Where is the tipping point where virtual reality becomes more real than reality? What happens when children are raised and educated in a virtual world because the real world is too terrible? What happens to the feeling of individual self-worth when you can make yourself look as “perfect” as you want? Oh look! It’s the Back to the Future DeLorean outfitted with Ghostbusters tech!
The preceding paragraph captures the the effect of Ernest Cline’s 2011 novel, Ready Player One, (adapted to film by Stephen Spielberg in 2018) on the human mind. Cline asks thought-provoking questions in this book, but ultimately abandons them in favor of the (truly awe-inspiring) depth of pop-culture on display.
The premise is intentionally evocative of the Willy Wonka story. In the year 2045, the brilliant (and hopelessly socially impaired) videogame designer James Halliday passes away, leaving an “easter egg” in his greatest game, The Oasis, that contains access to his 250 billion dollar fortune, as well as complete control of the Oasis.
The Oasis is a massive next-gen VR universe, experienced through traditional headsets, but also “haptic suits” (and 3-D treadmills, for the rich) providing the gamer with a physical experience corresponding to the virtual one. The 5 cent basic price tag helps quite a bit in over a billion users’ signing up. Why not? A world where you can be anyone and go anywhere is far more appealing than the war and famine-ravaged America of 2045.
Millions of Oasis users explore the thousands of Oasis planets in search of Halliday’s egg, primarily falling into two factions- “gunters” (egg-hunters, duh), and “sixers,” employees of a massive corporation known as IOI that wants to monetize the Oasis. The sixers are named for their only individualizing feature, a six-digit employee number. IOI is a perfect villainous organization, employing blackmail, white collar crime, and even indentured servitude to accomplish their goal of acquiring Halliday’s egg.
It’s not a traditional hide-and-seek, however. Halliday was obsessed with the pop culture of his youth- through the 1980s. Finding the keys to lead to the egg requires an in-depth knowledge of everything he knew and loved. It’s not explicitly stated, but this reader got the impression this was perhaps an act of revenge by the game’s creator on a world that he had never fit into. Benevolent intention or not, it works. The populace of 2045 become newly-enamored with arcade games, Dungeons and Dragons, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, John Hughes movies, Indiana Jones (but just the first three), anime, Star Wars, Back to the Future, and a million other films, games, books, and celebrities, the aforementioned of which were among the most culturally recognizable.
This is where we meet the (first-person) protagonist, Wade Watts. (The alliterative name calls to mind Peter Parker and Bruce Banner, as Wade tells us). He’s an orphan who lives in the stacks (stacks of trailers) outside of Oklahoma City with his Aunt. The stacks are an awful place to live, so Wade lives almost full-time in the Oasis. Despite being rather poor, he is able to level up his character Parzival (as in the knight who found the Holy Grail in Arthurian legend…and Monty Python, as we are reminded) and begin searching for Halliday’s egg along with his friend Aech (one of the book’s only truly thought-provoking figures) and eventual love interest Ar3emis (as in the Greek goddess of the Hunt). None of them have ever met in real life, which is tragic, because Ar3emis and Aech are Wade’s only friends.
What’s sadder is Wade’s flippant and nihilistic views on life, which I pray are not reflective of the author’s. (Then again, Wade was raised in the sesame street district of the Oasis while his mother worked as an escort in the red light part, so I’m pretty positive Cline’s life was better.) He’s from a world where everything that human society has created is at his fingertips, but was never given any human…society. So God was thrown out along with Santa Claus. There’s art, but it’s just recycled- there’s no more artists. There’s serious consideration of suicide at one point, when he considers the potential meaninglessness of his life if his character dies in-game. For Wade, life without the game isn’t worth living. This part, along with two other moments-an unnecessary reference to his desire for sexual release without human interaction and a sequence demonstrating Wade’s level of nonchalance regarding real world injustice and horrors made the book occasionally too dark or problematic to warrant a hearty recommendation.
Even though Wade’s worldview is refuted in the end, the question does remain as to why Cline saw it necessary to throw as much weighty/dark/intentionally problematic material in a book so interested in being fun. And it mostly is just that- fun. The twists and turns of the plot are genuinely enjoyable, and it is very entertaining to jump from obscure reference to obscure reference. One moment R2-D2 is walking around with the weird mech-bot from , and then Wade is buying a firefly-class vessel named the Kayley on Planet Whedon. Then he’s acting Matthew Broderick’s character in WarGames before finding obscure schoolhouse rock references.
I have not yet seen the movie, but I’m eager to. I’ve heard it makes the choice that Cline couldn’t- to choose a fun tone or a serious one, and it wisely chooses fun. Then again, Spielberg is a master visual storyteller, whereas Cline is….well, not. He just loves pop culture. And don’t we all? But then again, maybe I, with a wide set of interests, faith, a human social sphere, and love of the natural world am not the target audience. Because I feel that to not feel a twinge of pain at reading Watt’s narration would require a level of social ineptiude roughly equaling that which would allow one to interpret every last reference in the book. Thus, for this reader, there is a lasting memory of tragic human dynamics in a book intended to provide light reading.
Ready Player One tries to entertain. But Ernest Cline wants to have his virtual cake and eat it too, being an original work of fiction that is 100% dependent on other’s fiction. And he mostly succeeds at this goal. While it is an engaging premise, this particular reader was left wondering what kind of book Ready Player One would have been like if written by a dedicated author and not a self-professed “professional nerd.
2.5 out of 5 Fire Llamas
Recommended 16+ for strong language, mature themes, and crude references.
A 21st Century Renaissance Man 