Ready Player One

What a great nostalgic treat. Any child of the 80s should live this book. Fun, action packed and filled with 80s throw backs. Glad my kid recommended it.

Great story, great plot, great character development, great world building. I Absolutely loved all of the 80s cultural references. Highly recommend.

Ready Player One is a really adventurous movie, with humor and drama mixed together in a great way that provides fantastic visual fantasies. The imagination for such a movie began in the book written by Ernest Cline (who maybe even had a screen-play in mind when he wrote it.) Things are a little different from the movie in the book, the work of the movie business trying to maximize the production and make it more appealing. But the imagination is still there. I've read reviews by dissatisfied readers, who didn't like something in the narration or the author's style, but I'm all for giving credit where credit is due. Before this book I can remember Mr. Gibson's terror-driven cyber-crimes, and while that was all great, I like this other approach in RP1, not as an absolute map of the future, but for at least trying not to make it all seem so hopelessly terrible and violent. I've read the 1st chapter of the book, an introduction to the future, and although I don't recognize the scenes of the movie the information is still just as interesting and I want to know more. This kind of work, showing some possible future, will never be as accurate as the real thing, but there's no way to not respect the effort. I like these dreams because I'm also a dreamer. Thanks, Ernest!

This book is mostly depressing. It gets 5 stars for story line and ending. There is a great deal of detail about the Oasis world. The depressing parts are with the real world. I spend a lot of time in video games. I am so happy I don’t live in a real world described in this book. Not sure I want to read the next chapter. I hope you enjoy this book more than I did.

Dystopian future that seems to be getting closer to reality…. I am not a gamer and I still enjoyed the book. A ton of pop culture references from the late 70’s thru the early 90’s, that’s when I grew up, so I got most of them, not sure how they would hit with younger readers. The main villain is basically Elon Musk in 10-15 years.

A lot of reviews on here are good, and geared towards telling you what they liked about this book. I'm not here to do that. I have been studying writing for ~5 years,and have written a few completed, unpublished novels myself. I will admit I have a lot to learn and a long way to go before I will even consider calling myself a good writer or author- but this is just awful.1. The character is straight up Gary Stu. He's done everything- read all the books, seen all the movies, heard all the music, played all the games until they're all mastered/memorized, knows every little Easter egg and every little thing he's looking for. He has everything planned and prepared for and plans within plans and a backup plan for his backup plan. I mean he dropped out of high school, and still graduated because 'he had enough credits' -ffs!2. Things randomly... appear. He suddenly has a thing, or has done a thing already, without it ever being mentioned before it was needed direly for this exact situation to wiggle his way out of trouble. Oh of course he has this item, because he needs it to get out of this exact situation! We haven't heard of or seen this item previously, or had him do this thing- such as setting off a bomb in his console to "melt it to slag"- previously so it wouldn't seem like a cop out. Point is, if your character needs a thing and they suddenly have it- even if they 'already had it' and it wasn't mentioned before- f you. That's cheating, weak, and not good writing AT ALL.3. While I don't mind the rags to riches, it was handled poorly. He goes from nothing to 20,000 credits- that's fine, because he got the gold in a dungeon- but it was a low level dungeon that just was... bursting at the seams with gold? Based on a D&D Module? Now I haven't been able to play more than 3 games but I'm not sure they come with upwards of 20k gold pieces at the beginner levels. Though I'll let this slide because Halliday coded it- not me. Though at one point it's mentioned that he had to get a job at a call center... and then it's never brought up again and he has all the time in the world to stay in the OASIS. Did he quit? Does he have enough money to survive again? Where is he getting all these strange pieces of equipment for the OASIS then? Was that before his job magically stopped mattering? Or after?4. He jumps around a lot, and describes things that don't matter. I don't care what the barbarian on the cover of the game looks like, or what he's doing- I'd prefer to know what your surroundings look like and how you're reacting to them. Not "I cleared it easily because I'd mastered the game". Often, he describes a chunk of things, throwing in anecdotes that don't pertain to the story, and you're left confused, reeling, and wondering how any of this was allowed past the editing phase.5. The use of parentheses is often unnecessary and really annoying. Though this author doesn't seem to be aware of that. It also throws in a chance for him to add more unnecessary bits and pieces that just make you want to close the book or app and wish you could burn the digital copy in a fire somewhere.6. The human body needs the sunlight, or you start to face some rather unfortunate consequences, especially regarding a deteriorating mental health, not to mention physical. You need to shower and use the facilities. You need vitamins you can't get from pizza alone. Also, If you sit in one place for up to 18 hours a day, you're going to get bedsores, and muscle cramping, and if you do it enough, your muscles will wither. I want to have some realism in a book that's pertaining to the real world in a way that we're somewhat used to.7. We know next to nothing about Wade Watts himself. We know nearly every damn thing about his idol, Halliday, but other than a snippet here and there, and zero character growth, Wade may as well be a narrator, rather than character. It's like he sees nothing wrong with himself, doesn't want to grow or learn about anything that doesn't pertain to his idol, and wants to get the mystery girl. In so doing, he drops a friendship that he had for a long time which is a weak drama point.8. Ok, so his parents are dead. That's... original. Never seen that before. In every single D!sn3y film ever. Nah. Totally original. This is not to say it can't be used, but it doesn't excuse his complete 1 dimensional nature. Give him a paper cutout of a girl and the two would get along swimmingly.9. The battles- when they come- are short lived and unfulfilling. They have 0 tension. There is no way the character is going to get hurt, or lose anything, because he has a way around all of it. Turning his car into a matchbox size and tossing it into his pocket. Can't do that twice- oh look no one bothered his spaceship in a high level PVP zone with 'leather clad boosters' around who would love something as high end as that in the 4+ hours real time it took him to "perfectly" clear Pac-man. Which he 'could have done blindfolded' by the end.10. Ch...

By the mid-21st century, the Internet has become largely subsumed as the transport layer for the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), a massively multiuser online virtual reality environment originally developed as a multiplayer game, but which rapidly evolved into a platform for commerce, education, social interaction, and entertainment used by billions of people around the world. The OASIS supports immersive virtual reality, limited only by the user's budget for hardware used to access the network. With top-of-the-line visors and sound systems, body motion sensors, and haptic feedback, coupled to a powerful interface console, a highly faithful experience was possible. The OASIS was the creation of James Halliday, a legendary super-nerd who made his first fortune designing videogames for home computers in the 1980s, and then re-launched his company in 2012 as Gregarious Simulation Systems (GSS), with the OASIS as its sole product. The OASIS was entirely open source: users could change things within the multitude of worlds within the system (within the limits set by those who created them), or create their own new worlds. Using a distributed computing architecture which pushed much of the processing power to the edge of the network, on users' own consoles, the system was able to grow without bound without requiring commensurate growth in GSS data centres. And it was free, or almost so. To access the OASIS, you paid only a one-time lifetime sign-up fee of twenty-five cents, just like the quarter you used to drop into the slot of an arcade videogame. Users paid nothing to use the OASIS itself: their only costs were the hardware they used to connect (which varied widely in cost and quality of the experience) and the bandwidth to connect to the network. But since most of the processing was done locally, the latter cost was modest. GSS made its money selling or renting virtual real estate (“surreal estate”) within the simulation. If you wanted to open, say, a shopping mall or build your own Fortress of Solitude on an asteroid, you had to pay GSS for the territory. GSS also sold virtual goods: clothes, magical artefacts, weapons, vehicles of all kinds, and buildings. Most were modestly priced, but since they cost nothing to manufacture, were pure profit to the company.As the OASIS permeated society, GSS prospered. Halliday remained the majority shareholder in the company, having bought back the share once owned by his co-founder and partner Ogden (“Og”) Morrow, after what was rumoured to be a dispute between the two the details of which had never been revealed. By 2040, Halliday's fortune, almost all in GSS stock, had grown to more than two hundred and forty billion dollars. And then, after fifteen years of self-imposed isolation which some said was due to insanity, Halliday died of cancer. He was a bachelor, with no living relatives, no heirs, and, it was said, no friends. His death was announced on the OASIS in a five minute video titled Anaorak's Invitation (“Anorak” was the name of Halliday's all-powerful avatar within the OASIS). In the film, Halliday announces that his will places his entire fortune in escrow until somebody completes the quest he has programmed within the OASIS:“Three hidden keys open three secret gates,Wherein the errant will be tested for worthy traits,And those with the skill to survive these straits,Will reach The End where the prize awaits.”The prize is Halliday's entire fortune and, with it, super-user control of the principal medium of human interaction, business, and even politics. Before fading out, Halliday shows three keys: copper, jade, and crystal, which must be obtained to open the three gates. Only after passing through the gates and passing the tests within them, will the intrepid paladin obtain the Easter egg hidden within the OASIS and gain control of it. Halliday provided a link to Anorak's Almanac, more than a thousand pages of journal entries made during his life, many of which reflect his obsession with 1980s popular culture, science fiction and fantasy, videogames, movies, music, and comic books. The clues to finding the keys and the Egg were widely believed to be within this rambling, disjointed document.Given the stakes, and the contest's being open to anybody in the OASIS, what immediately came to be called the Hunt became a social phenomenon, all-consuming to some. Egg hunters, or “gunters”, immersed themselves in Halliday's journal and every pop culture reference within it, however obscure. All of this material was freely available on the OASIS, and gunters memorised every detail of anything which had caught Halliday's attention. As time passed, and nobody succeeded in finding even the copper key (Halliday's memorial site displayed a scoreboard of those who achieved goals in the Hunt, so far blank), many lost interest in the Hunt, but a dedicated hard core persisted, often to the exclusion of all other diversions. Some gunters ba...

By my son, Noah, the reader & reviewer of this book...Ready Player One was a thrilling adventure filled with science fiction, geeky references, and a creative outlook on the future. This book takes place in 2045. Most of the world’s resources have run out and there is an energy crisis that has driven many people out of a job. How do people deal with living in such a terrible world? The OASIS provides an escape for millions of people. It’s an online multiplayer game that allows millions of people to connect and explore. The creator of this OASIS became a multi billionaire named James Halliday. After he died, he created a contest for everyone in the OASIS to solve a bunch of clues using facts about his life. The winner would inherit all of his money and become the CEO of Gregarious Simulation Systems. Because this was such a good prize, millions of people studied Halliday and everything he did. Among these people was Wade Watts, an 18-year-old senior in high school. In order to obtain the Easter egg, you had to find the copper key and then find the first gate. After that, find the jade key and then the second gate. And lastly, find the crystal key and the third gate. Five years pass and no one can decipher the copper key riddle. Until one day in school, Wade figures it out. He becomes famous for being the first one to get his name onto the score board. However, he runs into his cyber crush, Art3mis. They hit it off and exchange contact information. She shortly completes the gate after him. Wade immediately finds the first gate and moves on while Nolan Sorrento, president of IOI blows up his home. More happens and eventually Wade is forced to work with Art3mis, his best friend Aech, and Shoto in order to open the third gate. He has thousands of people from the OASIS help him unleash a full-on attack on the Sixers (another name for the people at IOI). After all the effort, Wade wins the contest and finally gets to meet Art3mis in person.Many characters change toward the end of the book. Art3mis neglects Wade to focus on the hunt regrets it because she enjoyed her time with Wade. James Halliday spent his entire life escaping his miserable life through video games. Before he dies, he tells Wade not to make the same mistake as him. However, Wade changed a lot throughout the entire book. He starts off as a regular teenage boy, just playing video games every waking second of his day, desperate to find the egg. He isolates himself completely from other people until he meets Art3mis. He starts focusing more of his time and energy on her rather than on the hunt. Before her, speaking to girls was out of the question. Also, his goals with what he would do with the money changed. At first, he just wanted to build a spaceship and fly far away from earth. But after meeting Art3mis, he wanted to help feed the hungry like she did. He became very selfless and even risked spending the rest of his life as an IOI indentured servant just to make sure people wouldn’t have to deal with IOI taking over the OASIS. At the very end, the author wanted to show the readers just how important it is to be in the real world. “It occurred to me then that for the first time in as long as I could remember, I had absolutely no desire to log back into the OASIS.” (pg 372) Staying logged onto the OASIS has removed so many people from reality and hurt their mental health. Sometimes, escaping in the real world, no matter how bad it is, is the right thing to do.I thoroughly enjoyed every part of the book. While there were a lot of boring long descriptions, they were necessary. I loved how the characters changed a lot throughout the book and enhanced the theme. Teaching kids to not ignore the problems in the world and not just escape onto their phones is crucial. Ernest Cline was showing us what would happen if we simply did nothing and I hope this was a wakeup call for everyone. I liked the dialog and how the characters connected. I feel like Cline really captured the true essence of a friendship. Wade was also a good character. Some his lines and sayings were funny, and this made him a likeable protagonist. Some of the plot points were good as well. I would’ve never thought to have Wade become an indentured servant to penetrate IOI from the inside. That was really creative. I also enjoyed all of the references in the book, even though I didn’t understand most of them. And the way he incorporated them in the riddles was just absolutely brilliant. This is my second time reading the book and I enjoyed it so much. I’m sure all the nerds out there (especially ones who were teens in the 80’s) really appreciated this work of art

Ready Player One has been one of the most hyped movies lately. The book had been on my TBR list for quite a while and I decided to read it before seeing the movie.The world has evolved into a society filled with even more inequality than we have now. Most people live a hard life in trailer stacks (a form of housing where trailers/containers are haphazardly stacked on top of each other – see book cover) and endure a world that’s challenging and unforgiving. Imagine growing up in that environment, but then imagine having an escape that you could retreat to whenever you feel the need.The OASIS is that escape. It’s an incredible free virtual world where people (regardless of where or how they live) can be whatever they want and live exciting lives and explore incredible worlds. Just strap on a virtual headset and leave your troubles behind. This is how, Wade (Parzival), has grown up. He learned everything he knows online – he knows no different (Like my kids who have grown up with Apple keyboards, which are frustratingly different to the normal keyboards that I grew up with – they find standard keyboards alien!). And so there is the fundamental problem. Everyone is so poor and tormented by the real world that the escape from reality has become a natural daily obsession for most. The virtual world has overtaken the real world. No one wants reality – they just want virtuality.Add to that a chance to become the sole owner and controller of the OASIS (worth $500b) and you have a recipe that drives the world’s virtual obsession to an incredible new level. The underlying story centers around hidden eggs within the virtual world that need to be found. The one who finds the final egg first becomes the winner of the OASIS. The creator’s intention to pass on his legacy to a deserving player is challenged when a company hellbent on total control and profit comes into the mix. It’s a recipe for conflict and challenge worthy of the most complicated online games.I was engrossed in this book from the start. Hooked from the get-go. The settings are extreme and varied, changing from one page to the next but never becoming confused. The virtual world has the power to do that, so it makes sense when it does. One core fact that this book portrays so well is how easily we can be drawn into things that aren’t real. It shows us the extreme and of how best friends, connections, and relationships form even though players have never met in reality. It shows the power of the virtual world in masking the identity of players who have created a ‘life’ that is everything they want but don’t really have. It also explores the power of data and of how it can be used against us.Although it’s extreme, I believe it’s a very real scenario. And as AI starts to explode in the years to come, it’s not an unimaginable outcome. We are already obsessed with our phones and online interaction is already overtaking face to face. It’s just a matter of time before we retreat further into our own virtual worlds. I hope we don’t lock ourselves away in our homes like they do in this book. I believe this story is a warning – one to remind us to stay grounded in the real world. But with all of the terrible things that hit the real headlines each day, it’s easy to see why we would want to retreat and hide from it all.Another cool aspect of this story was the nostalgia. Pop culture from the 80s was a core component of a story with never-ending references to everything from songs to games to places to people. I loved this as it added so much detail to which readers could relate. I won’t go into detail but there is a section of the book that includes a Monty Python classic – I chuckled out loud as the coconuts clopped.A lot of my reading is done on my commute to and from my day job in the city. The whole virtual reality thing took on another level as the movie was being heavily promoted around me while I read. Many times, as I stood reading the book on the train platform, the trailer for Ready Player One looped on the big screens around the station. It was moments like that where I felt like I was in the game, reading the story in a virtual background of the sounds, the music, and the vision of the story.In A Nutshell - It’s a feast of the author’s imagination that explores the world of virtual reality and all that comes with it. Due to its core content, this book is rich with settings that span time, space, games, movies, memories, and places. The huge mix of material has been put together so well. This is my best read of 2018 so far and I think it will be a hard one to top. Highly recommended.

Ready Player One is a novel for anyone who loves obscure pop culture references, your childhood is inside these pages. Rush 2112, Atari 2600, Tolkien, Steven King, Ray Bradbury, Orson Scott Card, Shakespeare, Clockwork Orange, John Hughes films, Kaiju, and anything else 80s entertainment is liable to jump from your memory onto the stark black text. Young readers also can familirize themselves with the homages, which are often explained to great detail, even mmos and Quake make an apperance for videogame history newcomers. Quick read. Part adventure, love story, social and humanitarian commentary on society and how technology effects our everyday lives.To make the references more fresh. If you arent familiar already, enjoy games and films such as: *Not really spoilers because everyone should be familar with such gems*-Obligatory Spoiler Alert- Black Tiger Dungeons of Daggorath Galaga Joust Pac-Man Tempest Zork Adventure Airplane! The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension Back To The Future The Beastmaster Better Off Dead (film) Blade Runner Big Trouble In Little China Brazil The Breakfast Club A Clockwork Orange Conan the Barbarian The Dark Crystal Excalibur Explorers Evil Dead trilogy Ferris Bueller's Day Off Fight Club Footloose Ghostbusters Goonies Hawk the Slayer Highlander (film) and Highlander II: The Quickening Heathers' The Iron Giant (robot reward selection) The Killer Ladyhawke Legend The Last Starfighter Lord of the Rings trilogy Mad Max (1-3) Monty Python and the Holy Grail National Lampoon's European Vacation Real Genius Revenge of the Nerds Risky Business Rocky Horror Picture Show Say Anything Short Circuit Silence of the Lambs Sixteen Candles Sneakers Star Trek Star Wars, original and prequel trilogies, and made-for-TV Ewok adventures The Terminator Tron The Twilight Zone WarGames Weird Science The Matrix (1-3) Star Trek: The Motion Picture Star Trek (the rest.) 2010 "2112" by Rush "II. The Temples of Syrinx" by Rush "III. Discovery" by Rush "Alladdin Sane" by David Bowie "Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Richard Strauss (2010 soundtrack) "Atomic" by Blondie American rock band Devo English rock band Pink Floyd "A Million Miles Away" by the Plimsouls "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil "Change" by John Waite (Vision Quest soundtrack) Austrian rapper Falco (name of Parzival's planet stronghold) "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" by AC/DC "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo Ladyhawke soundtrack "Subdivisions" by Rush "Three Is a Magic Number" by Bob Dorough (Schoolhouse Rock!) Conan the Barbarian OST by Basil Poledouris Star Wars OST by John Williams "Pac-Man Fever" by Buckner & Garcia "Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats "Don't Let's Start" by They Might Be Giants "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" by Wham! "Like to Get to Know You Well" by Howard Jones "James Brown is Dead" by L.A. Style "Blue Monday ('88 Remix)" by New Order "Rebel Yell" by Billy Idol "Time After Time" by Cyndi Lauper "(Everywhere I Go) Kids Wanna Rock" by Bryan Adams "Union of the Snake" by Duran Duran "Bad Boys" by Duran Duran "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel "Pour Some Sugar On Me" by Def Leppard "The Wild Boys" by Duran Duran "In Your Eyes" by Peter Gabriel American metal band DokkenAnime and tokusatsu reference Cowboy Bebop Brave Raideen Gundam Neon Genesis Evangelion Supaidāman Ultraman Voltron Starblazers G-Force Giant Robo Gamera Godzilla Kikaider Mazinger Z Kiryu (Millennium Mechagodzilla) The Space Giants (Maguma Taishi) Robotech Speed Racer SpectremanTV Show references Family Ties Silver Spoons Spaced Max Headroom Monty Python Firefly Buck Rogers in the 25th Century Whiz Kids The Muppet Show Square Pegs Simon & Simon ElectraWoman and DynaGirl Isis Wonder Woman Schoolhouse Rock! Knight Rider The Simpsons Addams Family The Greatest American Hero Airwolf The A-Team Misfits of Science Land of the Lost He-Man G.I.Joe Thundarr the Barbarian H.R. Pufnstuf Cosmos Captain Kangaroo Riptide Misfits of ScienceLiterature references Douglas Adams Kurt Vonnegut Neal Stephenson Richard K. Morgan Stephen King Orson Scott Card Terry Pratchett Terry Brooks Alfred Bester Ray Bradbury Joe Haldeman Robert A. Heinlein J.R.R. Tolkien Jack Vance William Gibson Neil Gaiman Michael Moorcock John Scalzi Roger Zelazny Philip K. DickNow you are prepared..Its 2044, log into the OASIS, create your avatar, and win the egg and make James Halliday proud!

First and foremost, your enjoyment of this book will be directly correlated to your enjoyment and nostalgia for 80's pop culture, most notably early era video games, music, and movies. I love a lot of that stuff, so simply reading about a book framed with topics I enjoy make this book a worthwhile read for me. The story does serve to weave many of these cultural references into a YA tale about a boy on a quest to solve a riddle. A reader's reaction to the title itself would probably be a decent indicator of how much you will like the rest of the book. I would ideally like to give this book a 3.5ish rating, because I enjoyed it more than just "it's ok", but the highly specific subject matter prevent it from being a "general read"Pros:When the book evokes memories of things long forgotten and expounds on them in a way you probably haven't though about for years, you do feel a satisfying sense of understanding. In many books, for myself at least, a description of an item may be ambiguous enough for me to not quite know whether the image I have in my head is accurate, but by relying on mostly things that exist, you KNOW when your mental image is spot on.Our main character has a lot of knowledge pertaining to his quest before the book even begins, but I bought his expertise. This may be a stumbling block for some, but it's clear that our protagonist (and author perhaps?) has spent almost a lifetime amassing knowledge required to complete his task, and while it does lead to some hand holding on his part for us, the audience, I never felt like it was TOO far of a jump.Cline does weave in a lot of his own fictional history alongside actual 80's pop culture in a believable manner. The trail of breadcrumbs that marks the main quest throughout the story is littered with games, books, and movies both real and factual, and the line is blurred well enough that many times I wasn't exactly sure if something mentioned actually existed, or was created solely for the story. This neatly leads into a plausible extrapolation of the future of technology and video games.Following the thread of the main riddle is entertaining and highly driving. The actual clues aren't really intended to be "solved" by the reader, rather than followed. Our protagonist is the brains of the operation here, not us. It's a fun ride along, sort of like watching a magic trick be performed. You don't have to figure out the inner workings prematurely to enjoy the show.The largely virtual setting of the story does allow for some fairly imaginative combinations of people and places, reminiscent of playing with a toy box full of dolls and action figures from all sorts of shows, cartoons etc. sort of mashed together in a sort of wish fulfilling way, not too much unlike seeing the many different Lego sets being used together in "The Lego Movie"Cons:While the references I got were satisfying, there were some parts where familiarity was implied and I felt a bit "out of the loop", particularly when referencing music from that era. the description might be "x song by y artist was playing", but with no other description of the song, I didn't know whether it was happy, sad, suspenseful, intense etc. It definitely isn't a show stopper by any means, and the context of the scenarios do help inform the tone, but sometimes requisite knowledge seemed just that--a prerequisite to understanding what was happening.Wade, our protagonist, seems to flip flop between self loathing, overly confident, childish, meticulous, immature, mastermind whenever necessary for the plot to progress. He doesn't seem so much like a dynamic character as much as possessing a convenient set of switches to flip when appropriate. Maybe a different style of writing would better suite bridging or informing these changes, but as it stands he almost seems like many different people controlling one body at different timesSide characters are flat as pancakes. The permanent character list in this novel is already pretty small, but even the characters we have besides our protagonist are very one note. [MILD SPOILERS]]While some characters aren't exactly as they seem, even those differences when revealed turn out to be mostly superficial. [END SPOILERS] There are even Japanese characters that read completely like what a typical american would think a Japanese person is like, complete with adding "-san" to the ends of names and talking about honor.My last con is pretty plot specific so it might bare no relevance until you actually read the book so [MILD SPOILERS] Wade goes through a drastically life altering change that should have been the fire for the rest of his quest, but it seemed like little more than a plot device to cleanly allow him to be unchained from realistic consequences of his situation. It almost seemed like a quick and sloppy way to get rid of baggage as opposed to a full blown emotional catharsis. In fact, after it happens, it's mentioned maybe twice throughout the remain...

'Ready Player One', by Ernest Cline, is a tour de force in science fiction, but not for everyone.Why? Because it's all about gaming. MUDs, consoles, MMORPGs, VR, you name it. There's even an homage to all things 80's thrown in to season the mix. But if all those acronyms mean nothing to you, then neither will the plot because gaming provides the structure and mindset that makes the plot compelling.And it is a compelling story. Set in the 2040s, 'Ready Player One' paints a dystopian picture of a world in which we left things too late. Climate Change is no longer a theory to be disputed, it is a reality to be endured, and for the majority of America's population, that means living in abject poverty.With the real world so grim, most people escape to the virtual reality of the OASIS, which is like our internet on steroids. VR immersion rigs - goggles, haptic gloves and suits - and cheap OASIS access mean that even the very poor can escape reality, at least to some extent.But as with all good stories, there is a villain of the piece, and in the case of 'Ready Player One', that villain is a corporation known as IOI.IOI want to control OASIS because by doing so they would gain control of vast swathes of the world's population.Standing against this corporate threat are a bunch of teenaged geeks - Parzival, Aech, Art3mis, Daito and Shoto - called gunters. The action, however, unfolds on both the VR and real world planes, blurring the lines of both.Is the plot innovative and new? Um, yes and no. At its core, the story is about the fight between good and evil, which is as old as human time itself. But how it's done is why the story is so compelling. Being able to empathize with all of the main characters also helps.The main character is an avatar called Parzival. The young man behind Parzival is Wade, an orphan who lives with his aunt and her abusive boyfriends in a 'stack'. Stacks are trailer parks that have been built upwards rather than outwards [to save space] and they provide shelter to the very poor.Wade can access the OASIS because at the beginning of the story, he is a school-age boy and all school-age children are provided basic access for free - so they can attend virtual schools on a virtual planet called LUDUS.As always, of course, money talks, even in a virtual reality, so we become invested in Wade's life because he is the stereotypical geek. The big difference between him, and say someone like me, is that Wade/Parzival is one of the smartest geeks around. Luckily, his insecurities make us love him even as we wish we were more like him. -cough-And then there is the gentle love story I mentioned. It's there, and it's an integral part of the story, but it is not /the/ integral part of the story, the pivot around which all else revolves. If you need a comparison, think Chani and Paul Muad'ib from the Dune saga.For me, the love story in 'Ready Player One' struck just the right balance because it provided a change of pace when needed, as well as motivation for parts of Wade's character development. All without ever overshadowing the science fiction element. Then again, I may be a bit old-fashioned when it comes to science fiction and romance.And finally a word about the writing. Here too, the word that springs to mind is balance. At its core, science fiction [like its cousin Fantasy] is all about world building, so info. dumps are almost inevitable. The trick, then, is to balance the info. dumps with the action so the reader /wants/ to keep reading.As you can imagine, balancing two such conflicting elements, whilst also juggling character development, social commentary and that hint of romance, is one heck of a job. Ernest Cline, the author of 'Ready Player One' manages to keep all his balls [pun intended] in the air...most of the time.I think I only really became aware of the info. dumps once or twice during the entire story, and even then, I was interested enough in the world to feel no resentment.This was a story I enjoyed from start to finish, and it saddens me to think that such quintessential science fiction has been largely ignored by the establishment. It did win the Prometheus Award in 2012, but for my money, it should have won the Hugo and Nebula awards as well. It didn't, but perhaps, as with The Martian, Ready Player One will gain the recognition it deserves when/if Steven Spielberg turns it into a movie.In the meantime, why not read the book? Honestly, if you have ever played a video game, of any sort, then this novel is a must read.