Otherlands: A World in the Making - A Sunday Times bestseller

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His proposed ability to immerse oneself fully in a simulation gives him a great deal of artistic freedom, and the story winds through alternate interpretations of many classical literary works such as Through the Looking-Glass, The Odyssey and The Iliad, The War of the Worlds, and The Wizard of Oz, which are available as entertainment simulations within the series. Orlando Gardiner, one of the main characters in the books, spent most of his teenage years in this world's equivalent to MMORPGs based upon J. R. R. Tolkien's fiction. The overall series's events also bear a strong resemblance to The Lord of the Rings. Mr. Sellars—a mysterious man kept under house arrest on a US Military base. He is responsible for recruiting people to infiltrate Otherland and uncover its secrets. Although mentally tortured by the danger to which he has submitted them, he affectionately refers to them as his volunteers and tries to aid them in every way possible. As they try to discover the motivations of the Grail Brotherhood—obviously not world domination, since they already control the world—they discover that they are unable to log off. They are trapped, and if they die in the network, they also die in real life. The series covers their adventures as they seek to uncover the truth and wake their loved ones from their comas. Halliday is a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. He has held research positions at University College London and the University of Birmingham, and has been part of paleontology field crews in Argentina and India. He holds a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship at the University of Birmingham, and is a scientific associate of the Natural History Museum. His research combines theoretical and real data to investigate long-term patterns in the fossil record, particularly in mammals. He was the winner of the Linnean Society's John C. Marsden Medal in 2016 [1] and the Hugh Miller Writing Competition in 2018. [2] McConnachie, James (January 30, 2022). "Otherlands by Thomas Halliday review — an extraordinary history of our almost-alien Earth". The Sunday Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 2022-08-28.

The Twins—two men, one monstrously fat and the other painfully skinny, who appear in different incarnations throughout the network. They pursue Paul Jonas relentlessly. Otherlands is an exceptional debut that can be savoured like a fine wine. I found myself reciting passages to anyone within earshot. Beyond a fascinating tour of extinct lifeforms, Halliday’s carefully crafted yet poetic descriptions of scientific concepts are a masterclass in spellbinding science communication. Emily 22813—a young woman originally thought to be a puppet who nonetheless is able to cross world boundaries. She is pregnant, and she claims that Azador is the father.Description of the specific location and time frame of each chapter within the book, "Otherlands." "Otherlands" & Thomas Halliday on climate change [ edit ] Otherlands is teeming with literary references. Do you have a favourite piece of fiction that considers the pre-human world? Book review: Otherlands: A World In The Making, by Thomas Halliday". www.scotsman.com. 2022-02-09 . Retrieved 2022-08-28.

The world on which we live is "undoubtedly a human planet", Thomas Halliday writes in this extraordinary debut. But "it has not always been, and perhaps will not always be". Humanity has dominated the Earth for a tiny fraction of its history. And that History is vast. We tend to lump all dinosaurs, for example, into one period in the distant past. But more time passed between the last diplodocus and the first tyrannosaurus than has passed between the last tyrannosaurus and the present day. A mind-boggling fact. This is a glorious, mesmerising guide to the past 500 million years bought to life by this young palaeobiologist's rich and cinematic writing Ben Spencer, Books of the Year, Sunday Times LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE •“One of those rare books that’s both deeply informative and daringly imaginative.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White SkyVivid . . . An intricate analysis of our planet's interconnected past, it is impossible to come away from Otherlands without awe for what may lie ahead.” — Independent Writing with gusto and bravado [...] Halliday has honed a unique voice... Otherlands is a verbal feast. You feel like you are there on the Mammoth Steppe, some 20,000 years ago, as frigid winds blow off the glacial front... Along the way, we learn astounding facts Steve Brusatte, Scientific American

In January 2012, Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to the Otherland novels. The producer of the planned feature film was set to be Dan Lin, and the script was to be written by John Scott III. [16] As of 2023, no news has surfaced about this adaptation and it is presumed to no longer be in production. Glaser, Joe (June 5, 2022). "Book review: 'Otherlands' ". Bowling Green Daily News . Retrieved 2022-08-28.

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The relevant references are collected paragraph by paragraph in endnotes. One minor annoyance is that Halliday omits the titles of journal articles, which I normally find the most informative bit. No doubt done to save space, I cannot imagine this will bother many people. A mesmerising journey into those vast stretches of Earth's pre-history that lie behind us, on such a scale that you experience a kind of temporal vertigo just thinking about it... [Halliday is] a brilliant writer, his lyrical style vividly conjuring myriad lost worlds... It's obviously a bit of a gamble choosing one's Book of the Year in March - but there's a very good chance already that mine will be Otherlands. Stunning Christopher Hart, Mail on Sunday A book of almost unimaginable riches . . .This is an utterly serious piece of work, meticulously evidence-based and epically cinematic. Or rather,beyond cinematic. The writing is so palpably alive.” — The Sunday Times (U.K.) Otherlands also offers us a vast perspective on the current state of the planet. The thought that something as vast as the Great Barrier Reef, for example, with all its vibrant diversity, might one day soon be gone sounds improbable. But the fossil record shows us that this sort of wholesale change is not only possible but has repeatedly happened throughout Earth history. Calliope Skouros—a Greek-Australian detective who is assigned a 5-year old unsolvable murder case. As she researches, she begins to notice similarities between this murder and the MO of a famous serial killer (Dread).

Cho-Cho—a 10-year-old street boy of Mexican descent who sneaks onto the army base while Christabel is trying to help Mr. Sellars. He becomes involved with Sellars's experiments. In this remarkable book, the award-winning scientist Thomas Halliday takes us on a tour of the landscapes, flora and fauna of the distant past." [7]Hideki Kunohara—a Japanese man of unknown allegiances who nevertheless owns private space on the Otherland network. Williams, Tad (2013), "The Boy Detective of Oz: An Otherland Story", in Adams, John Joseph; Cohen, Douglas (eds.), Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond, Las Vegas, NV: 47 North, pp.84–123, ISBN 9781611099041 Superb... [An] epic, near-hallucinatory natural history of the living earth... Dazzling Simon Ings, Telegraph Otherlands review: A fascinating journey through Earth's history". New Scientist. January 19, 2022.