Otherland: Difference between revisions

If this sounds like a long synopsis, [[Doorstopper|wait until you read the books themselves]]. [[Tad Williams]] prides himself on the interweaving of [[Two Lines, No Waiting|multiple plot threads]] and [[Loads and Loads of Characters|enormous casts of characters]], and even more on having the reader actually care about what happens to them. This despite the fairly standard [[Cyberpunk]] setting and rather more pages than necessary spent on the way to each plot point. It's notable for having a fantastically diverse cast and treating them all with respect. The story could also be read as a [[Fantastic Aesop]] about the dangers of seeking [[Immortality]].

 

 

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* [[Blue and Orange Morality]]: The Other isn't so much evil as it is desperate and inhuman.

* [[Boarding School of Horrors]]: Felix Jongleur comes from an upbringing in one of these. Combine it with [[Kids Are Cruel]] to form his [[Freudian Excuse]] for being, essentially, the biggest bully in the world. Later, it turns out that the reason he selected Paul Jonas was because he went to the same school, in a mild form of revenge-by-proxy.

* [[Brain Uploading]]: This is the goal of the Grail Brotherhood, in order to cheat the inevitable deaths of their natural bodies. Ironically, {{spoiler|their attempt to do so fails utterly due to the interference of John Dread, while the characters who do end up getting their brains uploaded successfully are both protagonists, Orlando and Mr. Sellars}}.

* [[Breaking the Fourth Wall]]: The Nemesis program at one point does a [[Title Drop]] for the fourth book. It's easy to miss if you aren't paying attention.

* [[Cyberspace]]: An archetypal example.

* [[Cyborg]]: Mr. Sellars, who is enhanced not for [[Hollywood Cyborg|speed or strength]] but to be a living computer, able to connect to the 'Net with no external hardware. In a rare realistic treatment, this combined with the physical trauma he suffered earlier in his life leaves him a barely functional cripple.

* [[Death From Above]]: And how. {{spoiler|At the end, the Other crashes the satellite it is housed in into the headquarters of J Corp.}} The chapter in which this occurs is poetically titled "Star Over Louisiana".

* [[Deep-Immersion Gaming]]: Implicit in the VR game worlds, done quite a bit more seriously in Otherland itself.

* [[Doorstopper]]: [[Tad Williams]] continues in the tradition started with ''~Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn~''.

* [[The Dragon]]: Dread is this for Jongleur, though only because it gives him an outlet for his various homicidal and otherwise sociopathic impulses.

* [[Dream Apocalypse]]: Well, VR apocalypse. There's a fair amount of speculation by the characters as to whether the inhabitants of the simulation are truly alive, and hence whether destroying the simulation would be murder. {{spoiler|Fortunately, there's a way to [[Save Both Worlds]].}}

* [[Driven to Suicide]]: The Other had already been tortured and manipulated for decades, but it isn't until Dread gets hold of the system that it gives up all hope of saving anything of itself and chooses to {{spoiler|escape its own horrifying existence and take as many of its tormentors with it as possible on the way.}}

* [[Emergency Transformation]]: Via [[Brain Uploading]], for some characters whose physical bodies die.

* [[Encyclopedia Exposita]]: Sort of. Each chapter is prefaced with a short passage from a subscription news/entertainment feed, used as a [[Framing Device]] to establish a context for the larger world that the story takes place in. For example, the deaths of major characters may get mentioned in a subsequent chapter. The articles get increasingly creepy as the plot advances.

* [[Enemy Mine]]: Jongleur and the protagonists are forced to work together after he loses control of the system to Dread.

* [[Eternal Recurrence]]: Many of the virtual worlds in Otherland "reset" once they reach a programmed endpoint. This is appropriate, as they are intended to simulate games.

* [[Fan Disservice]]: See the trope entry. [[Brain Bleach|Nobody wants to type it twice]].

* [[Fantastic Drug]]: Charge.

* [[Fetus Terrible]]: Played horrifyingly straight.

* [[Fictional Video Game]]: Appropriately for a story about future Internet technology, games are abundant, especially full immersion VR games. The Middle Kingdom is the premier example, and several of the Otherland simulations are set up this way.

* [[Loads and Loads of Characters]]

* [[Magical Native American]]: !Xabbu is an African Bushman who was raised partly in the industrialized world; his "natural wisdom" plays a major role in solving some of Otherland's mysteries.

* [[Meaningful Name]]: John "More Dread" Wulgaru, on at least three separate levels:

** His mother, an Australian aborigine, gave her son the surname "Wulgaru" (a monster from their mythology) because she wanted to create a monster that would exact her revenge on the rest of the world.

* [[My God, What Have I Done?]]: {{spoiler|Sweet William, an 80-year old retiree, goes to Otherland after discovering that a person he had solicited for sex online is in fact 12 years old and is now in a coma. He wants to help her in order to apologize.}}

* [[Mysterious Informant]]: Sellars plays this role throughout most of the first novel, hiding clues to Otherland in out of the way places on the 'Net that he hopes the protagonists will stumble upon. Justified in that he's trying to recruit people to confront a multinational conspiracy that is well known for "disappearing" anyone who crosses them.

* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Dread. '' '''[[Complete Monster|DREAD]]''' ''

* [[Nebulous Criminal Conspiracy]]: The Grail Brotherhood, a group of financiers, corporate executives, drug lords, heads of state, and military leaders who unite for a single purpose: to cheat death.

* [[Point Defenseless]]: At the climax, it turns out that the J Corp tower, in addition to having a private military force, is equipped with surface-to-air missiles. {{spoiler|They prove woefully inadequate against [[Death From Above|what finally comes knocking]].}}

* [[Post Cyber Punk]]

** {{spoiler|In order to increase its "capacity", the Brotherhood harvested [[Human Resources|unborn fetal brains]] and stuck them in with the Other.}}

* [[Promotion to Parent]]: Renie is Stephen's de facto mother after their mother died in a fire and their father became a drunk.

* [[The Reveal]]: There are quite a few, but {{spoiler|finding out that the Other is a ''human being'' - namely, Olga's lost son - probably takes the cake.}}

* [[Running Gag]]: Sprootie and ''How to Kill Your Teacher'' are both running gags in the "Net feed news" [[Framing Device]].

* [[Shaggy Dog Story]]: !Xabbu shares Bushmen myths, and others [[Discussed Trope|point out]] that they have endings that don't relate to the beginning. Shaggy dog story within a story?

** A fair amount of the falling action and denouement are concerned with {{spoiler|the new artificial life that Sellars created}}, a plot point that seems jarringly irrelevant after everything that's come before, and is almost certainly intentional.

* [[Sugar Apocalypse]]: ''Twice''. First there's the battle in the cartoon-based world, then there's {{spoiler|Dread's reign of mayhem}}, culminating at the battle of the Well when the Other's [[Ugly Cute]] fairy-tale creatures get slaughtered.

* [[Staying Alive]]: {{spoiler|Orlando, who is brought back to life in a virtual avatar by the Other and then given his own [[Big Damn Heroes]] moment when he fights and defeats the avatars of Mudd and Finney at the Well}}.

* [[Talking Through Technique]]: Subverted. Mr. Sellars' chess game is just a chess game. It is, however, a front for his other covert activities.

* [[Technopath]]: John Dread's "twist"; a form of telekinesis that works at the level of individual electrons and allows him to manipulate computer systems.

* [[Team Mom]]: Renie, but not without a great deal of resentment from the others, who are (mostly) not kids.

* [[Their First Time]]: Renie and !Xabbu have three: one [[Mental Affair|purely mental]], one virtual, and one real.

* [[Theme Naming]]: The book titles all reference a key virtual environment from the book that the characters must navigate to or within.

* [[Those Two Bad Guys]]: Jongleur's two minions, Finney and Mudd, who gleefully torture both Paul Jonas and Avialle and whose online personas wreak havoc in Otherland.

* [[Tomboyish Name]]: In an inversion, "Sam" (''Salome'') Fredericks gave herself the apparently masculine name in order to disguise her gender from her online friends. Orlando is shocked to discover the truth.

* [[Torture Technician]]: Dread implies that he's one of these, at least as far as his [[Serial Killer|"hobbies"]] go. He is most certainly an expert at psychological torture.

* [[Ugly Cute]]: In-universe example -- the inhabitants of the world that the Other creates for itself are a mishmash of fairy tale creatures, often taken literally out of context, such as dwarves that consist of a head on top of a pair of legs.

* [[Unusual User Interface]]: Where to start? The VR environments of the 'Net can be accessed in a variety of ways, from the simple to the absurdly complex: a plain old flat screen, 3D goggles (both with "squeezers" for input), a mechanical framework that you strap into, full-body immersion in a pressure-sensitive gel, and for the rich, a direct neural implant. Within the 'Net, a combination of hand gestures and speech form the "programming" language. And some users go so far as to have custom interfaces designed for them, whether out of personal idiosyncracies or impatience.

* [[Villainous Crossdresser]]: {{spoiler|Dread poses as a female member of the group for a very long time. None of his true personality breaks out.}}

* [[The Watson]]: !Xabbu, whose ignorance of the 'Net provides plenty of opportunity for Renie to [[Justified Tutorial|explain how it works.]] Sam, sometimes. On the villains' side, Yacoubian and Dedoblanco function as this for the Brotherhood.

* [[What the Hell, Hero?]]: When Sellars' manipulation of the kindergarten-age Christabel Sorensen is discovered by her parents, they ''really'' let him have it.

* [[Win to Exit]]: When the protagonists come to learn that it is {{spoiler|the Other that is keeping them from exiting the VR environments of Otherland}}, they realize that they need to destroy or "rescue" it in order to get free.

* [[You Can Barely Stand]]: Orlando, much of the time, due to his illness.

* [[You Cannot Grasp the True Form]]: The Other appears this way online; in fact, the simulation devotes a lot of effort to forcing it into a semi-rational appearance to prevent the people who work with it from going crazy. [[Go Mad From the Revelation|It doesn't entirely work]].