The World of Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time is an encyclopedia for the bestselling The Wheel of Time epic fantasy series of novels by Robert Jordan about the unnamed world where the plot takes place, which is often referred by fans of the series as the World of the Wheel. It is published in the United States by Tor Books and in the United Kingdom by Orbit Books. The bulk of the text was written by Teresa Patterson based on notes and information provided by Jordan, who also serves as overall editor on the project. While the information in the guide is broadly canonical, the book is deliberately written with vague, biased, or even downright false (or guessed) information in places, as Patterson felt this would reflect a key theme of the series (the mutability of knowledge across time and distance).[1]
| Author | Teresa Patterson |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | The Wheel of Time |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Tor Books; Orbit |
Publication date | 6 November 1997 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (hardback and paperback), e-book |
| Pages | 304 (hardcover) |
| Followed by | The Wheel of Time Companion |
The book has been printed in several formats. The original release on 6 November 1997 was a large-format hardback with a predominantly white cover. This led to the book being dubbed 'The Big White Book' by fans. Some additional fans, citing poor quality of the internal illustrations, have dubbed the volume "The Big Book With Bad Art".[2] This edition of the book runs to 304 pages. The book was reprinted in a slightly different edition of the same size a year later. This edition has a different cover (a map of the Westlands) and the gallery has been expanded to include the cover of the eighth novel, The Path of Daggers, which was released at the same time. A large-format paperback edition followed in November 1999. On 6 June 2002 Orbit re-released the book as a 461-page mass-market paperback, stripped of all illustrations apart from the maps. This is the 'current' UK edition.
The book is an attempt to fill in the enormous backstory of The Wheel of Time novels and also serves as 'guidebook' to the world presented in the books. The original large-editions of the book were presented with full-colour art by Todd Cameron Hamilton and includes maps by Ellisa Mitchell, John M. Ford and Thomas Canty. The covers of the novels, painted by Darrell K. Sweet, were also included. The mass-market paperback editions only include the Mitchell, Ford, and Canty maps, however. The original artwork by Hamilton was fiercely criticised on release.[3]
The book consists of six sections, outlined as follows: