Subject: JORDAN: A Foretelling (longish)

From: [email-masked] (Don Harlow)
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1993 20:27:47 GMT

The Foretelling is upon me, and I see the future of Jordan!

The series will be completed with the ninth book, released on 
Hallowe'en in 1997, and Robert Jordan will go on to become a 
moderately well-known author of regional lore with definitive works on 
the life and deeds of Francis Marion and the curative properties of the 
palmetto. Meanwhile, he will have left many loose ends dangling in the 
series, and TOR Books will sharecrop out Randworld to other authors 
(Robert Jordan & Mercedes Lackey, _Herald-Mages of Andor_; 
Robert Jordan & Piers Anthony, _The Magic of Seanchan_; Robert 
Jordan & Elizabeth Moon, _The Paladins of Illian_; Robert Jordan & 
Jerry Pournelle, _The Mercenaries of Shienar_).

rec.arts.books.jordan will _not_ be passed. Jordan discussion will 
spread out over the net, finding niches in groups as disparate as 
sci.kibology, soc.culture.california.oakhurst, alt.fan.piglet, 
rec.arts.sf.holovid. As use of the net continues to grow by 12% a 
month, postings will number in the millions every day, and it will 
become difficult for Pam Korda and Erica Sadun to keep track of them 
all. The FAQ will run to 1,377,914 lines, some five times as long as the 
series itself. The business sections of local newspapers will run long 
articles about Jordan on the net and its possible financial potential. 
Patrick Nielsen-Hayden will be forced to wear a surgically-installed 
pager and learn to do without sleep.

Some Jordan posters will create a new religion in which Jordan is 
deified. Some anti-Jordan posters will create a new religion in which 
Jordan is demonized. The FDA will investigate both groups, but they 
will nevertheless be given tax-exempt status. Jordan himself will 
continue to pay taxes. Thanks to a re-release of the original series 
in 2023 (the nine books in the series will occupy positions one 
through nine in the New York Times' hardback fiction _and_ hardback 
non-fiction lists for 33 weeks) Jordan's taxes will pay off 
approximately one-third of the twenty trillion dollar national 
debt. When asked how he feels about this, the 75-year-old author 
will sagely comment: "I feel great about it. Sometimes, I do." 
His wife will just sniff. There will be 2,272 college classes 
around the country with titles such as: "Existentialism in the 
works of Robert Jordan," and old-time Jordan fans will complain 
that "Jordan should get back into the gutter, where he belongs."

An interminable "Wheel of Time" holovid series, broadcast both at 
prime time and as a daytime soap opera, will make stars of a number 
of aspiring actors and actresses. The woman who plays Aviendha 
will go on to star as Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone With the Wind: The 
Turn of the Century." Perrin will grow pointy ears for episodes 
three through six, but will lose them when they prove not to be 
necessary for the series to succeed. A spin-off series, "Wheel of 
Time: The Next Generation" will not be quite as successful. "Wheel 
of Time" will also be the title of a popular game show.

The most popular women's style in 2031 will be "the Ajah look." 
Hotel and motel managers will strive to grow stout. A proposal to 
rename Charleston, South Carolina, "Caemlyn" will be narrowly 
defeated by the city fathers.

As physical storage systems reach their maximum possible size, net 
nodes will gradually be converted to biological systems -- brains cloned 
(by a fan of "Jurassic Park") from DNA discovered in a fossil of 
_dinosaurus obnoxius barneii_. The net itself will gradually become 
quasi-sentient -- this is a 21st century term used to describe any entity 
which is self-aware and capable of getting pissed off. The general 
attitude to this development will be, in 21st century parlance, "Shittin', 
bubo!" Unfortunately, due to the miserable state of the American 
educational system the first word will commonly be misspelled. Arthur 
C. Clarke's short story "Dial F for Frankenstein" will become popular 
again.

An outbreak of premature deaths among Jordan posters will be found 
to be the result of the currently used newsreader, Omni Media Multiply 
Addressing News Interpreter (OM MANI), whose killfiles are 
peculiarly efficient. Anti-Jordan fanatics will cheer this discovery. 
Surviving Jordan posters will withdraw from the net to a mountain 
retreat called Paradise (which they, too, misspell, being the products of 
the same miserable educational system as everybody else). There they 
will discover that it was all true, and teach themselves how to channel, 
a capability which they will genetically pass on down to their children 
(Lysenko was right!). This will be the start of the Age of Legends.

Some thousands of years later the descendants of these Jordan posters 
will attempt to open a new account on the net ... and the rest is history.

-- 

Don Harlow			[email-masked]
Esperanto League (Info only)    (800)828-5944 or [email-masked]
Turnig^as la Rado de la Tempo, 
kaj postlasas multajn vojkadavretojn. (Lau^ Robert Jordan)