Tad Williams

Author Essay on Otherland I always have a hard time explaining Otherland. In today's book world, where people (especially on the sales and marketing end) usually want a description in a few words, leading to a neat category, it gets called things like "cyber-fantasy," "science-fiction virtual reality epic," and other even more hard-to-wrap-your-brain-around titles. It is science fiction, with ideas about the world that's coming soon, the future of the Net, and the shrinking distance between humans and their creations, but it's also an epic fantasy, and the virtual universe I've invented is mostly an excuse for high adventure of the getting-chased-by-monsters variety. (Although this is perhaps the weirdest and most diverse collection of monsters ever featured in one story.) Given the chance, even as an adult approaching the end of his second decade as a writer, I still really, really enjoy having people chased (and occasionally eaten) by monsters. In Otherland, a group of everyday citizens stumbles onto a disturbing but well-hidden truth: Children all over the world, but especially those who are users of the Net (a vastly expanded version of our own Internet, which has replaced television, telephones, and most other communication media with a single worldwide system), are falling into deathlike comas. Renie Sulaweyo, a young South African teacher whose brother is one of the victims, begins to investigate, along with her student !Xabbu -- one of the last of the Kalahari bushmen. Behind this worldwide outbreak lies the shadow of a network unlike any other -- a virtual reality universe built by a group of the world's wealthiest and most ruthless people, the Grail Brotherhood. With the help of some unusual friends, Renie and !Xabbu manage to break into the Brotherhood's secret project, entering the Otherland network. As Renie and others discover, Otherland itself is astonishingly sophisticated, its virtual reality simulations so realistic that experiencing them is just like real life -- except that real life was never so strange. With nearly unlimited budgets, the Brotherhood have built playgrounds for themselves from every point in history, literature, and imagination -- entire worlds of the past, perfect evocations of things only mentioned in books, environments as strange and original as Saturday morning cartoons. But the network and its ultimate purpose is a secret, and the Brotherhood have already proved themselves capable of murder to keep it that way. To the horror of Renie and her companions -- the sick teenager, Orlando Gardiner, who has honed his skills in dragon-and-dungeon fantasy games; the blind researcher, Martine; and the mysterious amnesiac, Paul Jonas -- they discover that once inside the Otherland network, they cannot go offline again. They are trapped in a universe of fantastical worlds, and the countless dangers they face, although computer-generated, are now terrifyingly real. In the first book, City of Golden Shadows, Renie and the others find their way into the network. River of Blue Fire, the second volume, tells of their dangerous journey through the network along the river that ties the simulations together and deepens many mysteries. Volume three, Mountain of Black Glass, not only brings Renie and the others closer to solving the riddles of Otherland but also brings them face to face with the Other, the network's greatest riddle, and reveals their true and most deadly enemy. In the fourth and final volume, Sea of Silver Light, a number of surprising truths will be revealed, not only about the fate of the characters but also about the fate of all humankind. Plus, I promise, there will be several more interesting monsters... -Tad Williams Top