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Mario the lone bookwolf's Reviews > Mountain of Black Glass
Mountain of Black Glass (Otherland, #3)
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What if the Matrix isn´t run by evil machines, but by the corpocracy?
This business model with certainly be a hard nut to crack for the public relation, corporate responsibility, and code of conduct departments, but maybe they could let it more seem like a great opportunity for everyone from kids to grandparents to have loads of immersive, forever fun.
The options, by switching between a corpocracy controlled, neoliberal nightmare world, and the fantastic VR, open so many plot possibilities that couldn´t be enabled with other worldbuilding combinations, it could even add sci-fi to the mix. I wonder why Williams didn´t consider doing this, adding an extra sci-fi world animation layer next to the mainly fantastic, historic, and horror ones, because this would have given the work even more suspense.
The epic range of Williams´ fantasy and imagination, whose high fantasy series Memory Sorrow and Thorn is an amazing journey, is mixed with the more dystopic cyberpunk wasted future elements of soon to be real sci-fi, making it an extraordinary science fantasy read. It´s as if one would change tone, genre, and even the author a bit, when the wonderful fantasy chapters are over and the desperate terror of a very possible future sets in again.
By the way, did anyone notice that, not just because utopias would be boring to tell, close to every sci-fi author draws a terrifying, horrible picture of the future and that many of these futures are already reality or will not take more than years to become real? I know I am redundant and already mentioned it before, but just how this might play out very differently in technologically extremely high developed Japanese and South Korean cultures, in different socioeconomic layers of society in the democratic West and especially in dictatorships and very poor countries, is both terrifying and fascinating.
Back to the show, the reader gets deeper and deeper into the degenerated rabbit hole, the plot accelerates, the unbelievable and ingenious conclusion of the fourth and final part of the series is prepared, and the sense of wonder overkill astonishes the reader with new revelations around each next dog ear corner. If one treats and uses books as bad as I do.
Want some amazing, unique, not stereotypical characters of different ethnicities added to the mix, making it even more complex, adding mythologies and mentalities to the already overboiling mix of ideas? This breaking of genre borders, in combination with unconventional protagonists, and the sheer length are the reasons why this series doesn´t get the fame and success it would deserve, why Williams isn´t named in a row with Sanderson, Erikson, Martin, Rothfuss, and others. He is just too big for our small world.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
This business model with certainly be a hard nut to crack for the public relation, corporate responsibility, and code of conduct departments, but maybe they could let it more seem like a great opportunity for everyone from kids to grandparents to have loads of immersive, forever fun.
The options, by switching between a corpocracy controlled, neoliberal nightmare world, and the fantastic VR, open so many plot possibilities that couldn´t be enabled with other worldbuilding combinations, it could even add sci-fi to the mix. I wonder why Williams didn´t consider doing this, adding an extra sci-fi world animation layer next to the mainly fantastic, historic, and horror ones, because this would have given the work even more suspense.
The epic range of Williams´ fantasy and imagination, whose high fantasy series Memory Sorrow and Thorn is an amazing journey, is mixed with the more dystopic cyberpunk wasted future elements of soon to be real sci-fi, making it an extraordinary science fantasy read. It´s as if one would change tone, genre, and even the author a bit, when the wonderful fantasy chapters are over and the desperate terror of a very possible future sets in again.
By the way, did anyone notice that, not just because utopias would be boring to tell, close to every sci-fi author draws a terrifying, horrible picture of the future and that many of these futures are already reality or will not take more than years to become real? I know I am redundant and already mentioned it before, but just how this might play out very differently in technologically extremely high developed Japanese and South Korean cultures, in different socioeconomic layers of society in the democratic West and especially in dictatorships and very poor countries, is both terrifying and fascinating.
Back to the show, the reader gets deeper and deeper into the degenerated rabbit hole, the plot accelerates, the unbelievable and ingenious conclusion of the fourth and final part of the series is prepared, and the sense of wonder overkill astonishes the reader with new revelations around each next dog ear corner. If one treats and uses books as bad as I do.
Want some amazing, unique, not stereotypical characters of different ethnicities added to the mix, making it even more complex, adding mythologies and mentalities to the already overboiling mix of ideas? This breaking of genre borders, in combination with unconventional protagonists, and the sheer length are the reasons why this series doesn´t get the fame and success it would deserve, why Williams isn´t named in a row with Sanderson, Erikson, Martin, Rothfuss, and others. He is just too big for our small world.
Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...
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Reading Progress
Finished Reading
March 3, 2018
– Shelved
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Karina
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Jun 17, 2021 12:20AM
Enjoyed your review and have to agree with you on the fifth paragraph about the future. These authors are telling us what is going to happen and it’s definitely happening now…. Creepy
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Karina wrote: "Enjoyed your review and have to agree with you on the fifth paragraph about the future. These authors are telling us what is going to happen and it’s definitely happening now…. Creepy"Thanks!
I know, this "It could be happening or is just happening" is one of the driving forces of my very severe sci-fi addiction. And then comes all the nonfiction, science fantasy, wiki, tropes, etc. added to the mix and one is lost for all other genres.
It´s terrible.
This series sounds so relevant and compelling! Great review, Mario!I've always believed in the adage: creativity precedes reality. I do agree with you, though (if I'm understanding you correctly), the time lapse between science fiction and reality is narrowing. Is this because... fiction writers are unintentionally giving nefarious agents ideas to engineer and test? Or, are we simply tapping into something that already exists and are serving the public by sounding the alarm? A little bit like the chicken and the egg quandary, but definitely food for thought!
Again, I appreciated your review!!!
Julia wrote: "This series sounds so relevant and compelling! Great review, Mario!I've always believed in the adage: creativity precedes reality. I do agree with you, though (if I'm understanding you correctly)..."
Thanks!
As you say, inspiring engineers and scientists is one of the biggest benefits of sci-fi. No matter what age and time, Bezos, Braun, Musk, etc. so many have been made obsessed with these ideas as kids, teens and young adults by a genre describing where we will go in very detail. Or they are the exception and it was mostly the science inspiring the authors...
The chicken and egg quandary is an excellent metaphor, I´ll steal that and use it for myself. ggg
