By Sean Begin
For anyone connected to the world of video games, the concept of a completely immersive virtual gaming simulation has long been the subject of myth and dreams. In his novel “Ready Player One,” Ernest Cline makes that dream a reality in more ways than one.
The novel is centered on the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online game, which uses virtual reality to completely immerse the user in a video game simulation. Set in the dystopian near future of 2044, in which a Great Recession has depleted most of the world’s resources, the OASIS has become, for many people, more important than the real world.
Created by genius video game designer James Halliday and his childhood best friend and businessman extraordinaire Ogden Morrow, the OASIS fuses Internet activities such as chat rooms and browsing with the full-fledged battles common in most online multiplayer games.
Upon his death, a video will from Halliday initiates what becomes known as the Hunt – a scavenger hunt for three keys and three matching gates that lead to a hidden Easter egg in the game. The first person to find the egg inherits the entirety of Halliday’s company and fortune.
A massive search begins in the OASIS but after five years, no one has found anything. Enter the story’s protagonist, eighteen-year-old Wade Watts, an orphan living in the “stacks” of Oklahoma City. These are literally stacks of old RVs piled up into towers for refugees to live in after they fled to the city.
Watts becomes the first person to locate the first key, thus initiating a wild and dangerous journey that sees him making allies with fellow egg hunters and enemies of the malicious Innovative Online industries, which seeks to find Halliday’s Easter egg in an effort to effectively take control of the Internet.
The clues left by Halliday to guide people on the Hunt comes in the form of personal diaries, titled “Anorak’s Almanac”. A child of the 1980s, Halliday bases all his clues and hints on obscure trivia from that decade. Everything, from early computers and fantasy games to music and movies of the 1980s, fuel Halliday’s obsession with the decade of his childhood.
Ironically, the Hunt causes a resurgence in everything 1980s. The fashion of the times comes back and music and movies of the decade suddenly find themselves at the top of the charts again.
Anyone with minimal knowledge of pop culture from not only the 1980s, but the 90s and early 2000s as well, will find Cline’s novel exciting. He writes with an excitement of someone who experienced the decade himself, having spent his formative teenage years in the 1980s.
Cline had already cemented himself in geek culture with his script of “Fanboys”, which Cline wrote in 1998 before the release of “Star Wars: Episode I” and follows five friends in their journey to see Episode I before their friend dies from cancer. The movie was eventually picked up by the Weinstein Company and released in 2009.
Cline’s affinity and love for the decade of the 80s comes through in his writing. For any self-proclaimed geek, the novel will prove to be an adventurous and exhilarating read. Cline is currently writing a screen play to adapt the novel into a movie, and has also announced plans for a second novel titled “Armada”.
