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Ernest Cline

Ready Player One: A Novel Paperback – June 5, 2012

by Ernest Cline (Author)

146,794 ratings

Book 1 of 2: Ready Player One

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg.

“Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly

A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.

When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself.

Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club

“Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost

“An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN

“A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe

“Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR

“[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9

Book 1 of 2

Ready Player One
Print length

384 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House Publishing Group
Publication date

June 5, 2012
Dimensions

5.16 x 0.81 x 7.94 inches
ISBN-10

0307887448
ISBN-13

978-0307887443
Lexile measure

970L
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Popular Highlights in this book

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“No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.”
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I’d come to see my rig for what it was: an elaborate contraption for deceiving my senses, to allow me to live in a world that didn’t exist. Each component of my rig was a bar in the cell where I had willingly imprisoned myself.
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Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation was a big place.
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From the Publisher

A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?

Editorial Reviews

Review

“The science-fiction writer John Scalzi has aptly referred to Ready Player One as a ‘nerdgasm’ [and] there can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture. . . . But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“A fun, funny and fabulously entertaining first novel . . . This novel's large dose of 1980s trivia is a delight . . . [but] even readers who need Google to identify Commodore 64 or Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, will enjoy this memorabilian feast.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Incredibly entertaining . . . Drawing on everything from Back to the Future to Roald Dahl to Neal Stephenson's groundbreaking Snow Crash, Cline has made Ready Player One a geek fantasia, '80s culture memoir and commentary on the future of online behavior all at once.”—Austin American-Statesman

“Ready Player One is the ultimate lottery ticket.”—New York Daily News

“This non-gamer loved every page of Ready Player One.”—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series

“A treasure for anyone already nostalgic for the late twentieth century. . . But it’s also a great read for anyone who likes a good book.”—Wired

“Gorgeously geeky, superbly entertaining, this really is a spectacularly successful debut.”—Daily Mail (UK)

“A gunshot of fun with a wicked sense of timing and a cast of characters that you're pumping your fist in the air with whenever they succeed. I haven't been this much on the edge of my seat for an ending in years.”—Chicago Reader

"A 'frakking' good read [featuring] incredible creative detail . . . I grinned at the sheer audacity of Cline's imagination.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Fascinating and imaginative . . . It’s non-stop action when gamers must navigate clever puzzles and outwit determined enemies in a virtual world in order to save a real one. Readers are in for a wild ride.”—Terry Brooks, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Shannara series

“I was blown away by this book. . . . A book of ideas, a potboiler, a game-within-a-novel, a serious science-fiction epic, a comic pop culture mash-up–call this novel what you will, but Ready Player One will defy every label you try to put on it. Here, finally, is this generation’s Neuromancer.”—Will Lavender, New York Times bestselling author of Dominance

“I really, really loved Ready Player One. . . . Cline expertly mines a copious vein of 1980s pop culture, catapulting the reader on a light-speed adventure in an advanced but backward-looking future.”—Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse

“A nerdgasm . . . imagine Dungeons and Dragons and an 80s video arcade made hot, sweet love, and their child was raised in Azeroth.”—John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of Old Man’s War

“Completely fricking awesome . . . This book pleased every geeky bone in my geeky body. I felt like it was written just for me.”—Patrick Rothfuss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wise Man’s Fear

About the Author

Ernest Cline is a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. He is the author of the novels Ready Player One and Armada and co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

0001

I was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire in one of the neighboring stacks. The shots were followed by a few minutes of muffled shouting and screaming, then silence.

Gunfire wasn’t uncommon in the stacks, but it still shook me up. I knew I probably wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, so I decided to kill the remaining hours until dawn by brushing up on a few coin-op classics. Galaga, Defender, Asteroids. These games were outdated digital dinosaurs that had become museum pieces long before I was born. But I was a gunter, so I didn’t think of them as quaint low-res antiques. To me, they were hallowed artifacts. Pillars of the pantheon. When I played the classics, I did so with a determined sort of reverence.

I was curled up in an old sleeping bag in the corner of the trailer’s tiny laundry room, wedged into the gap between the wall and the dryer. I wasn’t welcome in my aunt’s room across the hall, which was fine by me. I preferred to crash in the laundry room anyway. It was warm, it afforded me a limited amount of privacy, and the wireless reception wasn’t too bad. And, as an added bonus, the room smelled like liquid detergent and fabric softener. The rest of the trailer reeked of cat piss and abject poverty.

Most of the time I slept in my hideout. But the temperature had dropped below zero the past few nights, and as much as I hated staying at my aunt’s place, it still beat freezing to death.

A total of fifteen people lived in my aunt’s trailer. She slept in the smallest of its three bedrooms. The Depperts lived in the bedroom adjacent to her, and the Millers occupied the large master bedroom at the end of the hall. There were six of them, and they paid the largest share of the rent. Our trailer wasn’t as crowded as some of the other units in the stacks. It was a double-wide. Plenty of room for everybody.

I pulled out my laptop and powered it on. It was a bulky, heavy beast, almost ten years old. I’d found it in a Dumpster behind the abandoned strip mall across the highway. I’d been able to coax it back to life by replacing its system memory and reloading the stone-age operating system. The processor was slower than a sloth by current standards, but it was fine for my needs. The laptop served as my portable research library, video arcade, and home theater system. Its hard drive was filled with old books, movies, TV show episodes, song files, and nearly every videogame made in the twentieth century.

I booted up my emulator and selected Robotron: 2084, one of my all-time favorite games. I’d always loved its frenetic pace and brutal simplicity. Robotron was all about instinct and reflexes. Playing old videogames never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game’s two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It’s just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

I spent a few hours blasting through wave after wave of Brains, Spheroids, Quarks, and Hulks in my unending battle to Save the Last Human Family! But eventually my fingers started to cramp up and I began to lose my rhythm. When that happened at this level, things deteriorated quickly. I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: game over.

I shut down the emulator and began to browse through my video files. Over the past five years, I’d downloaded every single movie, TV show, and cartoon mentioned in Anorak’s Almanac. I still hadn’t watched all of them yet, of course. That would probably take decades.

I selected an episode of Family Ties, an ’80s sitcom about a middle-class family living in central Ohio. I’d downloaded the show because it had been one of Halliday’s favorites, and I figured there was a chance that some clue related to the Hunt might be hidden in one of the episodes. I’d become addicted to the show immediately, and had now watched all 180 episodes, multiple times. I never seemed to get tired of them.

Sitting alone in the dark, watching the show on my laptop, I always found myself imagining that I lived in that warm, well-lit house, and that those smiling, understanding people were my family. That there was nothing so wrong in the world that we couldn’t sort it out by the end of a single half-hour episode (or maybe a two-parter, if it was something really serious).

My own home life had never even remotely resembled the one depicted in Family Ties, which was probably why I loved the show so much. I was the only child of two teenagers, both refugees who’d met in the stacks where I’d grown up. I don’t remember my father. When I was just a few months old, he was shot dead while looting a grocery store during a power blackout. The only thing I really knew about him was that he loved comic books. I’d found several old flash drives in a box of his things, containing complete runs of The Amazing Spider-Man, The X-Men, and Green Lantern. My mom once told me that my dad had given me an alliterative name, Wade Watts, because he thought it sounded like the secret identity of a superhero. Like Peter Parker or Clark Kent. Knowing that made me think he was must have been a cool guy, despite how he’d died.

My mother, Loretta, had raised me on her own. We’d lived in a small RV in another part of the stacks. She had two full-time OASIS jobs, one as a telemarketer, the other as an escort in an online brothel. She used to make me wear earplugs at night so I wouldn’t hear her in the next room, talking dirty to tricks in other time zones. But the earplugs didn’t work very well, so I would watch old movies instead, with the volume turned way up.

I was introduced to the OASIS at an early age, because my mother used it as a virtual babysitter. As soon as I was old enough to wear a visor and a pair of haptic gloves, my mom helped me create my first OASIS avatar. Then she stuck me in a corner and went back to work, leaving me to explore an entirely new world, very different from the one I’d known up until then.

From that moment on, I was more or less raised by the OASIS’s interactive educational programs, which any kid could access for free. I spent a big chunk of my childhood hanging out in a virtual-reality simulation of Sesame Street, singing songs with friendly Muppets and playing interactive games that taught me how to walk, talk, add, subtract, read, write, and share. Once I’d mastered those skills, it didn’t take me long to discover that the OASIS was also the world’s biggest public library, where even a penniless kid like me had access to every book ever written, every song ever recorded, and every movie, television show, videogame, and piece of artwork ever created. The collected knowledge, art, and amusements of all human civilization were there, waiting for me. But gaining access to all of that information turned out to be something of a mixed blessing. Because that was when I found out the truth.

...

I don’t know, maybe your experience differed from mine. For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.

The worst thing about being a kid was that no one told me the truth about my situation. In fact, they did the exact opposite. And, of course, I believed them, because I was just a kid and I didn’t know any better. I mean, Christ, my brain hadn’t even grown to full size yet, so how could I be expected to know when the adults were bullshitting me?

So I swallowed all of the dark ages nonsense they fed me. Some time passed. I grew up a little, and I gradually began to figure out that pretty much everyone had been lying to me about pretty much everything since the moment I emerged from my mother’s womb.

This was an alarming revelation.

It gave me trust issues later in life.

I started to figure out the ugly truth as soon as I began to explore the free OASIS libraries. The facts were right there waiting for me, hidden in old books written by people who weren’t afraid to be honest. Artists and scientists and philosophers and poets, many of them long dead. As I read the words they’d left behind, I finally began to get a grip on the situation. My situation. Our situation. What most people referred to as “the human condition.”

It was not good news.

I wish someone had just told me the truth right up front, as soon as I was old enough to understand it. I wish someone had just said:

“Here’s the deal, Wade. You’re something called a ‘human being.’ That’s a really smart kind of animal. Like every other animal on this planet, we’re descended from a single-celled organism that lived millions of years ago. This happened by a process called evolution, and you’ll learn more about it later. But trust me, that’s really how we all got here. There’s proof of it everywhere, buried in the rocks. That story you heard? About how we were all created by a super-powerful dude named God who lives up in the sky? Total bullshit. The whole God thing is actually an ancient fairy tale that people have been telling to one another for thousands of years. We made it all up. Like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.

“Oh, and by the way . . . there’s no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny. Also bullshit. Sorry, kid. Deal with it.

“You’re probably wondering what happened before you got here. An awful lot of stuff, actually. Once we evolved into humans, things got pretty interesting. We figured out how to grow food and domesticate animals so we didn’t have to spend all of our time hunting. Our tribes got much bigger, and we spread across the entire planet like an unstoppable virus. Then, after fighting a bunch of wars with each other over land, resources, and our made-up gods, we eventually got all of our tribes organized into a ‘global civilization.’ But, honestly, it wasn’t all that organized, or civilized, and we continued to fight a lot of wars with each other. But we also figured out how to do science, which helped us develop technology. For a bunch of hairless apes, we’ve actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things. Computers. Medicine. Lasers. Microwave ovens. Artificial hearts. Atomic bombs. We even sent a few guys to the moon and brought them back. We also created a global communications network that lets us all talk to each other, all around the world, all the time. Pretty impressive, right?

“But that’s where the bad news comes in. Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole bunch of energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels, which came from dead plants and animals buried deep in the ground. We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it’s pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we’ve had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it’s been going on for a while now.

“Also, it turns out that burning all of those fossil fuels had some nasty side effects, like raising the temperature of our planet and screwing up the environment. So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we’re still fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left.

“Basically, kid, what this all means is that life is a lot tougher than it used to be, in the Good Old Days, back before you were born. Things used to be awesome, but now they’re kinda terrifying. To be honest, the future doesn’t look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. Human civilization is in ‘decline.’ Some people even say it’s ‘collapsing.’

“You’re probably wondering what’s going to happen to you. That’s easy. The same thing is going to happen to you that has happened to every other human being who has ever lived. You’re going to die. We all die. That’s just how it is.

“What happens when you die? Well, we’re not completely sure. But the evidence seems to suggest that nothing happens. You’re just dead, your brain stops working, and then you’re not around to ask annoying questions anymore. Those stories you heard? About going to a wonderful place called ‘heaven’ where there is no more pain or death and you live forever in a state of perpetual happiness? Also total bullshit. Just like all that God stuff. There’s no evidence of a heaven and there never was. We made that up too. Wishful thinking. So now you have to live the rest of your life knowing you’re going to die someday and disappear forever.

“Sorry.”

...

OK, on second thought, maybe honesty isn’t the best policy after all. Maybe it isn’t a good idea to tell a newly arrived human being that he’s been born into a world of chaos, pain, and poverty just in time to watch everything fall to pieces. I discovered all of that gradually over several years, and it still made me feel like jumping off a bridge.

Luckily, I had access to the OASIS, which was like having an escape hatch into a better reality. The OASIS kept me sane. It was my playground and my preschool, a magical place where anything was possible.

The OASIS is the setting of all my happiest childhood memories. When my mom didn’t have to work, we would log in at the same time and play games or go on interactive storybook adventures together. She used to have to force me to log out every night, because I never wanted to return to the real world. Because the real world sucked.

I never blamed my mom for the way things were. She was a victim of fate and cruel circumstance, like everyone else. Her generation had it the hardest. She’d been born into a world of plenty, then had to watch it all slowly vanish. More than anything, I remember feeling sorry for her. She was depressed all the time, and taking drugs seemed to be the only thing she truly enjoyed. Of course, they were what eventually killed her. When I was eleven years old, she shot a bad batch of something into her arm and died on our ratty fold-out sofa bed while listening to music on an old mp3 player I’d repaired and given to her the previous Christmas.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House Publishing Group; 32089th edition (June 5, 2012)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 384 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307887448
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307887443
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 970L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.16 x 0.81 x 7.94 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
- #44 in Dystopian Fiction (Books)
- #88 in Science Fiction Adventures

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ERNEST CLINE is an internationally best-selling novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. He is the author of the novels Ready Player One and Armada and co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games.

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John Walker

Epic treasure quest in a virtual world marinated in 1980s nostalgia

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 5, 2019

Verified Purchase

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 banded together into “clans”, some very large, agreeing to exchange information and, if one found the Egg, to share the proceeds with all members. More sinister were the activities of Innovative Online Industries—IOI—a global Internet and communications company which controlled much of the backbone that underlay the OASIS. It had assembled a large team of paid employees, backed by the research and database facilities of IOI, with their sole mission to find the Egg and turn control of the OASIS over to IOI. These players, all with identical avatars and names consisting of their six-digit IOI employee numbers, all of which began with the digit “6”, were called “sixers” or, more often in the gunter argot, “Sux0rz”.

Gunters detested IOI and the sixers, because it was no secret that if they found the Egg, IOI's intention was to close the architecture of the OASIS, begin to charge fees for access, plaster everything with advertising, destroy anonymity, snoop indiscriminately, and use their monopoly power to put their thumb on the scale of all forms of communication including political discourse. (Fortunately, that couldn't happen to us with today's enlightened, progressive Silicon Valley overlords.) But IOI's financial resources were such that whenever a rare and powerful magical artefact (many of which had been created by Halliday in the original OASIS, usually requiring the completion of a quest to obtain, but freely transferrable thereafter) came up for auction, IOI was usually able to outbid even the largest gunter clans and add it to their arsenal.

Wade Watts, a lone gunter whose avatar is named Parzival, became obsessed with the Hunt on the day of Halliday's death, and, years later, devotes almost every minute of his life not spent sleeping or in school (like many, he attends school in the OASIS, and is now in the last year of high school) on the Hunt, reading and re-reading Anorak's Almanac, reading, listening to, playing, and viewing everything mentioned therein, to the extent he can recite the dialogue of the movies from memory. He makes copious notes in his “grail diary”, named after the one kept by Indiana Jones. His friends, none of whom he has ever met in person, are all gunters who congregate on-line in virtual reality chat rooms such as that run by his best friend, Aech.

Then, one day, bored to tears and daydreaming in Latin class, Parzival has a flash of insight. Putting together a message buried in the Almanac that he and many other gunters had discovered but failed to understand, with a bit of Latin and his encyclopedic knowledge of role playing games, he decodes the clue and, after a demanding test, finds himself in possession of the Copper Key. His name, alone, now appears at the top of the scoreboard, with 10,000 points. The path to the First Gate was now open.

Discovery of the Copper Key was a sensation: suddenly Parzival, a humble level 10 gunter, is a worldwide celebrity (although his real identity remains unknown, as he refuses all media offers which would reveal or compromise it). Knowing that the key can be found re-energises other gunters, not to speak of IOI, and Parzival's footprints in the OASIS are scrupulously examined for clues to his achievement. (Finding a key and opening a gate does not render it unavailable to others. Those who subsequently pass the tests will receive their own copies of the key, although there is a point bonus for finding it first.)

So begins an epic quest by Parzival and other gunters, contending with the evil minions of IOI, whose potential gain is so high and ethics so low that the risks may extend beyond the OASIS into the real world. For the reader, it is a nostalgic romp through every aspect of the popular culture of the 1980s: the formative era of personal computing and gaming. The level of detail is just staggering: this may be the geekiest nerdfest ever published. Heck, there's even a reference to an erstwhile Autodesk employee! The only goof I noted is a mention of the “screech of a 300-baud modem during the log-in sequence”. Three hundred baud modems did not have the characteristic squawk and screech sync-up of faster modems which employ trellis coding. While there are a multitude of references to details which will make people who were there, then, smile, readers who were not immersed in the 1980s and/or less familiar with its cultural minutiæ can still enjoy the challenges, puzzles solved, intrigue, action, and epic virtual reality battles which make up the chronicle of the Hunt. The conclusion is particularly satisfying: there may be a bigger world than even the OASIS.

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Moon Donkey

So good it will make your eyes bleed!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 7, 2012

Verified Purchase

Freaking Spectacular

Ready Player One is one heck of a great book. Freakishly great. My initial reaction after finishing it was that it is a Hall of Fame inductee. Yeah... it was that good.

Oh - and I should mention that I was very honored to learn that my scores of review groupies voted me the greatest reviewer of all time. The usual response to something like that would be to say "I'm humbled." You know... that is what you always hear from sports figures, actors, and politicians when the win something. "I'm very humbled... " they say. Was I humbled? Heck no! That word isn't even in my dictionary! You are darn right I'm the greatest reviewer of all time! Humbled? Bah... more like - what took you so long to figure that out?! I mean what the heck... isn't it obvious? There should be two categories of reviews on Amazon. One for Moondonkey, and one for everyone else. In fact, Amazon should put a "Moondonkey" option under the search menu. Anyway... thank you for the honor. Yes, I am the greatest reviewer of all time.

Back to Ready Player One. You know - I suppose it helped that I grew up in the 80's and could recognize most of the references. In fact, I think I have The Tomb of Horrors in my basement somewhere. I looked up the image on Goggle and was like... Dude... I think I've got that. Why do I have that? Because I'm Moondonkey, that's why! Why wouldn't I have it?

I heard that they might make this book into a movie. If they do, I hope they don't themselves too seriously and just let it fly. If done right, it would be hilarious. If not, something like this could easily go off the tracks. However, to do it correctly, I suspect that the producers would have to get the rights to use material from a lot of sources - Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica just to name a few. The final battle is a perfect example... ideally you would want ships from all three flying around blowing stuff up.

I imagine the film starting with some green Apple IIe letters on a black screen - something to introduce the audience to the basic plot details. Then a cut to black and an awesome 80's song. Not sure which song- I'm open to suggestions (BTW - anyone else surprised that Mr. Roboto wasn't mentioned in the book?). I don't think that would be a good intro though... it has to be something fast-paced with a big punch right off the bat. FADE IN ...

How about Journey - Don't Stop Believin' for starting at the final scene and rolling into the credits. Awesome.

Bonnie Tyler - Holding Out for a Hero. Maybe for final battle between Z and Sorrento while stuff blows up all over the place. Awesome.

The intro is the tough one. It has to punch you in the face right away.... Just like the Star Wars into does... BAM! I was thinking maybe The Cars - Magic, but I don't know... I'm just not sold on it. I also looked at selections from Cinderella, Poison, and Bon Jovi. Not sure about those either. I even looked at the author's website, where he has a "playlist" of songs listed. Frankly, I didn't see anything that would make a good intro. Billy Idol? Anvil of Crom has a particular appeal, but it starts slow and was already used in Conan.

Another song with some merit is Kenny Loggins - Danger Zone. Except that it is a Top Gun song. However, if you listen to the beat of Danger Zone and Magic, you get the idea. Fast paced. Upbeat.

Hmmm... perhaps Holding Out for a Hero would work for the intro... maybe use it again during the last battle when Z has his "Neo" moment and turns to face the enemy. I think the beginning would have to be rewritten though... action right away.

Oh - and the big robot that Z uses at the end (whatever the name is)... I Googled an image of that thing and I don't think it works. First, too cheesey. Second, too obscure. Change it up. My vote is for Unicron instead.

I don't think that sticking strictly to songs mentioned in the book is a good idea.

UPDATE 3/26/2015
So I hear Steven Spielberg is going to direct Ready Player One. Frankly, that’s about as good of a choice as any given his background. However, I still have a hard time trusting him not to screw it up. Therefore, I’ve taken the liberty to write me own screen play for the film… well maybe not an entire screen play… or maybe even very much of what would generally pass for a screen play… but I did spend some serious time in front of my computer screening music and considering scenes. What? That’s crazy? Hey – it is more than you did so stop talking and let me finish…

Here is the problem – some of the content of the book is just too “geek fringe” for a good film. Did I just invent that term? Probably, I’m on the cutting edge of pop culture you know. I should trademark that. For example, Rush 2112 is just too far out there to be effective.

So here are some thoughts in no particular order:

One thing I’d add would be a Roller Rink scene with Z and Art3mis. There is a part in the book when they are sort of “dating” (but not really). I envision a compilation of Z and Art3mis doing “together” type activities set to REO Speedwagon Can’t Fight This Feeling. However, the first chorus of the song (at exactly 1:29) MUST climax to an initial shot of a disco ball on a ceiling and then pan down to the two of them doing a couples skate at a virtual roller rink. Or perhaps we see the ball first, then a shot of hands holding followed by a pan out to the larger rink. I mean come on – who didn’t couples skate to REO Speedwagon in the 80’s?

Another one - when Z and Art3mis dance at Og’s party… how about Forever Young by Alphaville? Yeah… I know… amazing huh?

I’m still a fan of using Holding Out for a Hero by Bonnie Tyler to intro the film. Read the following while playing the song and stick with me here… No, I’m serious. Print out this review and hold it in your hand while listening to the song.

I’m waiting…

Ok… are you ready now?

FADE IN to “Ready Player One .” in green Apple IIe letters on a black screen. The period at the end is flashing on and off. (cue the music)

INTERIOR DOCKING BAY
(first stanza…. Da…da….da..da..da….. at .06)) Close-up shot of boots walking (space pilot in suit)
(second stanza…Da…da…da..da..da… at .09) Close-up shot adjusting space gloves…

(third stanza…Da…da….da…da.da… at .12) Close up shot of name tag on uniformed chest “Parzival”

Then we see the back of the pilot climbing a ladder and getting into an 80’s version Battlestar Galactica fighter. Pilot adjusts controls, prepares for flights, etc… hand pushes forward accelerator.

(music – intense drumbeat….Dadadadadadadaadadad at .30 seconds) – ship blasts through launch tunnel and out into space…

As the Battlestar Galactica fades in distance in field of stars, Z is initially alone in space for perhaps 5-10 seconds. Then, at around the .40 to .45 mark he is intercepted by some Star Wars X-Wing fighters or something. Ships engage thrusters and fly into battle with various other ships…

Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the street-wise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night I toss and I turn and I dream
of what I need

(chorus)
Z fires to the pace of the drumbeat at .55-.56 (music…dum…dum..dee…dum…dum…dee…dum)…

(music… “I need a hero…. Symbol clash!)… Target ship explodes at .58-.59 (like a tie fighter exploding in Star Wars) and Z’s ship flights through the cloud immediately after, but before the vocals kick in again. Maybe it could have even been Aech joining him and blowing up the enemy to save his butt or something.

…(lyrics)…
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong
And he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight
I need a hero
…

EXTERIOR – (symbol clash!)…Z blasts another ship in pace with the music…at 1.11

…(lyrics)…
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure
And it's gotta be soon
And he's gotta be larger than life
…..
Then we see Aech and Z in a larger battle scene filled with ships from Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Babylon 5, etc. Maybe even some transformers and other robots flying around.

Take it from there…

Does this match the intro of the book? No. But there is no immediate spark at the book’s beginning. A Ready Player One movie should intro like Star Wars – A New Hope …Bam! Right into the action. Or Goonies – where the intro is a jail escape and chase to music. This should be like that. Are you reading this Spielberg? You should be. You should probably be making me a job offer this is so good.

I’ve considered how to explain Z having the resources to be in this environment at the beginning. I don’t know… maybe Aech brought him along on a “quest” or invited him to play an online “game” with him. The scene could end with Z thanking Aech for the opportunity or something.

The point of this is that the intensity of the opening scene can be matched at the end when Z turns to face Sorrento and then becomes Ultraman. Again… que the music and open the can…

The key to the Ultraman battle sequence (I still think Unicron is a better choice) is not the fight itself… it is the personality of the characters in that moment. Think Darth Vader in Empire. It is about the personality behind the mask.

Again… the following from Holding Out for a Hero:
…(lyrics)
Somewhere after midnight
In my wildest fantasy
Somewhere just beyond my reach
There's someone reaching back for me
Racing on the thunder and rising with the heat
It's gonna take a superman to sweep me off my feet
…

We hear the last part as the camera pans back to Art3mis watching the fight and we can see in her character that she has fallen for Z as she watches him rail against Sorrento in a match to the death… I imagine a zoom shot of Art3mis… maybe in her robot suit… maybe not… but the shot MIMICS the VADER shot at the end of Jedi when Vader weighs his choice between Luke and the Emperor… The intensity of that last scene in Star Wars was not the duel, it was the conflict that we saw in Vader’s eyes – even without seeing his eyes. In fact, this scene could be a a blatent imitation of that scene... this is an homage to 80's pop culture, right? Personally, I’d prefer that Art3mis still be in robot form and the camera focusing on the blank lenses of the robot eyes… yet implying sight behind the eyes as she watches Z in battle…

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Ally A

I loved this book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

I loved this book! As a woman in her 40s, I'm definitely not the target market for this. It’s a young adult book, and scifi, both of which I don’t usually read. However, as a bit of a gamer geek and an 80s nut, this was recommended to me by friends, and I’m so glad I read it – it was just brilliant!

It’s set in a dystopian future in 2044 – oil has run out, the climate is a wreck, and most people escape reality by spending their lives inside an immense virtual reality video game called the OASIS (similar to Second Life, if you’ve ever played it). It has its own currency, and kids even go to school inside the game. The creator of the game, James Halliday, died years earlier, without an heir to his immense empire, but left a video will with clues/easter eggs to be tracked in the game. Whoever solves these will inherit the OASIS, and the immense wealth that goes with it, and it’s an international obsession. Halliday was a teenager in the 80s and remained fixated with the era, so this means that everyone who is trying to solve the puzzle is just as fanatical, leading to some wonderful references. Wade Watts, our protagonist, is one of the millions trying to crack this. He’s a teenager, stony broke, living with his aunt, and at the bottom of the OASIS food chain. Through a combination of luck and skill with 80s arcade games, Wade somehow manages to be the first solve the first clue, and that’s when everything changes.

I’m not going to give you any spoilers, but I can’t recommend this highly enough. Great characters, very nasty baddies, loaded with 80s references, and actually worryingly possible – it’s definitely worth a read. Oh, and Steven Spielberg bought the film rights – the movie will be released in 2018. I hope he does it justice.

71 people found this helpful

Sci-Fi Kingdom

I wouldn’t waste your time on this book.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 16, 2019

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The premise seemed interesting and I really wanted to like this, but it was just so dull, boring, extremely long-winded and a bit hard to believe. There’s no way a teenager or someone in their early 20s could watch every 80s TV show, film, and animation, as well as read practically every book in existence – multiple times – and remember every single tiny minute detail of them all. While also repeatedly playing every 80s videogame ever created, and having the lyrics to loads of 80s songs memorised. I know this is fiction, but it still needs to be believable. I wouldn’t waste your time on this book. Basically a textbook full of pointless 80s entertainment references.

11 people found this helpful

John D. Payne

Good but not great

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 23, 2018

Verified Purchase

The concept of this book is much more exciting than the writing of it, unfortunately, which is probably what Spielberg saw in it when he made the movie (which bears only a passing resemblance to its source material). I think the main problem is that the author knows more about playing video games than crafting a good story. I got bored of his descriptions of the main character Wade playing games in the OAsIs. I'm a casual gamer myself, but I'm not sure there's any way of describing the playing of Pac-Man that doesn't make people want to skip a few paragraphs ahead. The story of the treasure hunt is mildly amusing, but the fact that it's all told in past tense doesn't really do it any favours. I would've liked to have seen more of the outside world as well which he briefly described earlier on. In fact, nearer the end we do get to see more of it, and this was my favourite part of the story. I thought that maybe things would improve as the stakes were raised, but it all becomes a bit too safe again. In the movie, there's a great scene in which Wade is in the OAsIs whilst also in the back of a moving van. This makes for great tension and juxtaposition, but in the book (SLiGHT SPOILER) he's safely tucked away in a secure house. There are some exciting moments in there somewhere, but they don't seem to have any great effect on the main character, he just carries on with the hunt. The authors knowledge of eighties movies and video games is admirable to a point, but it doesn't really make for a great read, although I did make it to the end, so maybe I saw a smidgen of potential in the debut author's scribblings. Good luck to him.

12 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Slick mix of Virtual Reality and 80's pop culture!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 25, 2017

Verified Purchase

Started this yesterday and it immediately sucked me in. I loved the premise - billionaire computer games developer dies and leaves a fortune to the first person to find an Easter egg hidden in the virtual world he created.

As we meet the principal protagonist we find that the world of the 2040s is in bad shape. The planet is beset with rampant global warming, economic collapse and the majority of its inhabitants living on government subsidies. So far, so, standard dystopian future! However the thing that moves this from a standard YA dystopia and into the realm of a bestseller are three key features; the hero Wade Watts, the world building and the massive amount of 80’s pop culture references.

Wade has real problems to struggle against; no mother or father, living on his own, no friends his own age and only the quest for the easter egg to keep him focused. A fat kid from the wrong side of town living on his wits and natural intelligence. With no friends or family he has to constantly fight for everything he possess.

The world building is excellent with the reader immediately able to visualise the world of deprivation, global warming and the end of oil. A world so terrible that most of the population has moved into the virtual world to get away from the grim reality of everyday life. The mechanics of the virtual world are also well detailed and thought out. As I was reading the book I kept thinking of a fully immersive version of Warcraft. The book is written from a first person perspective. The reader effectively lives inside Wade's head, which helps a lot with Wade being able to explain a lot of the 80's cultural references.

About half way through we meet the evil corporation trying to thwart our heroes plans. These "bad guys" are simple, one dimensional, greedy corporate goons. Having worked in the financial services sector for many years I recognised, their motivations and methods immediately. The bad guys are cheap and cheesy and a stark contrast with the heroes who are street punks living in a virtual world. The evil corporations motivation is greed and the heroes are motivated by fun, friendship, glory and the pursuit of the prize. Who you gonna root for — come on?

The final third of the book works well with our heroes facing bigger and more complex challenges. The finally is also well done and fun.

All in all an excellent, fun yarn. The book is well written, great entertainment with a blistering pace. If you are looking for a deeper meaning, or insight into nerd culture, this is probably not the book for you.

16 people found this helpful

Bluebell Girl

Ready Player One

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 25, 2019

Verified Purchase

I watched Ready Player One (by Ernest Cline) recently on film, and thought it was such an interesting film, I would get the book to read.

Set in the not so distant future, the novel is set in the year 2044. The world is ugly difficult place to live, famine, poverty and disease are now widespread. The main character is Wade Watts, a teenage boy who finds it difficult to live in the real world, interact with others and make friends. However, when he is logged into a virtual reality utopia known as the OASIS, he becomes Parzival. Here Wade, can be anything he wants to be and do anything he wants to do. He spends all his time devoted to uncovering the puzzles left by James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS. After Halliday died, he left clues hidden in the OASIS, that when solved will result in the winner gaining control of the OASIS and his massive fortune. The clues are not easy to solve, based on Halliday’s obsession with 80’s pop culture, and Wade like the rest of the world have been trying to solve them for years. Then Wade manages to find the first clue and finds himself in a dangerous world both real and virtual, where his life is at stake as others try to solve the clues before he does.

This is a dystopian sci fi book, clearly we have ceased to be able to imagine the future in a positive way. Additionally, we are no longer able to imagine a healthy world where humans can live, and we have retreated into a virtual world created where we can do and go anywhere, we want.

I really enjoyed this book, loved all the 80’s references to music, film, technology, gaming and tv. It was slightly different to the film, the quests were different, but I can see why they were changed for the screen. The book sometimes gets bogged down a little in describing some of the games played, but if you are a gaming geek, interested in retro games, I would imagine you would love this. I don’t know anything about Ernest Cline but would imagine that he is a bit of a geek and a gamer, judging by the subject matter.

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