Dave Wolverton (pen name: Dave Farland) wrote >100 hours a week in his early career, penning countless novels, including a nine-volume fantasy epic called Runelords that hardly anyone read. He taught writing at BYU and personally developed the careers of Brandon Sanderson and Stephanie Meyer, and was responsible for J. K. Rowling's global success. What did he get for all his effort? Does anyone know his name? He is already forgotten. He worked so, so hard. And his reward for all that work was a fatal subdural hemorrhage from falling down a flight of stairs. He was writing the tenth and last volume of Runelords when he died, and it will never be released because, unlike with Robert Jordan, his work did not gain wide enough appeal for an author to bother finishing it. You lose, good day sir, here is your subdural hemorrhage*, cheerio.*His little boy also got his head smashed in while on some excursion. Foreshadowing?
>>24093778Huh. Obscure post but I thought the exact same thing when he died. It wasn't really addressed by anyone in the fantasy community despite being a mentor to so many authors and helping with one of the most famous SF/F short story compilation series. Felt pretty sad about it.It's weird, too. Farland popped into my head the other day randomly and made me want to consider reading the Runelords someday. I guess we can at least remember him here. R.I.P. David.
>>24093778>and was responsible for J. K. Rowling's global success.Well, she was discovered by Barry Cunningham, a British editor for a British publishing house, Bloomsbury. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G8xoWbScB4&ab_channel=BBCNewsAnd Arthur Levine of Scholastic was important for subsequently "discovering" Rowling for purposes of bringing her work to America. But what is not clear to me is the relation between Dave Wolverton - who is also alleged to have discovered Rowling for Scholastic - and Levine. Does anyone know the details of this story? Who had priority of discovery for Scholastic's purposes? (Funded by the Vatican, it is a little-known fact that all Scholastic books have an Imprimatur, albeit inconspicuously placed in a virtually microscopic font.)
>>24094332Scholastic asked Wolverton to pick a book to push for the holiday season. He had a number of choices that year and selected Rowling. Had he not, it's conceivable Philosopher's Stone would not have gotten the momentum necessary for the six-sigma publishing event it became. I'm sure it would have still been popular, just not quite as possible. Matthew effects are real.
>>24094415not quite as popular*
Yeah and Edgar Allen Poe died in a gutter choking on his own puke, what's your point? Authors often get their success after their demise.
>>24094426Poe was already well-known. My point is that talent and hard work are vastly inferior to sheer luck, and the publishing world treats most of its writers like absolute garbage.
>>24094430Yes but most writers are garbage too. Besides, luck isn't random, it's a product of the quality of your character.
lol, nobody is owed anything. why does this distress you? as far as lives go, his was fine. at least he wasnt a ditch digger, or one of those guys who drive around in a pump truck sucking the shit out of portajohns on construction sites and fairgrounds
>>24094652Nah, his life was fucked. You don't know the kind of emotional pain he was in, especially in the last decade or so. The world is very hard on people.
>>24094653he could've been in pain and distress AND driving a septic truck.
>>24094663By your logic, we should only care about kids dying of horrible illnesses.
>>24094666Nah, I'm just pointing out the fact that you're owed nothing and you sound like a childish faggot when you complain about not getting recognition... and the fact that he lead a better life than the vast majority of humans makes it even more pathetic
Runelords sounds like a very generic title, I wonder if the book is as generic as the title
>>24094792seethe
>>24094893i dont know, you could argue it's a specific title. like what if it refers to guido von list type runes, frithian runes or whatever the euro runes were, a limited number of them and each lord has powers derived from one rune. it could literally be very specific and nongeneric
>>24094893It's a good series.
