Customer Reviews

Ready Player One

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Brief summary and review, no spoilers.

The year is 2044 and the world is an unpleasant and grim place. Famine and poverty are rampant, and to escape the bleakness of real life most people choose to instead enter the world of OASIS.

Let me explain OASIS - this is a virtual world that is very elaborate and realistic,and it contains multiple planets and landscapes. It was created in main part by a man named James Halliday, the ultimate lonely computer geek, who was obsessed with the 1980's. Halliday died some time before the start of this story but had stated in his will that his vast fortune would go to the person who could find three magical keys hidden in OASIS, pass the portals associated with them, and then find the ultimate prize - the hidden egg. Over the years many people have searched for these magic keys and gates but none have prevailed. Those who search call themselves gunters. Also at play is a villainess corporation called IOI led by a man named Sorrento - who's agents searching for the egg are called Sixers.

The main protagonist of this story is an 18 year old named Wade Watts. Wade lives in abject poverty with his uncaring and cruel aunt. Because Wade's life is so grim, like so many others he spends almost all of his time in OASIS. It's where he goes to school and it's in OASIS where he meets his friends - avatars named Aech and Art3mis. Because everyone he meets via OASIS is an avatar, it's hard for anyone to distinguish friend from foe.

Because of his real world lack of money and help, Wade has few powers and weapons for his avatar (which he named Parzival, a takeoff of Percival the Knight which was already taken.) Even with this disadvantage, because of his intelligence and his obsession with anything Halliday or 80's related he is able to figure out how to find the first key - the copper one, and figures out how to pass that first gate. The race is on, with other gunters and the Sixers in hot pursuit. The future of OASIS is at risk because Sorrento intends to start charging money for the use of OASIS, which would keep so many offline and unable to access it. And this competition poses real life dangers for the players as well.

This is really a quest novel in the grand tradition of great fantasy literature. We have obstacles to overcome and evil-doers to defeat, and "magic," albeit computer generated, along the way.. There is plenty of action in this book and you will be turning the pages eagerly to read what happens next.

One of the (many) things that makes this book so wonderful are all the 80's references, especially to the video games and music and movies that so many of us fondly remember.

Note - don't worry if you weren't or aren't a big video game player or don't remember a lot about the 80's - if you are it might only add to your enjoyment of this novel but anyone can follow along. The story is both innovative and old-fashioned and it should appeal to anyone who loves to lose themselves inside a good novel.

At heart, this is a book for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider or a geek, and for those of us who love to read. I haven't fallen in love with a book like this in a long time and I hope it gets the recognition and readership that it deserves. As an added plus, and without giving away any spoilers, there is an interesting twist of sorts at the end, that poses an ethical dilemma for anyone wielding power over OASIS.

Highly recommended. Just a magical book with a cast of characters that you will really care about. Even though this takes place in the year 2044, the sense of nostalgia and the world created will take you back in time to the way you felt when you were 18. I promise.

Well I couldn't stop reading this one if I were a gunter heading for the third gate. I didn't want it to end but I couldn't stop reading it either.
Do you remember a time when microwaves or CD's didn't exist? Floppy disks were floppy? When walkmans were cool? How about when Pac-man and Joust were the (edited) and you had to go to your local 7-11 or game room to play them?? Remember when you had to put your quarters up on the screen to get the next game and everybody stood around watching? This book brought back memories of that time. I've read the bad reviews. "No character development" "Same old plot" "Good guys vs Bad guys." For me, this brought back some vivid memories of sitting at a table with my D&D group. To have the visual of entering, virtually, a Gygax dungeon, holy (edited)! *bowing* "We're not worthy." It's almost too much for words on a personal level. I think that would be at the top of my g33k bucket list! Zork, my first true love of video games, when you had to create the scenery. (I can see the house and tree in my head vividly) I never beat it back then (I was 12 when my father and step mother introduced me to it and I was always getting kicked outside) but I own all versions of the game to this day. Cyndi Lauper,( "what time, I mean old Cyndi or now Cyn.." "Anytime Cyndi" Time After Time. I'm totally playing that at my wedding! I had all this running through my head as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep after two LATE nights and lack of sleep. While being drowsy at work, all I wanted to do was pick up this book or call off sick so I could immerse myself in this tribute to a childhood (now not forgotten). I HOPE I did this book some justice. I felt it was the least I could do. BTW I found your book by a plug on Patrick Rothfuss' blog (herein refered to as Art3mis cuz he's witty like that:)

This is the first review I've ever written and am proud to do so! Thank you so much Mr. Cline! I feel forever in your debt
This one's for all the nerds, g33ks and phreaks out there! You know (who) you are ;;)

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!

Ready Player One, Ernest Cline's 2011 debut novel, is set in the grim future of 2044, where economic collapse and energy shortages make life unbearable. Or, at least, part of it is. In this dystopian future, most people spend their days connected to the OASIS, an online virtual world where people can forget their troubles and be whoever they want to be while exploring thousands of exotic planets. Several years before the story begins, James Halliday, the eccentric creator of the OASIS who was obsessed with the 1980's of his youth, dies, leaving behind a message that the first person to solve his cryptic riddles and find a hidden easter egg he's left in the OASIS would win his huge personal fortune and control of Halliday's company, Gregarious Simulation Systems.

Our hero, Wade Watts - or, as he's known in the OASIS, Parzival (Percival was taken) - is an 18 year old who has only known misery in the real world, but has spent five years hunting Halliday's easter egg and mastering every bit of obscure '80's trivia he can find to try to solve Halliday's obscure clues. Parzival's friends Aech (mentor and best buddy), Art3mis (rival and love interest), Daito and Shoto (a pair from Japan working as a team) are also gunters (as the egg hunters are known), and become his friendly competition.

The unfriendly competition comes from Innovative Online Industries, led by the ruthless Nolan Sorrento. IOI and their hordes of corporate lackeys known as Sixers are also looking for the egg, so that they can rule the OASIS and "monetize" it properly. Monthly fees, advertising everywhere, an end to the guaranteed anonymity of the OASIS - it would be an end to life as Wade's generation knows it, and IOI will stop at nothing to reach the egg first and make it a reality.

The novel is filled to the brim with '80's references from film, television, video games, books, Dungeons & Dragons, and more, and anyone who grew up in that era will appreciate many of them. Cline does a great job of explaining them so that even if you don't have the trivia mastery Parzival does, you can keep up, and he makes it entertaining. I was born in 1978 (or, to put in Ready Player One terms, my first video game system was an Intellivision, but I spent way more time playing on the NES), while the fictional Halliday and the real Cline and Wheaton were all born in 1972, so there are a few references to the really early '80's I wasn't initially familiar with, but it didn't slow me down.

As fun as the fantastic voyages into the OASIS are, Cline does a great job of keeping the action in the real world important and exciting. Parzival finding the hidden keys, leveling up, and getting epic gear are very well done and entertaining, but the heart of the book is Wade's story and his personal growth and the struggle to juggle his quest for the egg and the need to survive and make personal connections in the real world. Those were the parts that really made me think (as I sit here typing the review to post in the internet - yes, I'm aware of the irony).

Actor, writer, and geek Wil Wheaton narrates the book, and he does a fantastic job. His characterization of Wade/Parzival and his friends and rivals really makes the story come alive. You can tell that Wheaton loves the material as much as Cline and Parzival, and experienced it himself as he perfectly renders all the movie quotes and classic video game sound effects of the era. Truly, I cannot think of another audiobook narrator who could nail the Pac-Man death bwoop like Wil does. This is one of those rare combinations of book and audio narrator that really adds another level of enjoyment to the experience.

Ready Player One is one of the best books I've read this year, and it has definitely put Cline on my radar as an author to watch. The film rights have been sold and Cline (who is also a scriptwriter) is working on the script. I'd love to see Ready Player One on the big screen. In the meantime, I heartily recommend you read Ready Player One, and if you are an audio book fan, definitely listen to it and enjoy Wheaton's fantastic performance.

The only thing that would have improved the book for me would be if Parzival was a descendent of Erdrick.

Ready Player One is a geektastic novel that invokes a nostalgic feeling for 80s geek culture. The 80s was, in many ways, the birthplace of the modern geek culture. Between video games, amazing geek-centric movies, the popularity and damning of role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons and the rise of progressive bands like Rush, much of what constitutes geek culture in the 2000s can trace its roots back to the 1980s. Author Ernest Cline obviously has a fondness for the time period and knows his stuff as he fills Ready Player One to the brim with pop cultural nods and firmly ties the 80s the entire plot of the novel.

It's 2044 and the world is in shambles. Poverty, war and other standard dystopian plot devices rule the day. Most of the population spends the majority of their time in a virtual world (think World of Warcraft on crack) called OASIS. OASIS started as a video game that grew in popularity to encompass multiple worlds and planets and systems that encompass virtually any geekdom you can think of (e.g. Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner, steampunk, etc.). Pretty much anything and everything is done in OASIS now. Even schooling. Ernest Cline spends a good chunk of the early novel setting up OASIS and creates a fairly believable depiction of what life would be like if we increasingly spent time in the virtual world as opposed to the real one. Wade Watts is a typical teenager in 2044. He's poor and goes to school in OASIS, where he is stuck on his schools planet because everything in OASIS involves real world transactions. In an interesting nod to the current financial situations engulfing our current world, OASIS currency is valued higher than "real" money and for those who don't have money, you're as stuck in OASIS as you would be in the real world.

Before Ready Player One begins, James Halliday, the inventor of OASIS, has died and left his entire fortune (and OASIS) to whoever can solve three puzzles inside the virtual world. Since Halliday was an 80s-obsessed geek, all of the puzzles and riddles are tied into the 80s. Because his fortune is vast and involves control of the ever popular OASIS, everyone and their monkeys start trying to search for it. The bad guys in this book are IOI, an Activision-esqe company who wants to control OASIS so they can monetize everything and rule the world, so to speak. What follows is your typical hero quest, filled to the brim with more 80s pop culture nuggets than you'll probably even catch.

The biggest problem with Ready Player One is that Ernest Cline is more a screenwriter than a novelist. He falls into the pattern of "telling" rather than "showing" the action. So, for instance, when Wade has to traverse a D&D module recreated in OASIS, it reads more like a montage and is over before it even starts. Instead of building suspense and sharing one or two key pieces of the module, Wade just tells us what he did and then he's at the end of it. This happens a lot, in particular with action sequences. He name checks action movies and director (i.e. John Woo) in describing what he did...but it's over in less than a paragraph. There's no real thrill or excitement in the action. It reads more like a blueprint for a movie script (which it's been picked up for by the way) than it does a full-fledged novel at times.

That said, I had a hard time putting it down. It's a very entertaining novel that invokes memories and nostalgia for those who remember the 80s. It reads quickly and will make a fantastic movies when and if it eventually gets made. As a first novel, it's decent. But I really wish Cline would focus more on showing us instead of giving us a quick summary of what happened.

While driving cross-country I listened to the audible version read by Wil Wheaton. First, Wheaton nailed the narration. It helps that the main character seems to match how Wheaton comes across on TWIT. Five stars for the narration! The book itself is fun and the pace is good. I read some review that said it was like DaVinci Code with a Cyberpunk theme and I think that is a good description--a fun book but not really great. It's definitely not in the league of Snow Crash or any book by Stephenson, Gibson, etc. Much of the plot movement involves pulling an arbitrary rabbit out of a hat. Wade gets stuck in some way and instead of tying threads together through the story, some random solution is presented. The characters and the world itself are 2D and not described in much detail. For example, the story takes place in a post peak-oil world, but that world is only briefly described. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading the book, but I wouldn't describe it as great.

I picked up this book because I am a bit geeky. I like all the stuff this book is about - computers, games, comics, junk like that. And the book isn't bad at all, really. Neat story, neat idea (sort of like Snow Crash without the satire/tongue-in-cheek humor. I want to let everybody know that I like this book, and will likely reread it in a few years. I am going to point out a couple of things that bogged the book down, and at times made me want to stop reading.

First, this book panders to nerds. That isn't a bad thing in and of itself, but you get the feeling very quickly that they are in there just so that nerds reading can think "HAH, I GET IT!" And instead of just throwing them in there so that people into nerd culture get them, he explains every single one. So not only do you immediately recognize the references, but then you get to sit there as he explains them anyway. If you're not completely turned on by having things you know about name dropped and then explained, this will bog down the story. Oh, Family Ties is a TV show from the 80's? Glad you explained it. Thanks.

Secondly, there are two types of nerds. Generally decent guys and girls with nerdy hobbies, and then anti-social, smug, condescending, pseudo intellectual nerds who are incredibly unpleasant to be around. These are, in popular vernacular, known as "Monvilles". Sometimes the author veers very, very close to outing himself as a Monville. A perfect example is that he includes a long, out of place rant about how he's atheist (he's speaking through the protagonist, but it is clear he wanted to rant against religion and used his protagonist as the mouthpiece) in the first chapter. He even includes "Deal with it" during this rant. It's out of place, silly, and I could see reading it on a message board, but here it's awkwardly inserted so that the author can say "I'm atheist...deal with it!"

Then there are a couple of parts that deal with working as technical support...and these are even worse. I've worked tech support jobs before, and they are incredibly frustrating. However, Cline uses these instances to show just how smug and unlikable he would be in real life. He has such utter contempt for anybody who dares spend their time doing something other than learning about computers. The people who need tech support are all halfwitted, slobbering subhumans who refuse to "think for themselves" and need a nerd (who is, of course, incredibly smart) to show them the way. He wastes a ton of time ranting against the people who call into technical support. Cline has said he worked in tech support, so when you call these places realized bitter, poorly socialized nerds are on the other end, furious with you because you have the audacity to ask questions about computers.

Then there is the dialogue. There are several instances where it becomes clear that Cline isn't very socialized. The dialogue reads like it was written by somebody who had never had a conversation but was told how they work by somebody who had. The book is pretty great when it's just the protagonist doing this thing, but when more than one character shows up it gets really bad really quick. There is one conversation about Swordquest in the book that is truly cringe worthy. The dialogue is so bad, so forced, and so unnatural that it makes Cline seem autistic.

Overall, I liked the book. I'm not trying to rag on it, I just want other people (who might not be unwashed, unshaven, obese nerds who love to sneer at the plebes) to understand the problems with this book. I think the really, really geeky will love the parts I've outlined above, but most normals will find them childish and unpleasant.

Ready Player One, Cline's first novel, is an incredibly journey through the future and past. Set in the mid 21st century, the world is going to hell in a handbasket. The greatest escape from reality is OASIS, a fully immersive, open-source, free VR game/environment. The creator of OASIS, Halliday, has decided to leave his massive fortune, and control of the company, to whoever can solve his huge, 80's geek/pop culture inspired "easter egg" hunt. Ready Player One follows impoverished Wade Watts as he tracks down the clues leading to the ultimate prize, trying to stay one step ahead of other competitors and IOI, a monolithic, moral-less corporation out take control of OASIS for its own goals.

That's a brief description of the book's plot, but it doesn't do justice at all to the writing. There are hundreds of minor details, little bits of enthralling geek and 80's trivia that show the loving care Cline took while crafting this novel. There are many well executed minor plot elements and questions, such as what this fortune should be used for, whether OASIS should continue as such an addicting escape from a terrible reality, the proper level of commercialization in popular software, and more which I won't mention to avoid any spoilers; these all add to the complexity, richness, and flavor of the novel. Furthermore, Cline's managed to include all these elements in a way that shouldn't turn off those who aren't dyed-in-the-wool geeks, or aren't old enough to remember the beginnings of popular computing; although I'm a definite geek, I'm in my 20s, and while I've seen a lot of these old movies, I've never had to deal with cassettes and only barely remember floppies. I study Chemistry, not programming. Despite my geek-cred limitations, I really loved this book and think other readers will too.

Overall, this is easily the best novel I've read that addresses the geek sub-culture, and one which I know I'll re-read again and again over the years. I'd recommend it to those interested in the development of nerd culture, as well as anyone looking for a great plot with awesome levels of detail and care in the novel's execution. I now look forward to Cline's next book with great anticipation, though I have no idea of how he'll top Ready Player One.

When I tell you what this book is about, most of you are going to think "That doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy. I'm not a gamer, and I'm not really a 1980s buff." Just forget all that. Seriously. I thought that too, but I was dead wrong. This is one of the most fun and exciting books I've read this year. The only reason I tried it was because Alyce at At Home With Books got so gosh darned excited about it that I felt like I had to read it. And I am so glad I did!

Here is the basic set-up: In the year 2044, most of Earth's population are living in poverty and misery. One of the few ways to make life bearable is to plug-in to the OASIS--a fully immersive virtual reality world where people can attend school, shop, date, and play. Basically, anything that can be done in the real world can be done in the OASIS--minus the pesky boundaries of the real world (like gravity, lack of magic and so forth). (The OASIS is very much like the Matrix, except that people consciously and voluntarily log in to the OASIS.)

Upon the death of primary OASIS architect, James Halliday, a worldwide contest is announced, with the prize being Halliday's entire estate, which includes his personal stake in OASIS and a fortune valued at more than $240 billion dollars. To win, all you have to do is be the first person to solve a series of riddles and puzzles that Halliday has hidden within the OASIS.

Naturally, Halliday made the contest extremely difficult. Knowledge of Halliday's personal likes, dislikes, and life are the key to success. It turns out (in a stroke of genius by Cline) that Halliday was obsessed with the 1980s, particularly vintage video games (like those from Atari, Ms. Pac Man), Dungeons and Dragons, movies like War Games and Ladyhawke, and music by bands such as Rush and Oingo Boingo. Halliday grew up in the1980s, and his whole life was informed and determined by 1980s culture. To succeed at the Hunt (as the contest comes to be known), a new subculture of Halliday scholars and searchers called "gunters" is born. (Gunters are people who spent every free moment of their lives searching for Halliday's Egg, the virtual form of the prize that Halliday has hidden.) In addition, the villain of the book--the mega-corporation IOI--is also going after the Egg with everything they've got in an effort to seize control of OASIS and commercialize the hell out of it.

However, five years have passed since Halliday's death and the start of the Hunt, and no one has yet to solve the first riddle. That is, until our hero, 18-year-old Wade Watts, an orphaned gunter who lives in poverty in the "stacks" on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, becomes the first person to appear on the Scoreboard when he find the Copper Key (the first of three hidden keys). And, as Wade says in the prologue:

Dozens of books, cartoons, movies and miniseries have attempted to tell
the story of everything that happened next, but all of them got it
wrong. So I want to set the record straight, once and for all.

The rest of the book is the breathless, deliriously fun, adrenaline-filled account of Wade's quest to find Halliday's egg. Filled with adventure, close calls, death, humor, romance, friendship, pain and a bajillion references to 1980s pop culture, the book is a kick to read. I enjoyed it immensely, and found myself so caught up in the story that I abandoned any pretense of housekeeping and devoured the book in just a few days. (Yesterday, I just sat and read it until I was done because I couldn't wait to find out how it ended.)

Too often, the thriller genre is filled with run-of-the-mill story lines such as "a lawyer found a secret and now he has to hide from the bad guys" or "a tough guy loner is in town to find the sniper who is picking off ordinary citizens" or "a serial killer seems to be loose in the PTA." Very few of these books are actually thrilling--where you literally feel your pulse quicken and you're on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. Ready Player One is a true thriller. I was so caught up in what was going on that I just raced from page to page. It totally read like a movie ... and I mean that in the very best way.

The other great thing about the book was how Cline built this dystopic future world that is totally (thank God!) unlike ours but then chose to make Halliday obsessed with the 1980s--thereby providing a motherlode of cultural touchstones that feel familiar and fun and fresh. By cleverly combining a unfamiliar future with the familiar past, Cline gives us the best of both worlds--allowing us to relate to Wade in a way that we could never fully relate to other dystopic heroes like Katniss Everdeen or Todd Hewitt. When Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail makes an appearance, I was smiling from ear-to-ear. I'm sure everyone will be able to relate to at least a few of the 1980s references, and if you can't, it still doesn't diminish the rollercoaster thrill ride that is this book.

Do yourself a favor and read Ready Player One. It was one of the funnest and most thrilling reading experiences I've had all year.

It's a book about a computer game. Uh-huh.

It's a book about finding an Easter Egg. Computer game with bunnies?

Whoever discovers the hidden secret will become the heir to a multibillion dollar company. Visions of chocolate covered bunnies running around hiding colored eggs in Willy Wonka's factory.

I promise you'll like it. Do I detect a gleam in the eye reminiscent of Gene Wilder?

I buy the book, take it home, and open it, discovering it's a book about a geek.

Meet Wade Watts. An eighteen-year-old high-school senior, living with his aunt in a trailer park, and a kid totally immersed in a computer game.

Let me fill in the rest. The year is 2044. There is a major energy crisis throughout the world, famines, unemployment, and poverty. Wade lives in the fifteenth floor of the 'stack', a conglomeration of mobile homes stacked upon other mobile homes to accommodate the overabundant population arriving in the cities.

The computer is not only an escape, but it is a way of life for a lot of folks. 2012 brought a new revolution in the computer industry when a couple of individuals introduced OASIS. A totally integrated global system that allows you to create a character, known as an avatar, and live in a make-believe world using a pair of goggles and a glove to control your alter-ego in the game. Imagine Facebook on nitro-Speed.

When the game's designer, James Halliday dies, leaving no heirs, a video is released worldwide explaining the rules of a contest. Anyone familiar with computer games knows that programmers can be a quirky lot and will hide secrets within their games. These little secrets are nicknamed Easter Eggs and usually upon discovering them the player is then rewarded with some sort of a prize. Halliday's prize is sole ownership of the massive corporation and two hundred and forty billion dollars.

There are three keys hidden, and each key will open a new gate and a challenge. Once the final challenge is completed that individual is deemed the winner. Sounds easy enough until you realize the first clue is in the form of a riddle. We're talking cyberspace here, where there are an infinite number of locations, with new ones created every second in which you could hide a single key. Impossible.

Lucky for our protagonists, Ernest Cline saw the futility in that kind of a search and imbued James Halliday with a fervent obsession with all things 1980s. A mad genius. You figure out which I'm referring to after reading the book.

The author does a thorough job of describing obsolete and not-so-easy-to-understand jargon for the uninitiated (newbies), while engaging the more die-hard computer users and gamers (geeks), that grew up in the early years of home computing. I was once more reminded that I'm on the far side of casual geekiness myself, having started with the same Tandy Color Computer from Radio Shack as Halliday, although mine only came with 4k memory. For me, a wonderful jaunt down memory lane and what are affectionately referred to as old-school games, including some of the very first arcade machines, of which I devoted more than my share of quarters to.

It's a book that really stands alone. Part mystery, part history, part espionage, part thriller, part comedy, part fantasy, and throw in a few others.

It's also a book about the strength of individuals uniting against corporate greed.

And lastly,

It's a book filled with pure nostalgic mind candy relating to the eighties.

Thanks for the memories, Ernest.