Theoryland of the Wheel of Time

Tucker asks, "Will you ever write a book or series where different magic systems come into the same world?"

Where different magic systems come into the same world. Um...I have already.

17TH SHARD

(confused) Published novels?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes.

17TH SHARD

I mean like different magic systems from different worlds.

BRANDON SANDERSON

That's what I said.

17TH SHARD

He's being really clever about this, Eric.

Eric

Okay, okay, sorry.

BRANDON SANDERSON

You're asking if I'll do it obviously.

17TH SHARD

(laughs)

BRANDON SANDERSON

Where that's the focus of the novel? Someday I might. Right now I've been planning in the back of my head, but I'm not sure if I'll do it. See, here's the thing: I like all of this stuff to be behind the scenes; I don't want any reader to walk up on the shelf and pull it out and feel like they are completely lost because they have to read 27 Sanderson novels before this one makes sense. And so that would be my hesitance in ever doing that. But I already have in very subtle ways. And if were going to do a conflux book, I might just post it on my website. I don't know, I'm not sure. It depends on how popular the things are and whatnot. But, I don't think I want to do that to my casual readers.

17TH SHARD

Right, they wouldn't have any of the background.

BRANDON SANDERSON

Right, they wouldn't have any of the background. Thing is, some of the magic systems do cross worlds, and have before. And that has not happened obviously; you haven't really seen it. Right now Liar of Partinel [an unpublished book —ed] and Stormlight Archive share a magic system, because with the unifying theory of magic there's a certain number of things that magic can do, and there's a lot of different ones, but when they get similar they tend to work in the same way. So Lightweaving shows up in both books. I may change that for Liar of Partinel, but it's kind of integral to that book and it's kind of integral to Stormlight Archive right now too. This is one of the reasons why I had to decide to do either Dragonsteel or Stormlight Archive as the big epic.

Some of the magic systems have been discovered on different planets, and some of them do work. A lot of them don't, but some of them do. It depends on your spiritual DNA, what people are able to do, and things like that. But, if you find a way to do illusion magic in one of my worlds it's going to work pretty much like Lightweaving, regardless of which planet you're on. If that makes sense.

You have said previously that the Stormlight Archive will include Lightweaving. Is that still the plan?

Yes.

FIRE ARCADIA

Have we seen a Roshar native in The Way of Kings who can use Lightweaving?

BRANDON SANDERSON

Yes, we have seen someone who has potential.

FIRE ARCADIA

He seemed to be trying to say that they didn't know that they can use it.

Just got back, asked a few questions. Please note that these are super paraphrased, but I did see someone's IPhone on the table, so we hopefully have a transcript!

Question

Have we seen another Lightweaver?