Ready Player One (2011) by Ernest Cline
In the near future (only a few decades ahead of our own), Wade Watts is living with his aunt in the "stacks" in the outskirts of Oklahoma City, hiding out every night in his hideout comprised of abandoned cars, siphoning off wifi signals and using a generator to plug into the OASIS. The OASIS is the logical next step in instant technological interactivity, developed by James Halliday, and coming to be the single most important facet of life in a post-apocalyptic, fossil-fuel-depleted world. Schools, entertainment, currency, relationships, pop culture, politics---all of it is filtered and experienced via the OASIS system. And Wade (whose online avatar persona is known as Parzival) has become obsessed with its developer, his life, and his every single 1980's-centered interest. Because at stake is the fate of the OASIS, multi-billions of dollars in assets, and his very way of life.
James Halliday has died, inviting players of the OASIS to take part in the largest video game "Easter Egg hunt" in history.
And Wade Watts, poorer than dirt, has spent five years studying the entire life of Halliday. And, despite clans of online gamers teaming up and collaborating, and despite the leader of Innovative Online Industries, Halliday's competition, using every means at their disposal to win the egg, he becomes the first player to solve the first of the three riddles to lead him to the goal.
That is the gist of this novel, and at first I thought the meta-nature of this book (references upon references; character names, and settings, taken wholesale out of books, movies, television shows, songs, comics...you name it) would work against its very nature. But damn if I didn't finish this book enjoying every single instance of it. By using Wade as the narrator, we come to understand this future world much more fully, until ultimately each chapter flew past. It became easy to picture the narrative as a massive MMORPG, with the reader observing every single instance and event; and Cline's descriptions of post-oil America were resonant and (hopefully) quite fanciful, if probable. There is such a love for every single reference (in particular, the Atari game "Adventure", the films WarGames, and Monty Python And The Holy Grail, and Dungeons and Dragons), as well as an innate understanding not only of geek culture, but also of why geek culture is so strong in the current era. And that's really the point here: geek culture (in particular comic book and gamer culture) has risen to not only be given a modicum of respect, but have proven to be enormously profitable. That literature can now easily exploit that culture is heartening for my own upcoming works, which likewise reference much more successful instances of science fiction and fantasy. This is a novel written for people exactly like me.
And it is telling that up until the moment I finished this novel, I did not fully view myself as a geek. Sure, in some senses I always have, but not in the way I always thought. Of the plethora of references in this novel (and there are way, WAY too many to count. Every other sentence seems to have a character from one of my favorite films---"Sam Lowery", "Harry Tuttle"---or a throwaway reference to Cowboy Bebop, or Supaidaman, or the cartoons from the 1980's that I watched as a kid), only the ones intrinsic to table-top RPG and super-old-school video games confused me (and even then, some of the games were those I played on my dad's old ColecoVision, which is still sitting in their basement). I was almost annoyed that there weren't more references to escape my notice.
I guess...that makes me a geek?
And this novel helped me realize that. In many ways, this novel transcends the "man-on-a-quest" narrative while simultaneously conforming to it, and is resonate in its exploration of online life, and the identities we each build for ourselves (which eventually lead to startling revelations in the novel). In the way that the term "catfishing" is in reference to how an online identity can sometimes be unlike anything our "real" selves are, Cline's novel takes that concept to the next level, where the online reality is much more important and intrinsic to one's identity than the real, physical life is. And the lengths to which Wade goes to more completely and fully immerse himself in the OASIS...hell...I wish I had some haptic connections and optic visors sometimes. In many ways, I felt the same way reading this novel that I had when I saw Spike Jonze's Her, that this was a squinty-eyed vision of a future of post-human, post-physical relationships, where technology can be used to attract and connect people on a purely intellectual level. And I love the sociological and psychological questions this raises, because they cut right into the core of what constitutes attraction, and friendship, and love. And how physical qualities, and even our own senses, can essentially be inconsequential when it comes to the core of a person. And that's a very hopeful thought.
Having grown up in the tail end of the 1980's, and been in love with pretty much every single item thrown into the novel (such as virtual giant robots teaming up to try and defeat and even more giant MechGodzilla), and now finding myself wanting to dig up the old ColecoVision and throw it on, and play the shitty Commodore 64 game versions of "Ghostbusters" and "Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom", I cannot possibly recommend this novel enough to anyone who might be reading this blog still.
This novel helped me meet new friends the other night (at a bar. A guy pointed at my worn copy and said, "That book is amazing!" and then proceeded to describe the plot to his wife. The night ended with us buying each other shots. And then more. And then more.) And it made me realize my girlfriend is perfect (she practically threw the book in my hands and forced me to read it the second she finished it).
I hope this novel never becomes a movie. Ever. It would be impossible, simply on a legal and rights standpoint, to do it justice. And it has done something I wouldn't have thought was possible: it combined multiple mediums and, using the power of the written word, breathed an entirely new life into them. This novel is perfect as is.
And now, today, a good friend of mine is making steps to create something very similar to the OASIS. A...pre-OASIS if you will. My best friend Robert Lockhart is starting work on his educational video game, Codemancer, designed to teach children computer coding and programming. If you would like to know more, or perhaps even help Kickstart his project, just click the link below:
Codemancer: The game that teaches the magic of coding!
