While I've read Ernest Klein's Ready Player One on a previous occasion, I recently found a copy at one of the books sales I've been hitting this past year. Since I'm between holds at the library (most of my reserve list is either not published as of yet or I was late getting a reserve in so I have a bit of a wait), I figured I'd pass some time by re-reading it. I just wasn't expecting to finish it again in two days.
For those of you who haven't read it....
Ready Player One concerns one Wade Watts in the year 2044, as humanity is in decline from a lack of natural resources. When we meet Wade (AKA Parzival), both of his parents are dead and he's living in a stack cluster in Oklahoma City with his drug addled aunt. He's enrolled in an on-line High School in the OASIS, a free-ish online world that most of the Earth is in. (basically, with a set of gloves and a visor that scan the world on to your retinas, it's virtual reality on a universal scale.) And he's a gunter, one of the many seeking the OASIS creator Halliday's Easter Egg, which gives the first one to find it ownership of OASIS and all of his sizable fortune.
Wade's best friend online is Aich, who competes in tournaments for money and thus is more well off than Wade. (Seems virtual currency is worth more than "real" currency.) Later on, they add Art3mis to their cabal, a female gunter and blogger.
Halliday's will left everyone with a riddle to find the first key, which in turn would lead to the first Gate. While in Latin Class, Wade solves the riddle and uses a school provided transport chit to travel across the virtual world to get to a small forest that opens on to the Temple of Elemental Evil. Having access to the module, he's able to get into the throne room, where the Lich (who's supposed to be elsewhere) greets him and challenges him to a game of the 80's classic "Joust". (The one where you press the flap button a lot and try to make the NPCs drop eggs.) Art3mis, who had solved the riddle a month prior but had yet to beat the Lich meets him and points out that his name now tops the scoreboard, which had been blank prior to someone getting the first key. Wade figures out where the first gate is and ends up playing through challenge wherein he's Matthew Broderick in Wargames.
While this does lead to plenty of money and endorsement deals, it also puts a giant target on his back courtesy of IOI and the Sixers. IOI being a company that wants to control OASIS (so they can charge people to use it and make ad revenue off of it) and the Sixers being a group within IOI named Oologists who work for the company trying to find the Egg. The leaders of the Sixers, Sorrento, approaches Wade about becoming a Sixer. When Wade denies him, Sorrento and IOI set off a bomb in Wade's stack. Thankfully, Wade's in his hiding space, buried in a pile of cars.
And on and on it goes, filled to the brim with 80's cultural references, until the very last climactic battle in front of the third gate that features Ultraman taking on MechaGodzilla. And a race to the finish in the gate as Sorrento runs about 18 minutes behind Wade.
Given how quickly I finished it this time, I'll again say it's a very engaging read, filled with memories of my childhood, even if a few of the references got on my nerve. (Like the Second Gate, which involves RUSH's "Temple of Syrinax".) I also found myself laughing when a discussion about The Goonies revealed where I knew the mother on The Real O'Neals from.
If you haven't read it, and, like me, remember the 80's, pick up a copy. Or if you like Audiobooks, the version of this one is read by none other than Wil Wheaton.
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