WORDS
Recently I heard that the long-awaited final book to The Wheel of Time - delayed by the author's death - was being split into three books by the new author. I was intrigued by this as I had caught wind of Robert Jordan's promise to his fans to keep the finale to one volume, even if it meant running to 2000 pages or more hardcover, so I've recently discussed the matter a bit more with some friends and did some looking-up on the Internet.
Here is Brandon Sanderson's blog entry about the ballooning length of the last book. In it he reveals that he felt he was "only about halfway done" after hitting 400,000 words. Now, that's a big number, but how much is 400,000 really? Like I said, I did some looking-up: here are some other numbers.
2001: A Space Odyssey - a paltry 61,487 words. Well, that's not a very big book anyway - Clarke tends to write pretty easily readable material. Before we kick it up to the big tomes of sci-fi, let's see what fantasy godfather J.R. has for us:
The Fellowship of the Ring - ~177,000 words
The Two Towers - ~143,000 words
The Return of the King - ~134,000 words
The volumes of the Lord of the Rings, individually, are relatively easy to swallow. Alright, let's see what one of the grandmasters of sci-fi lore has for us:
Dune - a meaty 185,723 words. Dune is often considered a pretty thick book and a long read; Herbert can really bore in on certain things when he wants to. But we're still nowhere near the average Wheel of Time episode. Also, most of (if not all of - I couldn't find complete data) the following sequels to Dune were shorter than the first.
The Eye of the World - ~305,000 words. The first of the Wheel of Time books, and is (I am told) typically considered one of the best and quickest-paced of all the series. We've taken a big leap here. Let's take a look at one of the crazy ramblers of sci-fi...
Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard - 387,953 words. This is probably the last half-decent thing Hubbard wrote before completely succumbing to mental illness and depravity. Hubbard technically wrote a massive 1M+ word novel called Mission: Earth, but it's considered a trainwreck abortion, so I won't count it. This is about as big as sci-fi generally gets.
The Shadow Rising - at ~393,000 words, this is the longest Wheel of Time book to date. We've just about hit the halfway mark for Sanderson's estimate on the length of the finale.
The Lord of the Rings - the whole thing weighs in at about 454,000 words. Any two Wheel of Time books will still outweigh it. Alright, let's get really brutal.
War and Peace, as translated in English, comes in at "over 560,000 words". This book is generally regarded as "that really huge book that is intimidating in its size". But we're still not close - you could fit Dune and then some in the space between this book and the Wheel finale.
Atlas Shrugged - at about 645,000 words, Ayn Rand really could not fucking shut up about her retarded anti-social beliefs, at one point inserting a fifty page speech by one of the characters. And yet, we could still fit one of the latter volumes of The Lord of the Rings between here and the finale.
The Bible - "just under 775,000", for both Testaments.
It really doesn't get much bigger than that. Wikipedia claims that the longest and second-longest published English novels are Mission Earth at ~1.2M words, by L. Ron Hubbard (which is by non-Scientologist accounts a piece of shit), and Sironia, Texas at ~1.1M words. There are a handful of books above 800,000 words, but it would appear as though the finale to The Wheel of Time will, if counted as one big novel, be one of the biggest English books ever published.
Robert Jordan probably would not have gotten his way; I cannot see even him being able to bully publishers (and the bookstores) into printing and selling an 800K+ word book. At 250 words a page that would run to over three thousand pages.
Here is Brandon Sanderson's blog entry about the ballooning length of the last book. In it he reveals that he felt he was "only about halfway done" after hitting 400,000 words. Now, that's a big number, but how much is 400,000 really? Like I said, I did some looking-up: here are some other numbers.
2001: A Space Odyssey - a paltry 61,487 words. Well, that's not a very big book anyway - Clarke tends to write pretty easily readable material. Before we kick it up to the big tomes of sci-fi, let's see what fantasy godfather J.R. has for us:
The Fellowship of the Ring - ~177,000 words
The Two Towers - ~143,000 words
The Return of the King - ~134,000 words
The volumes of the Lord of the Rings, individually, are relatively easy to swallow. Alright, let's see what one of the grandmasters of sci-fi lore has for us:
Dune - a meaty 185,723 words. Dune is often considered a pretty thick book and a long read; Herbert can really bore in on certain things when he wants to. But we're still nowhere near the average Wheel of Time episode. Also, most of (if not all of - I couldn't find complete data) the following sequels to Dune were shorter than the first.
The Eye of the World - ~305,000 words. The first of the Wheel of Time books, and is (I am told) typically considered one of the best and quickest-paced of all the series. We've taken a big leap here. Let's take a look at one of the crazy ramblers of sci-fi...
Battlefield Earth, by L. Ron Hubbard - 387,953 words. This is probably the last half-decent thing Hubbard wrote before completely succumbing to mental illness and depravity. Hubbard technically wrote a massive 1M+ word novel called Mission: Earth, but it's considered a trainwreck abortion, so I won't count it. This is about as big as sci-fi generally gets.
The Shadow Rising - at ~393,000 words, this is the longest Wheel of Time book to date. We've just about hit the halfway mark for Sanderson's estimate on the length of the finale.
The Lord of the Rings - the whole thing weighs in at about 454,000 words. Any two Wheel of Time books will still outweigh it. Alright, let's get really brutal.
War and Peace, as translated in English, comes in at "over 560,000 words". This book is generally regarded as "that really huge book that is intimidating in its size". But we're still not close - you could fit Dune and then some in the space between this book and the Wheel finale.
Atlas Shrugged - at about 645,000 words, Ayn Rand really could not fucking shut up about her retarded anti-social beliefs, at one point inserting a fifty page speech by one of the characters. And yet, we could still fit one of the latter volumes of The Lord of the Rings between here and the finale.
The Bible - "just under 775,000", for both Testaments.
It really doesn't get much bigger than that. Wikipedia claims that the longest and second-longest published English novels are Mission Earth at ~1.2M words, by L. Ron Hubbard (which is by non-Scientologist accounts a piece of shit), and Sironia, Texas at ~1.1M words. There are a handful of books above 800,000 words, but it would appear as though the finale to The Wheel of Time will, if counted as one big novel, be one of the biggest English books ever published.
Robert Jordan probably would not have gotten his way; I cannot see even him being able to bully publishers (and the bookstores) into printing and selling an 800K+ word book. At 250 words a page that would run to over three thousand pages.