Ready Player One is a semi-dystopian sci-fi novel by Ernest Cline.
My interest in the book came from a list online of books as I researched some new novels to check out. It looked interesting, but my interest grew as I learned Spielberg is making the movie.
Wade is a young man living in a future where poverty has increased, as has people’s connection to a virtual world, called OASIS. The creator of this virtual, internet world died and placed a contest within OASIS, and whoever finds the keys and the eggs within the world that he hid, they would win ownership of the multi-billion dollar virtual world.
As you can imagine, Wade becomes central in finding the keys and eggs and the great reward.
The creator of OASIS was deep into the 80’s pop culture – movies, games, TV shows, music, etc, so the hints are connected to things from the 80’s.
The book is well written, has great pacing, and an engaging story. The characters are full and realized. As it says on the novel’s cover, it is derivative of Willy Wonka and the Matrix, and takes the best from both.
A huge amount of the novel’s charm is the 80’s references, both popular and obscure. As a child of the 80’s myself, I could tell Cline either did amazing research or is an 80’s pop culture geek himself … or both. I’m not sure how people not raised in the 80’s would appreciate, but that era was so iconic, it is a big selling point.
While the book won an award for Young Adult, I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone younger than high school for some of the language and themes. But overall, this is one of the best books I’ve read in a while, and I highly recommend it.
Peace.