I wrote in an email recently that I have so far refused to watch Lost because the series is being strung out by the writers so that it lasts as long as is profitable, rather than as long as the story goes on for. I call it CMF: Cascading Mysteries Failure. It’s when a popular mystery series widens its scope and produces more episodes in order to keep the gravy train rolling, usually by clearing up one original mystery while introducing five new ones. The show thus begins to sprawl, the plot becomes slack, and the fans become frustrated at being continually teased without any payoff. It happened to Twin Peaks, it happened to The X-files, and from my distant vantage point, it looks like it’s happening to Lost.

Of course, the fact that I’ve watched precisely zero episodes means that I’m not exactly the world’s greatest Lost fan, so this diagnosis may be completely wrong.

I mention CMF to note the passing of Robert Jordan, writer of epic fantasy. Someone I knew in Brazil (who I believe was called Conrad) tried to get me into the Wheel of Time books, and I always put off reading them because of the less than rave reviews of the later books in the series. I didn’t want to put a lot of time and effort into reading a gigantic fantasy cycle if I would be forced to read bad books to find out how the story ends. Well, it seems the story ended on September 16th 2007 when Jordan died, taking the unfinished final book of the series with him. It may be finished posthumously, as Jordan himself may actually have intended (he gave extensive notes to his confidantes during his illness), but it’s not the same; if the fans merely wanted plot points, they could have read the Wikipedia summary.

So am I ever going to read the, by all accounts excellent, first two books of the Wheel of Time? Unlikely.