I happened to read an old review of the Wheel of Time book saga, where the reviewer dismissed the massive work by saying all Jordan did was string together stories like The Lord of the Rings and Dune.
That made me laugh because that was sort of the point — an iteration of previous tales, stringing them together to create his world. No, Jordan didn’t copy those books. He simply paid homage to writers he loved, though there could be more similarity than maybe he intended because he used a lot of same sources as did those authors. What he did do, during the ten years he spent researching his world before writing one single word of the first book, was . . . well, research. He researched world myths, legends like King Arthur, folklore, history, costume, culture, war. Then he broke all that up into little pieces and rebuilt his world from those fragments of our past and an imagined future. There are few if any direct parallels to our word but instead there are multiple parallels for each character and culture.
For example, a lot of people think Jordan’s warrior culture, the Aiel, is based on the Fremen from Frank Herbert’s Dune since both are desert-dwelling warrior cultures, and perhaps Jordan did give a nod to Dune, but Jordan’s warrior culture is an amalgam of Zulu, Bedouin, Apache and Japanese cultures, and maybe some others. Their looks (pale skin, light hair, and light eyes) and their system of clan and sept is a parallel of old Scottish and Irish clans and septs. The Aiel are further connected to the Irish through the Tuatha’an, a Wheel of Time culture named after The Tuatha Dé Danann. And something I just discovered — their system of ownership, where women own the houses and everything in them, comes from the Cherokees. (In case you’re wondering, this puzzle aspect of the books is one of the reasons I keep rereading. It’s fun for me to dig out all the references.)
Jordan said over and over again that he wanted his world to be both our past and our future. As he pointed out, “You can look two ways along a wheel.” Also in his world, what goes around, comes around so that the characters in the books are the source of many of our myths and legends and we are the source of many of theirs. He said he wanted to explore what the nature and sources of our myths might be.
His explanation for why the myths and even the histories that the characters experience in The Wheel of Time are so different from ours is that what is remembered and how it’s remembered changes throughout the ages, like the game of Whisper, or Telephone, or Gossip, where someone passes a secret to the next person, who passes on what they heard to the next person, and in the end, what results is generally unlike what was originally said. His point was that things change over time, that stories change, that names change.
He points this out at the beginning of the first chapter of every book: “The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.”
When asked where he got the idea of a wheel, he said, “The name comes out of Hindu mythology, where there is a belief that time is a wheel. Many older cultures believe that time is cyclic, that it repeats. In fact, I believe the best thing the ancient Greeks gave us was (the idea) that time was linear and change was possible.”
That’s for sure! There is a fatalism to the books stemming from the wheel, where everything will be repeated when the wheel comes around again, though perhaps with minor differences. Which also gives them their belief that you can change your life in small ways, but not large ones. Not an easy philosophy to live under.
But I’m getting away from my original point: to say that Jordan strung a bunch of stories together is true. Sort of. But it completely negates the brilliance of the world he created — our distant past and perhaps our distant future.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.
Bertram's Blog 
The “R” Thing
February 19, 2026 — Pat BertramI don’t know if I’ll ever post this because of . . . you know, the “R” thing. Still, I’m writing this for me because I think it’s interesting and because it’s something I’ve been noticing and thinking about.
I mentioned once or twice before that I sometimes listen to conservative black commentators. I started because I wanted to hear what they thought about white liberals insinuating (if not flat out saying) that blacks were too stupid to figure out how to get an ID in order to vote. Interestingly, most of those commentators ignored the issue, as if it had nothing to do with them because of course, it didn’t. The insinuation is merely talk from people who haven’t a clue what they are saying and no concept of how the world works.
I continued watching these commentators because they are smart and informed, they have great sources and resources, and they gave me a different slant on what was happening in this country. I especially wanted to hear things from their point of view rather than from the white liberals who are always telling us what blacks think (or what they should think).
That’s neither here nor there. It’s just something I did. But here’s what’s interesting: suddenly, I’m seeing a lot of these non-white people asking, “Where are the whites?” You’d think (if you listened to liberals) that living in a white-free world is what people of color want, but it isn’t. These commentators want what most of us want — to be known as Americans (or rather, United-States-ians since “American” suddenly means something different from what it always has meant), and they want to be part of a country where the races can intermingle. The first time I heard a mention of disappearing whites was from a black commentator who reviewed the half-time show. She said if it was supposed to be inclusive, “Where are the whites?” And then she admitted she missed seeing them.
Another black woman said that if it’s okay to promote black-owned business, then it should be okay to promote businesses as white-owned, but instead of doing either, she concluded, all these businesses should simply be promoted as “American-owned businesses.”
Then another black commentator noticed a white student being blocked from entering a “multi-cultural” area on campus and pointed out that “multi-cultural” by definition would include whites.
And yet another black commentator mentioned the difference between black pride and white pride — one is hailed as a good thing, the other evil.
And one often tells the history of slavery and mentions that whites are the only ones who fought to get rid of slavery, a practice that has gone on all over the world for thousands of years.
A prevalent comment left on these videos is from whites telling them they are betraying their race. Luckily, the commentators continue to voice their opinions despite this.
It seems ironic (or maybe fitting? I don’t know) in a world that’s trying to erase whites, where whites are made to feel ashamed of their heritage and skin color, where you can’t state simple facts if those facts include “whiteness,” where the European influence on the founding of this country is being overwritten, where an entire generation of white boys have been demonized for things that happened before they were born, it’s blacks who are pointing this out.
Maybe I am that “R” thing as so-called friends on Facebook once railed at me when I merely shared a post by a conservative black commentator who refused to be told what to think simply because her skin was a certain color.
Still, I think it’s an interesting turn of events, and apparently, since you are reading this, I decided it was interesting enough to post here on my blog.
***
Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.