Tad Williams became an established writer with the success of his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series of fantasy novels. Williams followed it up with Otherland, a series of cyberpunk-themed novels not unlike William Gibson's Pattern Recognition and the books of Charles Stross.
In the Otherland series of novels, the Internet has advanced to the point where every element of the real world has a digital representation. The Otherland is a bit like Second Life, if Second Life was combined with World of Warcraft, Battlefield 3, and every other online game, social network, and website on the internet.
dtp Entertainment has since acquired the rights to Williams' novels and intends to turn the setting into an MMO, with Singapore-based developer RealU. The game will be published by Gamigo.
Unlike other MMOs, Otherland will offer a dynamic environment that changes throughout the course of the player's interaction with the world. Fun!
The game is being built on the Unreal Engine 3. In addition to offering an interesting take on the MMO genre, it'll probably also look pretty.
Thanks for the tip, Kiala!