Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

All writers have rituals, things they do to get the juices flowing, to let their minds know that it’s okay to start drifting into the ephemeral.  For many of them, myself included, music is a big part of it.  As I sat down to write this morning, I queued up every 80s track I had on random rotation, because nothing else would have felt right.  As the first song started, a slow smile crept across my face.  It was Poison’s Something to Believe In.  Incredibly appropriate.

My nostalgic trip was due in large part to the book I just finished, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.  Cline was the screenwriter on 2008’s homage to friendship and Star Wars, Fanboys.  For those of you who’ve seen the movie, you’re familiar with Cline’s deft hand at walking that thin line between well-developed characters and an entertaining plot.  Ready Player One takes that to the next level.

The story takes place in the mid-21^st century and starts with the death of OASIS creator James Halliday.  (The OASIS is a massive online virtual reality simulation comprised of hundreds of thousands of planets where the majority of the world spends nearly all of its waking time, having retreated from the rampant poverty, war and hopelessness of the dystopian future.)  When Halliday dies, leaving a massive fortune and controlling interest in GSS, the company which runs OASIS, his last will and testament is broadcast online to every terminal and television in the world. Somewhere in the vast universe of the OASIS is hidden an Easter egg and the first person to find the egg will be the sole inheritor of his entire estate.

Halliday, being a child of the 80s, was obsessed with the culture of his youth, from the music, movies and books to the earliest incarnations of personal computing and video gaming tech.  For five years, the world fruitlessly searches for the first of three keys for the three gates that will lead to Halliday’s egg, combing through the pop culture of Halliday’s heyday.  Finally, a young man from rural Oklahoma, Wade, finds the first key.  The book is the story of his quest for the egg.

It would have been easy to have made this novel a tribute to the generations that came up in the 80s and 90s, and, from the very first page, it very much is, but, as with Fanboys, Cline transcends the mass of pop culture references, letting them take a back seat to fantastic storytelling and a depth of character development that harkens back to the days of classic sci-fi.  Like the OASIS, Wade’s world is immersive, his problems universal. 

This book was very obviously a labor of love for Cline.  Though its plot and pacing are crafted well enough to hold the attention of readers unfamiliar with the genre or who haven’t any firsthand experience with Halliday’s golden era, it will, without a doubt, resonate most strongly with those in my generation.  This book was written for us, for the kids who, when its mentioned, will hear the trumpets that open Boingo’s Dead Man’s Party or who can appreciate a modified Firefly class ship called Vonnegut.  And especially for those of us who remember watching the Keatons or the Huxtables for the warmth and acceptance of family in a world a little too cold.