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A review by beckylbrydon
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
5.0
Set both in a dystopian future where the world has fallen to ruin and in an online "Oasis" where there lives a huge nostalgia for all things 80s, Ready Player One manages to examine the concept of whether an online post-human existence is truly utopia for all who go there, wrapped up in a massive adventure full of geek/nerd culture. However, it does so without being a heavy book, remaining light-hearted and also full of adrenaline at times.
As nearly everyone in the future does, Wade Watts resides in the ruin that global warming, the energy crisis and countless wars has left the world, but lives in the online Oasis where he can go to school and compete in the Quest set by the founder of Oasis before he dies, five years prior to the book. By finding three keys and opening three gates, contestants will have the chance to find the hidden Easter Egg, and in doing so win Halliday's inheritance of over $2 billion and control of the Oasis. The only clue Halliday left is a single riddle and the Anorak's Almanac , a collection of Halliday's journal entries about his streams-of-consciousness observations on various classic video-games, sci-fi and fantasy books, movies, songs and comic books. In Oasis, a massive sub-culture is born, making the book a geek/nerds dream of references to films such as War Games and Star Wars, and games such as Pacman, Zork and Dungeons and Dragons. Wade, as his avatar Perzival, races against his friends (old and new) and also against the corporation, members of which are known colloquially as Sixers, that wants to charge users of the Oasis, who will stop at nothing to get the Easter Egg... literally nothing.
Wade lives in a post-human online world, as does his friends and practically everyone he interacts with. The world of Ready Player One is portrayed as a dystopia, where food is scarce and the air polluted, while Oasis is this eutopia where life is seemingly perfect. However, as the book progresses and we see Wade grow as a character, there is this question of whether virtual contact is really contact at all. Of whether a virtual life is really life at all, no matter the state of the world outside. In addition to this, are the people we meet online really who they say they are. Is the cute raven haired girl avatar really operated by a young girl, or an obese 53yr old man called Chuck with male pattern-baldness. By extension, can you really be friends with people you barely know anything about who you meet online, where it is so easy to lie about who you are. Conversely, in a world where the people you meet only look how they want you to see them, do outward appearances really matter or is it their personality you fall in love with. Do friendship and relationships transcend the need to be physically around each other.
Even as an action-packed nerd/geeks dream, it doesn't necessarily isolate those who were not born or grew up in the 80s, nor those who haven't heard of many of the references. As well as being a fun adventure story paying homage to 80s culture, Ready Player One is a book that can make you think without overtly doing so. It is equally possible to focus on the story as it is to find the subtle questions the book poses. Definitely a book I will be returning to in the future.
As nearly everyone in the future does, Wade Watts resides in the ruin that global warming, the energy crisis and countless wars has left the world, but lives in the online Oasis where he can go to school and compete in the Quest set by the founder of Oasis before he dies, five years prior to the book. By finding three keys and opening three gates, contestants will have the chance to find the hidden Easter Egg, and in doing so win Halliday's inheritance of over $2 billion and control of the Oasis. The only clue Halliday left is a single riddle and the Anorak's Almanac , a collection of Halliday's journal entries about his streams-of-consciousness observations on various classic video-games, sci-fi and fantasy books, movies, songs and comic books. In Oasis, a massive sub-culture is born, making the book a geek/nerds dream of references to films such as War Games and Star Wars, and games such as Pacman, Zork and Dungeons and Dragons. Wade, as his avatar Perzival, races against his friends (old and new) and also against the corporation, members of which are known colloquially as Sixers, that wants to charge users of the Oasis, who will stop at nothing to get the Easter Egg... literally nothing.
Wade lives in a post-human online world, as does his friends and practically everyone he interacts with. The world of Ready Player One is portrayed as a dystopia, where food is scarce and the air polluted, while Oasis is this eutopia where life is seemingly perfect. However, as the book progresses and we see Wade grow as a character, there is this question of whether virtual contact is really contact at all. Of whether a virtual life is really life at all, no matter the state of the world outside. In addition to this, are the people we meet online really who they say they are. Is the cute raven haired girl avatar really operated by a young girl, or an obese 53yr old man called Chuck with male pattern-baldness. By extension, can you really be friends with people you barely know anything about who you meet online, where it is so easy to lie about who you are. Conversely, in a world where the people you meet only look how they want you to see them, do outward appearances really matter or is it their personality you fall in love with. Do friendship and relationships transcend the need to be physically around each other.
Even as an action-packed nerd/geeks dream, it doesn't necessarily isolate those who were not born or grew up in the 80s, nor those who haven't heard of many of the references. As well as being a fun adventure story paying homage to 80s culture, Ready Player One is a book that can make you think without overtly doing so. It is equally possible to focus on the story as it is to find the subtle questions the book poses. Definitely a book I will be returning to in the future.