A few words about the pages

My Robert Jordan pages have been around for quite some time now, and I started to realise that I had trouble remembering in which order things appeared and when. I also thought it would be a nice idea to do some sort of "mission statement" - what I put on these pages, how I do it and so on.

Mission statement

Mainly, this is an archive for what I've written to rasfwr-j, or those texts of other people that I think should be made available in a more permanent way. I don't take submissions for archiving stuff. Post it to rasfwr-j instead, and I'll (hopefully) find it of interest and ask you if you want me to archive it.

Links are handled pretty much the same way. Frankly, I don't have the time to spend updating and checking oodles of links, especially not when we already have Pam Korda's excellent Wheel of Time Index.

Don't ask me about so-called "mutual linking" ("If you link my page, I'll link to yours"). IMO, the whole idea is at odds with the concept of the web, and promotes quantity over quality. If I find a page that has original and interesting content of some quantity and quality, is written using acceptable HTML and fits within the framework of my page(s) I will link to it - no questions asked.

I also host the Swedish Darkfriend pages, for which somewhat different rules apply.

A brief history of the pages

With apologies to Stephen Hawking. Everything is more or less by memory, with some help from Deja News, so let me know of any errors.

I started on these pages some time in early spring 1995. At that time I had far-reaching plans of hypertextualising all of the glossary entries and putting them on the web. After some consultation with Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor Books I stopped that project. In hindsight I'm glad I did, I simply didn't know enough text processing and HTML at the time, it would've been a pain to keep it up-to-date and it would've consumed far too much of my precious disk quota.

But by May 1995 I had at least an early draft of the White Tower Conflict as well as plot summaries by Craig Cassar for TEotW, TGH and TDR. Not much, but there weren't very many WoT pages by that time either. Pam's index didn't exist, and the only art gallery that existed was (I think) Novak's.

Shortly afterward Robert Jordan visited Stockholm and the East of the Sun fantasy convention, and read aloud from the then un-published prologue of ACoS. The reports from the convent and summary of the prologue became a major draw for my pages, and also prompted a minor spoiler flame war on rasfwr-j. The rest of the summer of 1995 was productive too - I wrote my article on Norse mythology, the one exploring roles of Rand, Mat and Perrin and a first draft of my entry of my ACoS prophecy, meant for the A Crown of Plots Contest.

Well, the article on Rand, Mat and Perrin wasn't webbified until over half a year after it was written.

By autumn 1995 my pages had reached a fairly stable state, with the article on Norse mythology, Craig's plot summaries (now joined with the summary for TSR) and the CoS prologue summary as the main attractions. I used the first verse of the prophecy for an image header.

After that, not much happened. A few new pages appeared, but the next major thing came during early autumn 1996. I made a big overhaul of all the pages moving to HTML 3.2, and the welcome page received its by now familiar animated icons. During spring 1997 I moved all the pages into its own directory, something I should have done from the very beginning. But there are still lots of pages pointing to the old locations even six months afterwards, judging both by my own searches and the access logs. *sigh* But as of October 12 1997, I deleted all the pointer pages. Serves them right.

The next overhaul spawned this page and happened in September 1997. I cleaned up the links section, removed some old pages, gave the East of the Sun a dedicated page and the welcome page a face-lift. But the biggest thing was the beginning of the move to HTML 4.0 and Cascading Style Sheets, a move which I have now (October 1998) completed by going from HTML 4.0 Transitional to HTML 4.0 Strict. Hopefully this means an end to the large technical-style updates. Read more about my usage of style sheets.

In early December 1997 the next big thing happened - Tor Books demanded that I remove The Far Snows Dance, my take of when Rand and Aviendha made love in an igloo in The Fires of Heaven.

At this moment (October 1998), this archive has some 25 pages, with the plot summaries, my treatise on Asmodean's death, and the article on Norse mythology as the major draws. In addition there are a few pages for the Swedish Darkfriends. The main page is in the top-ten of the most visited pages at DSV. I'm quite proud of it all.

Soap box (aka the icon collection)

These pages have received the

They are (or at least should be)

They make use of

Copyright statement

Any and all quotations belong to Robert Jordan or to the author of said quotation, if specified. The pages with a specified author are copyrighted to said author. All other text is copyright © Karl-Johan Norén.

Karl-Johan Norén, kjnoren@hem3.passagen.se
My Robert Jordan page
Last modified/Senast ändrad: 28 Dec 1999