Which one will you focused more in the future, the Heralds or Radiants?
I feel that I should probably RAFO this one. We are going to delve into the Radiants as orders a lot. But the Radiants as individuals? Depends on what you mean. Kaladin is well on the path toward becoming one of them, though he’s not one yet, as Teft is quick to point out. So if you mean focusing on actual Knights Radiant, we’ll have to see if anyone actually manages to become one.
The Heralds are integral to the entire story, which is why the Prelude focuses on them. Since someone showed up at the end of the TWOK claiming to be one of them, I think you can obviously expect some attention to be drawn there. Who each of the Heralds are and what their natures were is important.
Will we see more philosophical discussions like those between Jasnah and Shallan?
These questions are very important to Shallan and Jasnah and to an extent other characters such as Dalinar, so you will indeed see much more of this. I wouldn’t include it if it weren’t very important to the characters. And what’s important to the characters has a strong influence on what’s important to the plot.
If what happens at the end of TWOK Part Five with Dalinar is to be believed, then there is a very interesting theological conundrum to this world. Something claiming to be God claims also that it has been killed. Which then in some ways leaves someone who is atheist right, and yet at the same time wrong. When Jasnah and Dalinar meet, you can expect some discussion of what it means to be atheist if there was a God and God is now dead. Or will she say that obviously wasn’t God? Those circles of thought are very fascinating to me and to the characters.
Are the “Ten Fools” the antithesis of the ten orders of the Knights Radiant?
Ten is a number of mythological import in the world. The Ten Fools are, essentially, the opposites of the Ten Heralds–who each represented an ideal. (Those ideals were later adopted by the orders of Knights Radiant, so yes, there is a connection–but there’s a step between them.)
You said it was because of your work on The Wheel of Time that you were able to do this story justice. What did you mean?
Wheel of Time forced me to stretch as an author and it forced me to learn to juggle multiple viewpoints. I hadn’t had a lot of practice writing sequels or planning sequels, and then I had to write the twelfth book in a fourteen book series. This taught me a lot about working with sequels. Also, seeing what Robert Jordan did for foreshadowing really taught me a lot about how to foreshadow across a big long epic. But I would say mostly it’s just juggling the viewpoints, learning how to make sure all the characters are making appearances and we’re enjoying them all and everything is balanced all without losing track.
I’m confused about the passage of time in the Stormlight Archive. Can you help me convert things to Earth equivalents?
A Rosharan year is 500 days and each day is about 20 hours, so the Rosharan year is about 1.1 Earth years.
Would it be possible to have a Shardgun (Shardblade in the form of a gun)?
RAFO!
Are the Parshendi living computers, and are Spren variables in a computer system?
Excellent question. I would say no. I don’t think of them that way. But I have considered this idea, and there is a place in the Cosmere where people are using Spren, not Spren but something similar on another planet, for a little bit of computation, which I want to be able to write that story someday, but it’s a very fun thing that I dug down a rabbit hole in one time. So, you might see this somewhere in the Cosmere. But it’s not actually Roshar. I wouldn’t call them that.