Ready Player One

Cline, Ernest. Ready Player One. New York: Crown. 2011. Print.

First Sentences:

Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest.

Description:

When you are a hungry reader like me, you look for interesting books from a wide variety of sources. Recently, my 11 and 13-year-old nephews recommended Ernest Cline's Ready Player One, as one of their favorites. I'd never heard of it, but plunged in and was captivated enough to binge read it in a couple of days.

It is an especially interesting book for those of us who lived in the 1980s and played coin-operated video games in arcades, watched TV sitcoms like Family Ties, and lapped up movies like War Games. In Ready Player One, knowing details about these social icons is key to understanding and solving the ultimate game that forms the basis of the plot. And playing is definitely worth your while as the final prize is over $250 billion dollars.

The game and the prize fortune are hidden within the online simulation world of OASIS. And what is OASIS, you ask?

[The Oasis was] a malleable online universe that anyone could access via the Internet, using their existing home computer or videogame console. You could log in and instantly escape the drudgery of your day-to-day life. You could create an entirely new persona for yourself, with complete control over how you looked and sounded to others....You could become whomever and whatever you wanted to be, without ever revealing your true identity because your anonymity was guaranteed.

James Halliday, the creator of OASIS, had just died. Having no living heirs, he decided to create a game within OASIS with his massive fortune as the winner's prize. A video message was posted after his death introducing the game, its prize, and an opening riddle about three keys to open three gates to find the fortune. 

But after five years, no one in the entire world had discovered even the first key (and definitely everyone was looking) . Then one name appeared on the online scoreboard signifying the first key had been found -- by Parzival, alias teenage Wade, the narrator of the story. 

We follow him as he struggles with the puzzle riddles and exploring the worlds of OASIS and Halliday's life. Because the game's creator was a lover of everything from the 1980s, Parzival/Wade has to master television dialogue and film trivia as well as game-playing skills of ancient video consoles to have any hope of finding the treasure.

Almost immediately, Parzival sees on the scoreboard that four other avatars also have found the first key and are competing against him to solve the next riddles and get to the billion dollar prize first. But also in the running are representatives from the gigantic IOI corporation who wants to control the OASIS worlds and make it into a for-profit operation. The race to the prize is on.

I'm a non-gamer and have only played a few ancient games in arcades in the '80s. But this book dusted off plenty of memories for me (including the phrase "Ready Player One" which appeared before the start of a video game) and introduced me to a boatload of potential technology likely to be commonplace in the future. 

It's a fantastic, page-turning affair of avatars, robots, games, combat, human interactions and mental struggles that I dare you to put down once you are in Parzival/Wade's mind, trying to answer to coded questions and perform the complex tasks required.

(Soon to be a movie in 2018. Can't wait.)

Happy reading. 

Fred

(See more recommended books)
________________________________________

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game

In the future, children are recruited to be trained as military commanders to thwart the expected attack of powerful aliens. One young student, Ender, must learn the battle strategies as well as leadership skills to survive the complex training and mock skirmishes during his training.