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

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The Ramesseum itself was originally known by a name that translates as ‘The House of Millions of Years’, an epithet that could easily be appropriated for the Earth. Our planet’s past also lies hidden under the dirt. It wears the scars of its formation and change in its crust, and it, too, is a mortuary, memorializing its inhabitants in stone, fossils acting as grave marker, mask and body.

Halliday’s brilliantly imaginative reconstructions, his deft marshalling of complex science, offersa thrilling experience of deep-time naturefor pop-science buffs.” — Library Journal (starred review) Book review – What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities ofBees August 15, 2023 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] This book is an exploration of the Earth as it used to exist, the changes that have occurred during its history, and the ways that life has found to adapt―or not. It takes us from the savannahs of Pliocene Kenya to watch a python chase a group of australopithecines into an acacia tree; to a cliff overlooking the salt pans of the empty basin of what will be the Mediterranean Sea just as water from the Miocene Atlantic Ocean spills in; into the tropical forests of Eocene Antarctica; and under the shallow pools of Ediacaran Australia, where we glimpse the first microbial life. 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.

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Hideki Kunohara—a Japanese man of unknown allegiances who nevertheless owns private space on the Otherland network. I read Eoghan Daltun’s An Irish Atlantic Rainforest, which is absolutely fantastic, a paean to rewilding and the benefits of letting nature do what it does best. It’s an exploration of how much life there is just waiting under the soil to return. I really enjoyed Katherine Rundell’s The Golden Mole, a selection of essays about endangered species that is very evocative. I’ve just started Elderflora: A Modern History of Ancient Trees by Jared Farmer, and it’s very interesting so far. One novel I absolutely loved recently was The Binding by Bridget Collins, a fantasy book about bookbinding and magic. A fascinating journey through Earth’s history . . . To read Otherlands is to marvel not only at these unfamiliar lands and creatures, but also that we have the science to bring them to life in such vivid detail.” — New Scientist Glaser, Joe (June 5, 2022). "Book review: 'Otherlands' ". Bowling Green Daily News . Retrieved 2022-08-28. Imagine the history of life on Earth as a road across Australia, Thomas Halliday suggests. You, in the present day, are in the centre of Adelaide, South Australia. The Last Universal Common Ancestor, an unknown organism that probably lurked by a deep-sea volcanic vent about four billion years ago, is in Darwin, on the north coast.

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). Immersive . . . bracingly ambitious . . . rewinds the story of life on Earth—from the mammoth steppe of the last Ice Age to the dawn of multicellular creatures over 500 million years ago.”— The Economist 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.

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This is a piece of nature writing that covers millions of years, from the very start of evolution, while capturing the almost unthinkable ways geography has shifted and changed over time. Epic in scope and executed with charming enthusiasm, Otherlands looks set to be a big talking point for fans of non-fiction in 2022 ‘The 15 New Novels And Non-Fiction Books To Read In 2022’, Mr Porter 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. 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. 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.” By studying the distant past, Halliday can envision prospective climate change scenarios. Depending on how much CO 2is emitted, the Earthcould very well be heading towards Eocene-temperature levels far faster than any underlying long term paleontology-cycle would suggest.