The Otherworld Series
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In the Otherworld series,
an immersive virtual reality world is constructed, and with mind-uploading becomes an artificial afterlife, which survives the collapse of civilization in the real world.
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In The Birth of Another World,
an immersive virtuality world is constructed, then improved over time thanks to the feedback of its beta testers, and eventually becomes an artificial afterlife.
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In Part 1,
ordinary people Tom and Xiuying separately beta test an immersive virtual reality being built at the behest of ancient immortals looking to build an artificial afterlife.
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In Part 2,
the virtual reality platform called Virtuality and its flagship world called the Sphidiverse becomes fully operational, while Tom and Xiu continue to explore it.
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In Part 3,
mind-uploaded Xiuying adjusts to her new "afterlife", the virtual world goes public, and the true motives behind the construction of the virtual world are revealed.
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In Life in Another World,
after a century of virtual afterlife, many questions begin to arise about the full implications of mind-uploading, as Met continues to torture herself into the pits of virtual hell.
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In Part 1,
questions abound about artificial intelligence personhood and the ethics of creating, duplicating, and modifying uploaded human minds.
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In Part 2,
Tom and Xiu end up working together to redeem the mad so-called "Queen of Hell" for whom the virtual world was constructed.
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In Part 3,
further ethical questions arise about the interface between uploaded and artificial minds in the virtual world, and robotic bodies in the physical world.
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In Death and the Other World,
another century later, catastrophic real-world events threaten to destroy the virtual world with it, but the man behind it all manages to barely save a small portion of it.
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In Part 1,
Tom is a part of a network of curious users who stalk a living doppleganger of the Queen of Hell in real life, only to discover it's definitely not the same person.
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In Part 2,
catestrophic events in real life publicly reveal the mysterious background of the company responsible for building Virtuality, and threaten to destroy it along with the rest of humanity.
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In Part 3,
as Virtuality collapses along with the rest of civilization, Xio rushes to rescue Met from it, preserving a tiny fragment of "hell" with her and anyone else he can manage to fit in it.