Ready Player One [Kindle Edition]

READY PLAYER ONE is one great piece of literature, a book that not only will get hold of you from page one and never let go but it will also speak directly to your soul. At the same time though, Gen-Xers will have the time of their life in a nostalgia trip of the 1980's like no other.

Wade Watts is an 18-year old orphan living with his heartless aunt in a stacked trailer park. He is obese and suffers from acme and severe lack of social skills but to him it matters little because he is almost always online, getting schooled and hanging out with his friends on a massively multiplayer online environment named OASIS.

OASIS consists of a virtually endless number of worlds, some magical, others cyberpunk and yet others approximating the real world. OASIS is a huge success as in 2044, when the gap between the rich and the poor has grown into an unbridgeable chasm and all of the fossil fuels are gone (but not the environmental problems their abuse caused), life is bleak for the great majority of humanity. The only sane refuse is to get lost in this digital heaven.

When James Halliday, the insanely rich and eccentric creator of OASIS, dies he wills his multi-billion company to the first person who will discover the three keys he Easter-egged into his digital universe. So the worldwide stampede of egg-hunters (known as gunters) starts off, people searching for the ultimate video game prize. Their only clues are Halliday's video message and known 80's fixation. With such a global race, a race that takes the masses back to simpler and happier times, the 80's come back in fashion.

Early video games, taking their first steps just out of the primordial sea and capturing the imagination of an entire generation with only some blinking pixels. Classic RolePlaying Games with dungeon crawling, looting, re-equiping and leveling up. Sit-coms of unique determined optimism, springing from an era of a growing economy and reigned-in capitalism. SciFi TV series offering immersion that was never again replicated. Toys and gadgets that sprung from instances of pure genius. Movies so epic in scope and impact that one developed blind-spots to their cheesy props and plot holes.

Like a good 80's pop-culture narrative the hero (known by his handle of Parzival) has companions (Aech and Art3mis, Shoto and Daito), he has to face powerful villains (Sorrento and his army of Sixers), overcome insurmountable obstacles and find his destiny. A classic piece of literature that will find its rightful place in the 21st century canon.

The pop-cultural zeigeist shows a strong geek-chic bias lately but even if the 80's were before your time or you never played any MMOGs or even any video games you will still love this book. You will not want to miss a single line of code, you will more fun than Ferris Bueller on his day off and, when done, you will feel the urge to start it all over again. And again.
Because you too will ask yourself: did Ernest write this book especially for me or is the gravity tag of the pop-culture during our teenage years so powerful we have all unknowingly turned into its image?

Can you hear the 28K modem screeching its connecting handshake in the background?

WITH MY HIGHEST RECOMMENDATIONS!

If I could, I would have rated this book 4.5 stars because it's an almost perfect read.

The year is 2044 and the world is a mess. We're out of oil; famine and poverty are wide-spread as are crime and disease. Most people spend as little time as possible in the real world, instead living their lives in OASIS, a fantastical and limitless virtual world, created by James Halliday, the ultimate geek and software designer with a passion for the 1980's, the decade in which he grew up.
Wade Watts is a teenager whose real life circumstances are desperate. Living on the top floor of a stack of mobile homes with an aunt who doesn't want him and only allows him there for the food tokens he's entitled to, he spends most of his time in his hide-out, logged into OASIS. That is where he goes to school, spends his free time and meets the few friends he has. And, for the past few years, that is where he, like millions of people, is on a treasure hunt.
When James Halliday died his will stipulated that the person who could find the three keys he had hidden in OASIS and open the gates connected with them would inherit his fast fortune. Ever since the terms of the will were made public millions have been trying to decipher the clue that should lead them to the first key, but after five years the hunt appears to be going nowhere. And then Wade, or rather his avatar Parzival, finds the first key and unlocks the first gate. Suddenly everything changes. While others are hot on his heels, Wade finds the whole world interested in the person behind Parzival and while most of that interest is good-natured there are those who want to find the keys at all cost in order to change OASIS into something it was never meant to be.
Officially the real identities of avatars on OASIS should be secret, but as Wade soon discovers that is not actually the case. He finds himself threatened both in the virtual and in the real world, and when real people start dying he realises that he has far more on his hands than just the quest for the keys.
Parzival/Wade's quest for the keys and the ultimate price will not only changes his life it will affect the whole world.

This is a book about and a must read for geeks, especially those who grew up in the 1980's. Having said that, this was a fascinating read for me, who doesn't qualify as a geek in any way shape or form.
Although I had a hard time getting my head around the idea of a virtual world as fast and integrated as OASIS and wasn't always able to keep the virtual and the real world separate, I did find myself completely caught up in the story, the quest and all the references to the 1980's.
In fact, for a large part it was all the links to the 1980's that made the book so fascinating for me. Although I would know next to nothing about computer games during that (or any other) period, I got a great kick out of the movie and music references. I can't help feeling that either the author is a dedicated geek with a preference for the 1980's himself or did an amazing and impressive amount of research. I didn't check any of the references in the book, but the few I recognised we're all spot on.

This is a very well written book. Nothing happens that doesn't have significance at some (sometimes much later) point in the story. The story deals very well with the advantages and down-sides of living in a virtual world and the picture it paints of the real world in the near future is realistic enough to be scary. At the same time the book does a great job showing that no matter what environment you put them in, young adults have the same concerns, hopes and fears everywhere and at anytime. The characters of Wade and his friends make this a book about growing up as much as a fantasy about virtual living.

In a not-too-distant dystopian future, with the climate and economy in ruins, where most of the American population live in high-rise trailer parks called `Stacks', the only escape from grim reality is a vast virtual reality state called OASIS. The creator of OASIS has just died, leaving his entire two hundred and forty billion dollar fortune to the first person to crack the clues and find the Easter Egg. The creator's avatar is called Anorak, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about what follows. If you, like me, are a bit of an Anorak yourself, you're sure to love `Ready Player One'.

I'm not at all surprised the film rights have already been sold, it's a very filmatic book - actually one of its weakest points as a novel, especially during the graphically detailed descriptions of vid-game battles, which do go on a bit. I imagine, if you, like the author, had spent your teenage years playing these games, these chapters would have a certain nostalgic thrill, but for me, they held everything up like crazy and I found myself speed reading for most of them. Another small irritation is the way Cline mirrors the movies in having his characters pause for lengthy, expositionary conversations, when they should be doing something, usually something really important - "Flash, I love you - but we only have 14 hours to save the world!" - It could be an intentional reference, but it was damn annoying when you're desperate to move on to the next piece of the puzzle.

But these are just small quibbles. The plot is terrific and the online-world Cline creates is a giant total-immersion experience of 80's pop and gamer culture. The story of our hero, Wade, and his online friends as they quest for the egg and battle the Dick Dastardly-evil IOI corporation, from first encounter to the ultimate `Game Over You Win!' end is almost impossible to put-down.
Along the way, the references are sprayed, Banksy-like, over a fast-shifting narrative which is vast and epic, twisting and turning like a twisty turny thing. Arthur Dent, Rush's "twenty-one twelve", Star Wars, War Games, Ferris Bueller, Galaga, Everquest, World of Warcraft, LOTR, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, the Rubik's cube - the references just keep coming; the appearance of Graham Chapman's Arthur, trotting along to Patsy's coconut shells (an African or a European swallow?) was the final, epic cherry on my cake. From the Dungeon's and Dragons opening to the Atari Adventure (Nerd Note: Warren Robinett, who created this game, added in the first ever Easter Egg) end, I was in Geek heaven.

I loved every minute of it. I wonder if Simon Pegg has read this novel? If not, he should, he'd love it, and if you loved Spaced, so will you.