He is the author of several fantasy and science fiction novels, including Tailchaser's Song, the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, the Otherland series, and The War of the Flowers.

Blue Dog Anchorite informs the others that Otherland was specially commissioned by a cryptic organisation known as the " Grail Brotherhood ", comprising some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men and women, and that he is the only surviving member of the team who devised Otherland's security, his colleagues having died in unusual circumstances.

Even as the group flees Temilún, one of their " sims " – simulation bodies – is secretly taken over by John Dread, a murderous young man who directed the Grail Brotherhood's assault on the Atascos and who now seeks to learn about Otherland to his own advantage.

He is responsible for recruiting people to infiltrate Otherland and uncover its secrets.

* Orlando Gardiner — a young boy suffering from progeria who is drawn to Otherland while playing a virtual reality MMORPG called Middle Country, in which he is the Barbarian hero Thargor.

* Singh — Known better by the name Blue Dog Anchorite, who is the only surviving member of the group of technicians that designed Otherland and a well-known member of Treehouse.

After the events of the Sky God Project, she is drawn into the events surrounding Dread and Otherland.

* The Other — the strange entity that is the secret and backbone of Otherland.

He knows a great deal about the Otherland network, although he is unwilling to share his information.

The Otherland MMO is scheduled to be released in Europe and North America in 2012.

* German Power metal band Blind Guardian has composed a song titled " Otherland ," which is dedicated to the series, on its 2006 album A Twist in the Myth.

City of Golden Shadow is the first book in Tad Williams ' Otherland series.

The " Otherland " of the book's original and series title is a virtual world or worlds.

" City Of Golden Shadow " is a city in the Otherland network, to which the main characters are being summoned.

The first two are hackers that agree to help them find the golden city, which is in a mysterious network called " Otherland ," while the third is an anthropologist and archaeologist whose expertise is pre-Columbian Latin America.

Renie,! Xabbu, Martine and Singh plan to break into Otherland ; Renie and! Xabbu, along with Long Joseph and van Bleeck's assistant Jeremiah Dako, travel to Wasps ' Nest, a mothballed military base in the Drakensberg mountains, where there is equipment allowing Renie and! Xabbu to stay connected to the Net for extended periods.

Preparations completed, they hack into Otherland, but Singh is confronted and killed by the security system ; he is later found dead in his room from a heart attack.

Renie,! Xabbu and Martine manage to enter Otherland, and make their way to the golden city, which is called Temilún.

Otherland is their private network, where many of them own numerous simulation worlds ( others being leased out for very large sums ), and they intend to use it for even more mysterious purposes.

* Murat Sagar Singh: Also known by the code name " Blue Dog Anchorite ," Singh is an elderly man who was an acquaintance of Susan van Bleeck and a worker on some programming for the Otherland project.

* Tad Williams four-volume science fiction epic Otherland touches upon Dreamtime and other aboriginal myths.

* Tad Williams ( 1975 ), author ( Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Otherland, and Shadowmarch science fiction / fantasy series )

In the sci-fi / cyberpunk / fantasy novels Otherland by Tad Williams, Paul Jonas passes through a " simworld ", or highly realistic simulation, of Xanadu, as described in Coleridge's poem.

Similar to the Otherland series that was initially intended to be a trilogy but became a tetralogy instead, Book 3 became so lengthy that it was not possible to be published in one volume.

In the Otherland series, by Tad Williams, a virtual reality version of Oz exists, wherein real-world antagonists play sadistic versions of the roles of the Tin Man, The Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion, in a twisted, martial, and post-apocalyptic version of Oz, populated both by characters from the novels, and a large quantity of male and female humans who go by the names " Henry " and " Em " respectively.

*" Treehouse ," a hackers ' paradise from the book Otherland: City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams.

* Paul Jonas — a British man trapped in Otherland and pursued by the Grail Brotherhood for unknown reasons.

He also reveals that Otherland was commissioned by a secret organisation called " The Grail Brotherhood ," and that Atasco, who oversaw the security project for Otherland, was an important member of that organisation.

He helps Renie,! Xabbu, and Martine hack into the system, but is killed by a malevolent aspect of the Otherland security system when he tries to enter with them.

At the end of the book, he is unconscious and at risk of dying from his disease, cared for by members of the other eight people who also succeeded in entering Otherland.

* Mr. Sellars: an elderly man imprisoned on an army base in North Carolina, who ' recruits ' Orlando and the others by leaving clues about the Otherland scattered across the net.

* Mr Jingo's Smile, a virtual nightclub from the Otherland series by Tad Williams

Tad Williams ' epic Otherland series of novels features a South African Bushman named! Xabbu, whom Williams confesses to be highly fictionalised, and not necessarily an accurate representation.

Calypso also appears in Tad Williams ' Otherland series.

His paintings have appeared on the covers of more than 350 books and magazines, including many Stephen King novels, most of the Del Rey editions of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern series, Piers Anthony's Incarnations of Immortality series, the Del Rey edition of Edgar Rice Burroughs ' Mars series, Melanie Rawn's Dragon Prince and Dragon Star series, the DAW editions of Michael Moorcock's Elric books, numerous DAW editions of C. J. Cherryh's work, many of Robert A. Heinlein's novels including Friday and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, the Ace editions of H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels, and Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, Otherland, and Shadowmarch series.

The humans, computer-generated characters based on the lost minds of children drawn into the Otherland program, look forward to a messianic prophecy foretelling the coming of " The Dorothy ," where a child would be born among them.

While Long Joseph and Jeremiah stay offline, she,! Xabbu and Martine ( who remains in France ) break into the Otherland network to reach the golden city.

Following the trail of the city, he and Fredericks gain access to the online fringe community TreeHouse, from where they too find their way into Otherland.

* Hideki Kunohara — a Japanese man of unknown allegiances who nevertheless owns private space on the Otherland network.

* Bolivar Atasco ( Shu )— A Colombian man who contributed to the Otherland Network in order to build a simulation in which Meso-America became a world power.

In January 2012, Warner Bros. acquired the film rights to the Otherland novels.