quotes and WoBs at signings aren't always as deliberately thought out as I'd like them to be. Answering questions on the fly can be challenging, and my phrasing can be bad in retrospect.
But no Shard was in residence on First of the Sun during the events of that story. The Investiture on that planet is residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium. Everything happening there could happen with or without a Shard present. Indeed, I would say that no Shard was ever "in residence" on First of the Sun.
The being called Patji still exists, and is a Shard of Adonalsium. Shards in the past have been interested in First of the Sun, and have meddled in small ways there. (Like they have on a lot of Shardworlds.)
Note that I might have been a little misleading in the first quote by bringing up Threnody, which is a real corner case in the cosmere because of uncommon events there.
That said, I'm sure that every story I write about a planet will bring up the quirks and unusual interactions of the magic there, because that's kind of what I do. (First of the Sun has its own oddities, as mentioned in Arcanum Unbounded.) Every planet is likely to end up as a corner case in some way, just like every person is distinctive in their own way, and never fully fits expectations.
I still consider one of the major dividing lines between "major" and "minor" Shardworlds (other than Shard residence) to be in strength of access to the magic, and control over it. I intend the minor Shardworlds to involve interactions with the magic as setting--coming back to spren, you could have a minor Shardworld with people who use, befriend, even bond spren. (Or the local equivalent--Seon, Aviar, etc.) But you'd never see power on the level of the city of Elantris, the actions of a Bondsmith, or even the broad power suite of a Mistborn.
But, as ever, the cosmere is a work in progress. The needs of telling a great story trump things I've said about what I'm planning. (I do try as much as I can to avoid having two texts contradict one another. And when they do, that's often a lapse on my part.)
Wait.
I'm confused.
So the Investiture on First of the Sun is associated with a Shard or is it residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium?
Cause the question was a follow up (on this) where you revealed that all Investiture in Cosmere got assigned to a Shard even if it wasn't part of a Shard.
And then you said that the one on First of the Sun is directly associated with one of the Shards (and since later you revealed Patji to be an avatar of Autonomy (also, what are avatars and how do they work?)) we took it to mean that at one point Autonomy Invested in First of the Sun.
But now you're saying it didn't?
If there was no Shard ever on First of the Sun but Patji is a Shard/avatar of a Shard then where is Patji, actually?
Could you please clarify all that?
So the Investiture on First of the Sun is associated with a Shard or is it residue, normal Investiture from Adonalsium?"
The reason I have so much trouble answering these questions (and you'll see me struggling to get an answer in the 10-15 seconds I have when someone asks me in a signing line) is because this isn't an either or. Is this computer I'm using matter associated with Earth, the Big Bang, or such-and-such star that went supernova long ago? Well, it's probably all three.
When people ask, "What Shard is this Investiture associated with" it gets very complicated. Shards influence and tweak certain Investiture, giving it a kind of spin or magnetism, but all Investiture ever predates the Shattering--and in the cosmere matter, energy, and Investiture are one thing.
I always imagine Investiture having certain states, certain magnetisms if you will, associated with certain aspects of Adonalsium. So it's all "assigned" to a Shard--because it's always been associated with that Shard. To Investiture, Adonalsium's Shattering meant everything and nothing at the same time.
We generally mean the term "Invested" to mean a Shard has taken permanent residence in a location, a kind of base of operations--but at the same time, this is meaningless, since distance has no meaning on the Spiritual Realm, where most Shards are. So imprisonment of a Shard like Ruin or Odium is a crude expression--but the best we have.
Autonomy never "Invested" on First of the Sun. But even answering (as someone else asked) if they created an avatar without visiting is a difficult thing to explain--because even explaining how a Shard travels (when motion is irrelevant) is difficult to manage. It's a subject that I intend to be up for debate, discussion, and argument by in-world philosophers and arcanists.
You can see why I have such troubles explaining these things at signings--and why I fail when I try to, considering the time limitations and (often) fatigue limitations placed upon me. These are concepts I intend to spend entire, lengthy epic volumes explaining and exploring.
Let's say you were Autonomy, and you have--through expanding and exploring your understanding--found a gathering of Investiture that has always been there, you always knew about, but still didn't actually recognize until the moment you considered and explored it. (Because even though your power is infinite, accessing and using that infinity is beyond your reach.) Were you "Invested" there? No, no more than you're Invested on Roshar, where parts of what were Adonalsium still exist that are associated with you (in the very fabric of matter and existence.) But suddenly, you have a chance to tweak, influence, and do things that were always possible, but which you never could do because you knew, but didn't know, at the same time.
And...I'm already into WAY more than I want to be typing this out right now. If it's confusing, it's because it's practically impossible for me to explain these things in a short span of time.
I'm going to leave it here, understanding that no, I haven't fully explained your question. (I didn't even get into what avatars are, what Patji was, and what happened to Patji the being--and how that relates to Patji the island.) But hopefully this kind of starts to point the right direction, though I probably should have just left this question alone because I bet this post is going to raise more questions than it answers...
You've confused things so much now. We thought we had a pretty good grasp of this whole Patji situation (Autonomy visited the planet at some point, got themselves all Invested and created an avatar which is called Patji by the locals).
Now you're saying no Shard has ever visited there? And that the pool would have existed if no Shard had ever interfered? But that Patji still exists and is a Shard?
Does that mean Autonomy edited First of the Sun from afar without actually going there? And that the pool would have already existed without any intervention? Does this mean it was associated with Autonomy from the beginning? I'm really confused now.
I don't believe I said no Shard had visited. I said no Shard was there during the events of the story.
Investiture on First of the Sun predates any Shards fiddling with it.
Shards have fiddled with it by the time of the story.
I think fandom might be going down too far a rabbit hole on this one.
Are you saying here that Patji is an avatar of Autonomy, or is it a separate Shard and not an avatar of Autonomy?
When I said Patji was a Shard, I was meaning Automony--but it is not quite that simple.
Take this post to mean "no, you should not be looking toward another Shard for Patji's origins. Autonomy is the one relevant." But Autonomy's relationships with entities like this (not sure entity is the right word, even) is complex. I'm not trying to confuse the issue, though.
Kelsier talks about a myth that seems similar to ours, about the grand maze of Ishathon, which seems to parallel to the labyrnth myth.
There are certain things from being a student of folklore, I know about certain myths that show up multiple times in different cultures, and I know how frequently myths show up in different cultures. So, I will frequently add in cosmere versions of these myths, knowing that different cultures on our world have spawned them independently, feeling it's likely they would spawn on-world in the cosmere. So, when you see a Cinderella myth, if I ever use it, which is the single most common myth throughout all cultures. I'm not saying "Oh, someone's been to Earth and found Cinderella." I'm saying, "People have developed this myth independently." But, yes, that is coming from my folklore background.
Is it a Scadrial-specific myth, or is it a kind of a cosmere cosmere...
This one, in specific, I believe is Scadrial-specific.
By the way, Kaladin's comment on Taln and Shalash's mental health makes me wonder: Are the Ten Fools based on the Heralds after they broke the Oathpact? Having 9 immortal, mentally ill people on Roshar for millenia seems like it'd have spawned some stories that could have eventually become stories of the Ten Fools. Taln wouldn't be included in this, but with Vorinism and the number 10, I imagine they'd have created something to oppose his virtues.
Also, I can't remember if this is confirmed or not, but on the topic of the Heralds' mental health, is it at all supernatural? Taln seemed to recover somewhat when Dalinar summoned the perpendicularity at the end of Oathbringer. So, is it just severe PTSD, or something supernatural is involved?
I've tried to make it clear in talking about the books that I separate what has happened to the Heralds and normal mental health. What they're suffering from is in large part supernatural--and has to do with the way souls (or Cognitive Shadows) work in the cosmere. So you are correct. This doesn't mean that some normal treatments wouldn't help them, but their core problem has a huge supernatural component.
And yes, there IS a relationship between the ten fools and the Heralds, though people on Roshar wouldn't be able to point it out.
Is the Heralds' madness related to and/or the same thing as the Fused's madness? The Stormfather mentions that each time one of the Fused is reborn, their mind is further damaged. Is it the same with the Herald? To many rebirths, possibly compounded by the fact that they not only often died each Desolation, but were tortured until the next one?
Yes, these two things are related. (There are some hints in Rhythm of War at how Hoid has avoided a similar fate.)
Note that the torture--and the many rebirths--are a big part of this. But their age is also a factor.
Does this mean that a certain Cognitive Shadow from the Mistborn series is fated to go insane?
Depends on a lot of factors. But the longer a Cognitive Shadow exists, the more likely these problems are.
Would this affect the Returned as well? What about those with a lot (like 8,000) breaths since they are not cognitive shadows.
Returned are Cognitive Shadows. In the Cosmere, there is no way to bring someone back to life, other than normal medical resuscitation, without using a Cognitive Shadow.
What about Dalinar? I thought he has had textbook PTSD, but the screams he continued to hear turned out to be magic.
Dalinar has a whole host of issues, not easily defined by a single definition. Assume, though, that his mental state is a normal response to, in part, supernatural occurrences.
The different for the Heralds is that they have conditions which could only truly exist in the cosmere, even if some of the manifestations and symptoms are similar to what could happen on Earth.
So is that implying that Hoid is a Cognitive Shadow, or is that just an effect of being really really old? Also does Vasher know about/how to avoid these effects? Probably an RAFO, but...
Come back to that question in about a month or so.
People were looking for a clarification on the spelling of Lumar, if you know the spelling.
L-U-M-A-R. I mean, I guess we've canonized it now, huh.
Isaac named it, I said "Hey, come up with a good name for this."
I can tell you, kind of, the process if people want to know about that. I put together some different things. "What are things that have resonance with The Princess Bride?" was one of the things, and I gave Brandon some options in that direction.
Which I didn't like many of.
There was maybe one or two that felt like it. It was sort of in a way, not tuckerization, but sort of an homage to the roots of the story. Those weren't working, so we just went to: what are common root words for things in the story that make it feel that way, and that's where we came up with Lumar. It was a little more straightforward and simple than some of the other names of planets in the Cosmere, and we liked that it felt like it worked with the main character.
And also the fairy tale feel of it. Naming this planet something like Scadrial didn't feel right to me either, because where this planet came from and the story and things like that, plus this is likely to be the name... A lot of these names, like if you translate in world, a lot of the characters would call their planet "the planet," right? They are not going to name their planet. So when a person--in most of the books when I translate them talking about Roshar, I'm translating them referencing the planet or their word for it in their own individual language, which is going to be different in everybody's language, just for convenience sake. And we felt that the root words of this are what people would latch on to in-world, in-universe for calling this planet. The two words mashed together, are very, uh, yeah.
I guess if you're on Roshar, you wouldn't be technically digging in the earth, you'd be digging in the Roshar.
Yes. Well, they don't have a lot of earth, but you know. If you use the word earthquake, right? I have chosen that I will use the word earthquake on all these planets even though none of them are earth. That's just how I'm translating, just add that filter that someone's translated this into English, and they've chosen the best word for your understanding, and we think that Lumar covers what they in-world would call this and evokes the same feeling.
Lines of Protection. Is the field generated once the line is completed? Or is it a progressive thing?
Almost everything that's going with this takes effect as the person's thinking of it taking effect. There is a mental connection. So, as you are drawing, until you are finished, there is nothing there; unless, sometimes, you want it to be. There is a direct link. The Rithmatist does have a magic that is consistent with cosmere rules. I decided not to set it in the cosmere primarily because I did not want Earth to be in the cosmere.
So how strongly consistent is it with <realmatic theory>?
I didn't keep myself completely to the rules. It could fit, but... don't take anything The Rithmatist does and apply it to the other books.
You actually mentioned at a signing I went to last year that the Rithmatist magic was going to be, like a cosmere thing, but you pulled it out. What about it wasn't working?
It wasn't the magic, it was the setting. I decided I didn't want Earth in the cosmere, even a alternate version of it. The magic still kind of works very cosmere-y.
The non-cosmere works/series are not related to each other or in the same universe.
Are the non-cosmere books related?
No, Earth is just generally non-cosmere, but they're not related.
Reading the BoM Ch. 2 preview, would "welch on a promise" be an idiom in a universe without Wales? Is Earth in the Cosmere?
All cosmere books are to be read as if translated to our language. The translation often uses our idioms to convey ideas.
Usually, you should assume if we didn't translate it directly, it's something that wouldn't work too well in English.
For instance, using the name of a city in the Roughs where people are thought to be like that.
Very clever, solves a lot of problems. BTW, what would the Scadrial version be? Roughsmen are less trustworthy, roughed?
I often consider using something in-world, but you have to be careful about how much jargon you use. It can be off-putting.
I'm getting "Taln's scar" tattooed on my right shin to cover a scar. Any input on the size/shape of the galaxy? (more than just the star map in the front of arcanum)
That's pretty cool! Well, Taln's scar is going to look different from different vantage points in the Cosmere. From the vantage point used on the Arcanum star map, it looks like a curved string of red stars. Elsewhere it's straighter. From some vantages, it will be horizontal, and others it will be vertical. There will be the sides of some planets that won't see it at all, kind of like how the North star isn't visible from the southern hemisphere of earth.
Are just the stars red? Is there cosmic space dust around them that's also red? Like a Nebula, but also red?
I honestly don't know if the stars are red or if there is space dust around them making them appear to be red. This is a question better asked of Brandon. However, I don't think you can go wrong making the stars red themselves as they appear on the chart, especially since most of the Cosmere views them as red, too.
Does Snapshot take place on the Reckoners' Earth, or one of the other Core Possibilities? (Based on the reading you did I would assume the latter, but it doesn't hurt to get confirmation on that).
It's one of the Other Core Possibilities.
The idea of going meta-series with Reckoners is to offer me the chance to play with quantum possibilities and alternate dimensions, which is something to cosmere's not set up to do. We'll see how big this one gets, but I'm fond of silver age comics, and the idea of alternate realities they explored. (Often in goofy ways because...well, silver age.) This also gives me a realm to do some magic, like the Epic powers, that I can hand-wave a little more, rather than confining everything to the structure of the cosmere.
The new book, Skyward. Is that a Cosmere--
It is not a Cosmere. I need to reference Earth in it for it to work the way I want it to, most likely.
If I were to guess: allo- would have its roots in the word allos (Greek for different, also the root of alloy), feru- would be ferrum (latin for iron), and hema- would be haima (Greek? for blood).
Yeah, I could mix traditions and linguistics a little and pass it off based on my theory of translation for the books. The construct is that the person translating them for us is looking for words that evoke the right feel in English, not for exact 100% accuracy. So she can mix greek and latin roots, play a little loose and free, to give the right vibe to the reader--when in the world, they would have a single in-world linguistic tradition.
Either way, you've popped out the right ones, though I want to say the last was hemat as a root.
Hang on a moment.... I always assumed that the translation effect from in-world language to English (or other Earth languages that allowed us to read the books) was more of a passive thing, almost like we are 'Connecting' to the stories which enables us to read the words that make sense to us.
Are you saying here that the process is actually by design? That someone (from the sounds of it Khriss) is somehow actively translating the events of the books and that's why we read them in our native language? Is this something that has been discussed before and I missed it?
I've always imagined a hypothetical translator into English, more as a writing construct (to explain certain things and the way I do things) than anything else. I wouldn't consider it canon, in that there is no Earth in the cosmere, but it's how I frame the process for myself. It's how I explain to myself that certain metaphors work and the like.
Steelheart and The Rithmatist, are they a part of the Cosmere as well?
They are not, yup.
Just someone in line said that Steelheart was Hoid's planet, but I thought that they were not part of it.
They are not part of it. Anything that mentions Earth is something that I didn't want to be in the Cosmere.
Are the graphic novels of Dark One still supposed to be prequels to the eventual television series? Or will the television series be an adaptation of the graphic novel?
If I get my way, television series is an adaptation of the graphic novel. Let me talk you all through the long history of Dark One. I, as you might know, I really like to take sort of modernist, deconstructionist looks at the epic fantasy core idea, the Hero’s Journey you might call it, the epic fantasy of it. And in a lot of ways, you might call this my foundational myth. The idea of the young man born to a peasant family who has a noble heritage, who goes on a question, becomes a king, gets magic objects, saves the world. Like, this is the story of the David Eddings, The Wheel of Time, Memory Sorrow and Thorn, Sword of Shannara. I read a ton of these works when I was a young man, and it is kind of the core fantasy myth of the ‘70s and ‘80s. Fantasy really doesn’t do as much of that anymore, ‘cause it was done quite a bit and quite well. But I really like looking at that and deconstructing it. It’s not religious, but it’s very similar to that for me, the thing that kind of is my origin as a writer.
So, like you see authors deconstructing, in the Middle Ages or even the Renaissance and later, the Adam and Eve story, you see me deconstructing the heroic journey in fantasy. Mistborn was doing this to an extent. And after doing Mistborn, I found that I really wanted to explore another version of this, and it started to take shape in my mind as just being called Dark One. Obviously a nod to The Wheel of Time, but also a nod to a lot of these stories that have the Dark Lord who is the antagonist of this sort of monomyth. And I really wanted to do a story about, “What if you found out that instead of being prophesied to be Harry Potter, there was a prophecy that you would become Voldemort. And how did you deal with that? And what did that do to your life?”
Well, I tried this story multiple times until I cracked it. The first version I can remember writing was in its own complete fantasy world, and was a Young Adult/Middle Grade attempt at it. This is because Harry Potter was one of the inspirations for it, so it had a very Harry Potter-esque sort of… I was kind of using some of J.K. Rowling’s prose constructions. Not, hopefully, plagiarizing them, but looking at how she wrote and trying to do something a little more light-hearted and whimsical, like hers. And it just did not work. Just completely flopped on its face. Though, it’s the first place that Pattern, that eventually ended up in Stormlight Archive, showed up. Something like Pattern. And I set that aside and left it for a few years.
A few years, I came back to it and said, “What if I did this as a portal fantasy?” Fantasy where you start on Earth, and then transition to the fantasy world. And I tried it again, and I got, like, two or three chapters in, and it still was not working. It felt better. I felt like it made a step forward, but I had not cracked it. It was still a Middle Grade story; young YA, old Middle Grade, kind of like where Alcatraz sits.
I left it alone again. Years later, this would be, like, 2014 maybe, I thought, “What if I tried setting this in the cosmere?” I moved it to the cosmere. Go three or four chapters in. And it still didn’t work. This is not unusual. I mean, this is the most unusual one for me in that it’s gone on the longest. But a lot of times, you try something and it just doesn’t feel right, doesn’t work. So I set it aside yet again.
And when I came back to it, the big change I made in my brain is that I’m like, “I think that the problem is that this is a book for someone who grew up reading these stories, but who is not still themselves a young person who hasn’t experienced these stories.” This story works way better if you share, kind of, in this foundational myth that I love so much. So that you can understand how it’s kind of trying to deconstruct it. And I realized I needed to write this as an adult property, not a Middle Grade. Or, if YA, it had to be old YA.
And that’s when I sat down and I wrote this treatment that really, finally, worked. When I say “treatment,” it is the plot outline, pretty detailed plot outline. And at that point, I decided it would probably work best as a television show. And I outlined it episode-by-episode. I went really into detail on all the characters and things, and it just sang to me. It worked; it really clicked. And that’s when I said, “Let’s try to get this made.”
So I took it to Hollywood, and there was a lot of excitement immediately surrounding it. Didn’t go anywhere, didn’t go anywhere… then, some things happened with Random House, my publisher, and one of the people that worked in their film department got ahold of the treatment and was like, “Wow, this is amazing. Let’s do something with this.” And then it just started to go “Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.” That is when I decided to do the graphic novel.
So, the graphic novel is taking my original outline for the TV show, which does include chunks of dialogue and things like that, and doing it as a graphic novel format. Meanwhile, the television show started to take on a different life. This was when Joe Michael Straczynski was brought on, and he had some things to add that are very cool. But the television show really started to drift away from the original property. So we’re still kind of in talks about how much this will look like the graphic novel. But the graphic novel kind of turned into the way to express my vision for what this would be.
I don’t know what will happen with the TV show. I honestly can’t say. Joe is great to work with. I really like Joe. I am hopeful that something very cool will come out of it. It might look completely different. And in fact, there’s a chance we will rename the project property Joe and I are working on into something else, and call it something else. Who knows. Hollywood is weird, as we probably all already know.
Regardless, this is my vision. Graphic novel is not the prequel. Graphic novel is the actual outline that I wrote, taken and adapted really faithfully. They did a spectacular job with this. They focus a little more on Mirandus. The actual outline has more with Lin, Paul’s mom, and Mr. Caligo. And they focused their attention a little more on Mirandus. It’s not like they added anything; it’s just that there was too much there, I think. (Because it was meant to be a full season of a television show.) And so they focused their attention there. But Lin is still in it. There’s still plenty, and the scenes that are still there are all ones I had in the outline.
If I do a novel, it would be the prequel to this. Because the prequel, not giving any spoiler stuff, would be the thing that would work in an epic fantasy novel sort of form.
There’s the short version of the long history of Dark One.
In the Arcanum Unbounded, it says that a Rosharan foot is longer than cosmere standard. How does that compare to an Earth foot?
Longer. Kaladin is almost seven feet tall, by our measurements. We've got a height comparison, Shallan is about six feet tall. She thinks she's short. Compared to us, she'd be on the taller end. That's why if you notice people from around the cosmere that show up, they're often mentioned as short. Not Hoid, who's able to use magical means to change how he's perceived, but someone like Felt, and stuff like that.
I was delighted to read in the forward to Arcanum Unbounded that the Cosmere was inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Robots/Foundation universe. Elijah, Daneel, Hari, and Dors are some of my favorite characters ever, but I was horribly disappointed by Foundation and Earth, our de facto endpoint for the series. Since you were so kind as to step in and finish Wheel of Time after Robert Jordan’s death, have you ever considered writing anything in the Robots/Foundation universe to bring us to a more satisfying ending?
Though I too had mixed feelings about Foundation and Earth, I have come around on it over the years--and like a lot of things about it. The ultimate evolution and implementation of the three laws being one of them.
I think every fan of the series has to come to terms with the differences between the two eras of Asimov's writing life, and the different themes of the two different "halves" of the Foundation series. Though I do prefer the tight early narratives, I can appreciate the more philosophical approach of the late narratives.
I could see myself contributing to a themed anthology of Asimov-inspired or in universe stories, should one happen. But I don't ever see myself doing anything like you mention, in part because Asimov had collaborators he worked with that have already been doing things like continue his legacy--and who are much better suited to it.
In all the Cosmere books, on all their worlds, the only thing <brazenly> different about the ecosystems than Earth are the things affected by magic. So, in one of the books, you mentioned, like, a dolphin. Why is everything the same?
So, there's an in-world answer and an out-of-world answer. The out-of-world answer is that every book has something we call a learning curve, so that is what makes it harder to get into the book. And learning curves, usually, if they're written well, have great payoffs, but also act like a brick wall when getting into your book. And so certain books, I have designed to have shallower learning curves, so you can focus on learning all these new characters, and the situations, and the political situation, but not have to learn entirely new terminology for the setting.
In-world, most of these worlds were created by people or... who came from an original world. For instance, there was a planet that the gods from Scadrial (the planet of Mistborn), they came from this world, and they created what they had seen there. So the animal life there, they just created in their own world, because that was what they had a pattern for.
So in-world, there's a reason, they're all connected. But you'll notice that some of the ones with the steeper learning curve are the ones that have the weirder world, and Way of Kings has the steepest.
On Roshar, the only area that isn't affected by the Highstorms, Shinovar, is basically like Earth, where everything else has changed.
That gives us a little bit of a frame of reference to contrast things with. There's some in-world things about that you'll learn eventually, but it gets us some ways for you to be like, "Oh. The grass looks like this because it is so different from the grass that this girl is pointing out. It's grass like ours." It's very helpful for establishing a conversation topic.
Is Skyward going to be part of the cosmere at all?
It is unrelated to the cosmere - since Earth is part of its history, and because certain elements of space travel are done differently.
