Martin Simonson
A dozen Tolkien experts have been invited by Erabor Enterprises, a company dedicated to creating virtual reality games, to a future version of Tolkien’s Middle-earth. The team’s task is to populate the world with new stories and creatures that, for copyright reasons, cannot be the same as those in Tolkien’s books, but must retain some of the ’original spirit.’The experts travel through the virtual world on the starship Wingelot, with all sorts of luxuries on board. Little by little, tensions begin to emerge among the members of the expedition, who have differing visions of how Tolkien’s world should be adapted. At the same time, Simon Segerstad, one of the invited scholars, begins to suspect that Erabor Enterprises is manipulating the expedition members towards specific ways of thinking and acting. Meddle-earth 5.0 is a science-fiction satire about adaptations that aim to make classics accessible to a contemporary audience, eager for new sensations.At the same time, it highlights the problems arising from our current existence in the limbo between the virtual world and the physical world, and the rising levels of manipulation exerted on all of us through our virtual identities.
