My ship stood out in the vast array of vessels, since it was the only giant robot.
– Ernest Cline
I just finished the funnest book ever.* And I mean, like, Harry Potter fun. After reading a Book Riot piece called How to Recover from an AMAZING Book, and absolutely relating to the literature hangover the author described, I had to read the book that had sent her reeling. The book was Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. And it was totally worth the four week library wait.
Ready Player One is a sci fi novel that takes place in the year 2045, in the United States, when the real world has been abandoned in favor of the OASIS, a virtual reality universe created by James Halliday, who adolesced in the 1980s, and who died a multi-billionaire in 2040. Halliday was a loner when he died, with no-one to leave his billions to, so instead of willing his vast fortune to charity, he set up a quest within his OASIS game system: the first person to find the Easter egg he had hidden within the thousands of worlds encoded in his virtual universe would win his $240 billion.
As if that weren’t a fun enough premise for a novel, the entire quest requires a vast knowledge 1980s pop culture. For folks of my generation – that is, those of us who grew up in the 1980s, playing Atari and Space Invaders, whose first computer experience was with a Commodore 64, who watched Family Ties and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and Back to the Future, whose brothers played with Transformers, who listened to Duran Duran or had boyfriends who listened to Rush – this book is filled with nostalgia. Because Ernest Cline doesn’t just talk about the ’80s. In the OASIS, and in the hunt for Halliday’s egg, Cline enters his characters into the 1980s, into simulations where they must complete a Dungeons & Dragons quest, not by rolling dice, but by navigating their avatars through a D&D module within the OASIS. Or play a perfect game of Pacman. Or become a character in War Games, moving him accurately and reciting his lines correctly to earn points (extra points for inflection).
The geekery is off the charts, with high school kids plugged into the OASIS all of their waking hours, wearing “haptic suits” that allow them to animate their avatars. They hang out in virtual chatrooms, gain experience points, pick up artifacts, level up. I couldn’t help but think of my friends who play World of Warcraft as I read the familiar gaming jargon. I texted one of them as soon as I finished, “You HAVE to read this book.”
A word of warning, though. If you’re looking for literary genius, profound truths, sophistication or complexity, you won’t find them here. The closest you’ll get is a not-so-subtle caution, as society and the world crumble from neglect, to beware the lure of online life to the exclusion of your real one. But if you want a light, enormously fun read, with lots of “nerd pandering,” as one Amazon reviewer so aptly put it, this book has it all: funny, likable characters, despicable villains, virtual space travel, gaming, riddles, and giant robots. By Level Three of the book, my eyes could not scan the words as fast as I wanted to consume them. Ready Player One was a terrific first novel that left me smiling.
*Okay, so that was hyperbole, since from the bar graph you can clearly see that Harry Potter was slightly more fun than Ready Player One.
“At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed.”
Butterfly Mind 
Omg, I can’t wait to read it!! I think Chill will like it too
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This is next on my Kindle queue. (What were you saying about living in a virtual world?)
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This is my husband’s favorite book. He discovered it two years ago and has been talking about it ever since.
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Loved this book. LOVED IT. It’s a fun as a goofy graph. xoxo
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Honored to spread the gospel of RPL! Will John the Baptist this book til the end of time!
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Wasn’t it awesome?! I listened to Wil Wheaton’s audiobook narration, and it did not disappoint one bit. I don’t think I’ve ever fist pumped in triumph, laughed, or wanted to stay up late to listen to “just one more” cd so much with any other book. Glad you enjoyed it!
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Come on…Moby Dick was a little fun. Plus, I miss you.
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I wanted to like this so much, but I couldn’t get on board. The premise was really cool, but the writing and story were so bad that I can’t endorse it.
If you can deal with sentences and stories like this, you’ll love it:
Ranger Rob was a niner, a young kid who dedicated his life the quest to find Badgley’s fortune. When she died, she left her fortune hidden in the Metropolis, a magical land where everything was based on 90s culture. Ranger Rob wanted to find her fortune, so he learned everything he could about the 90s. He listened to Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Bell Biv Devoe, and watched Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Beverly Hills 90210. Boy did he love the 90s.
Once Ranger Rob entered the Metropolis, he became someone else entirely. He locked into his avatar and grinned with happiness at a joke he remembered about something from the 90s. Boy did he love the 90s.
Then, Ranger Rob encountered the bad guys. They shot him in the face with a tazerator, an elaborate gun that killed people instantly. There was literally no way to stop it. Nothing you could do can stop this thing. The tazerator was fired and coming right at Rob.
Except Ranger Rob had imagined that this would happen because something similar happened on an episode of That’s So Raven that he watched because Badgley loved it so much. So Ranger Rob pulled out his magic sorcerers sword that he had hidden in his pocket. He got this because he beat a playstation game.
Then Ranger Rob used the sword to shield the tazerator. The tazerator epxloded into one hundred pieces. Ranger Rob was so happy that he blasted Lisa Loeb on his 1st Gen iPod.
Then Rob found the next clue to Badgley’s fortune. It read:
When I’m lonely, well, I know I’m gonna be
I’m gonna be the man who’s lonely without you
And when I’m dreaming, well, I know I’m gonna dream
I’m gonna dream about the time when I’m with you”
I had literally no idea what it meant. I needed to figure it out so I could get a billion dollars. And I knew that Internocorp, the corporate team that was bad, was going to find it before me if I didn’t try to find it first.
So while I thought about what this clue could possibly mean, I went and called the girl I liked from a mech-phone, a device that shows almost no technical advancement even though it has a futuristic name and indicate we’re in the future. We talked and talked and talked, but she was a Niner too, so we didn’t talk about that.
We talked for months. In that time, nothing happened that would mess up my quest to find the money.
Then, I remembered that the clue was the exact lyrics from that song by the Proclaimers about walking 500 miles. I put it on my Laser Disc player and listened to it on repeat for an hour.
Then, I remembered that in the Metropolis there was a land exactly 500 miles wide and 500 miles long and 500 miles wide. I got into my virtual spacevan and teleported there. I made up teleporting to create tension at various points in the book even though it created no tension.
When I got to Proclaimer Island, I realized that everyone was already there. Internocorp had set up an elaborate defense system that no person could ever navigate. But luckily, a few days earlier I had purchased a gunnonator, a gun that has a longer name than necessary. There was only one in the entire Metropolis. And I had it. So I pointed it at the elaborate defense system and shot it and they exploded. Nice!
Then, I walked to the door and sang the proclaimers. It didn’t work. So I thought some more. What could it mean? Then I remembered that in the song they had to walk 500 miles. So I walked 500 miles and it worked. The gate opened. I literally could not believe it.
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I literally cannot believe you just wrote this book on my blog. Nice!
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Ernest Cline wrote it, I just translated it into the 90s
Also:
**SPOILERS**
I got really mad towards the end when they reveal H is a black chick and it’s a big deal. First of all, it made me really sad to think that in this wild future, it’s still a big deal that a woman comes out as a lesbian. I’d hope that in the next 30 years we advance enough so that it wouldn’t be a big deal. And then the whole “the Oasis was the best thing to ever happen to minorities” was ridiculous. I think it said that it was the best thing because they could just pretend to be white men. That’s when the book really lost me. It was trying to make bold political statements, but they just came off as clunky and annoying.
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