Ready Player One Review

Ready Player One, released in August by Random House, is written by Ernest Cline. This is Cline’s first published novel, but he already has a lot of credibility with me by being the screenwriter for the fun movie,  Fanboys. The book is based in a dystopian future where fossil fuels are extremely scarce and most people spend their days in the ubiquitous online virtual reality system, OASIS. The book opens with the lead character introducing the reader to what happens when OASIS’s creator, James Halliday, dies.

Halliday, immensely wealthy, has been a recluse for several years and on his death everyone in OASIS gets invited to play in a scavenger hunt. The prize…his fortune including ownership of OASIS. To help, Halliday has left clues to help the players on a hunt that is influenced by his passion for the 1980s. The book is a romp through almost everything geeky and good about the 80s…John Hughes movies, video games, and Dungeons & Dragons and the like as players try to find 3 keys to open 3 gates to get the easter egg prize.

The book definitely made me think fondly of the movies I watched with friends as a teenager, the first video games I played, my favorite cartoons/anime and role playing back in the day. I felt the story was the recent successor to Neuromancer and Snow Crash (which if you haven’t read them, go do it now).  It blends the “real” world of the dystopian future with the virtual worlds of OASIS well and if you have played video games, you can easily picture something like OASIS coming in the future.

At the end, you will want more. That isn’t to say that the story isn’t complete, it is, you just want to have more time with the characters and the world. I really enjoyed this book both for the story and the reminder of all those great things we got to experience for the first time in the 1980s. Sure they were often cheesy, but they were completely new. I give Ready Player One 5 Mick Happies. You should read it or listen to the Wil Wheaton audio version of the book. Go to the Random House website to read the prologue. Check out Ernest Cline’s blog for more geeky goodness.  Once your done, you can wait with me and hope  for the Ready Player One movie, which Warner Brothers optioned earlier this year.