"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline, is a sci-fi novel about a kid, living in an impoverished near future, escapes like most of the population into a super-powered virtual world invented by a Steve Jobs style nerd. The plot of the novel is following this kid trying to find an 'easter egg' planted by this eccentric inventor bajillionaire, all by playing different video games or by using pop cultural references from nerd culture () most of these from the 70's and 80's (the dawn of blockbuster movies, and PCs and video games (arcade games, PC games, and pre-Mario Bros game controllers).
I don't know. The nerd-pop-cultural references were all there. Star Wars, Star Trek, Blade Runner, Monty Python, War Games. Joust, Defender, Dig Dug, D&D, all well referenced, lines of dialog. All well suited to my personal memory of teen years. Lots of excitement and virtual explosions and real explosions and plot twists and I'm sure hidden easter eggs in the novel itself.
But I'm an old dude. I don't see how kids these days (2011) would appreciate the references.
The tone is very much 'young adult novel'. It should be advertised as such, because it's not Philip K Dick if you're expecting that. The concerns are all of a cliché 18 year old (does that girl like me? I will obviously win this game having played it literally hundreds of times or literally never! I hate my welfare aunt who I live with since my parents died.)
The writing is like Asimov. I don't mean that as a compliment. Despite its obvious attempts at being modern and PC, they all come across as clunky white-male-teenager-privileged like a nice mormon dad coming to terms with a child caught drinking coffee. The main character's best friend on-line, a dude like himself but cooler, turns out in real life to, wait for it, it's shocking, are you sure you won't be shocked, a shy black overweight lesbian. Oh and the girl I like in the virtual world whose avatar is totally hot, in real life, she's also hot except she has a port wine stain on her face. The horror. The shame. The forced lesson of understanding of others without being other.
And the plot should be considered simply a string of the most unmotivated deus ex machina's and Mary Sue. And this is two levels deep, both in the engineered MMORG world and in the simulated games within that world. Oh did I mention this one hidden rule that you get 40 lives if you die the right may in this video game? Convenient that the best friend of the inventor comes to help out the gang at the last minute. Oh no, the opponents destroyed absolutely everything (virtual) with a pixel bomb (sorry, that's not in the book but it's the shortest way to give the same idea), but the one tiny thing needed to complete this one magic task left happens to have survived? I'll win a bajillion dollars, I think I'll share it with my friends even though I won the game at the end, I'm a great guy!
The book is a lot of fun (moreso if you recognize the references). But it's mostly processed sugar and wish-fulfillment. Should be a fun movie, which should be able to avoid most of these clunkers.
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