80s

At the time I found Ready Player One, I was up for getting into a good, well, a great, journey book. Walking through the airport on my way home from an August conference in Vegas, this book somehow stood out as a perfect story to spend my trip being engrossed in. The description on the cover read, “Enchanting…Willy Wonka meets The Matrix”; which was exactly the perfect description to raise my interest.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is set in the year 2044 and tells the story of Wade, a young kid full of passion for the 80s, on a quest for his prize – the solution to a virtual reality game OASIS, left behind by a famous videogame designer and retro aficionado, James Halliday. Along the way were puzzles and various Easter eggs left within the game, and solving the game meant consequently inheriting Halliday’s hidden fortune.

After reading a few pages in the shop, I was hooked and had to buy the book. For me, it seemed to have just the right mix of all the best elements of honest geekiness, and lots of 80’s retro references. While the story is about a video game, the quest feels much more like an enchanting quest, closer to Journey to the Center of the Earth than say, Tron. Mix in with that feeling a ton of references to John Hughes’ movies and a sense of that “man against the machines” feel of films like Terminator 2, or The Matrix, and you’ll have a feel for what Ready Player One was like to read.

Something that really worked in the book, was the way Cline creates the feeling of a much bigger world than what is currently happening. There is a definite shared appreciation and understanding that emerges between Halliday and the young “Gunters” who are pursuing the final prize that he has hidden within his game. The book bounces between what is happening and flashbacks and quick historical explanations of why something is, and seeing the story of the quest unfold through the young eyes of Wade as he realises the full extent of evil in the corporation that pursues them so closely.

Like the author, I grew up with arcade video games and all the referenced 80s films and music, so this book really struck a chord of familiarity and excitement with me. Even without that, the story still came across with a lot of heart and feeling. It isn’t overly technical or clinical, yet still was a great follow up to prolong the rush from the conference I’d just been to.

Without giving away too much of the story, there were also some great moments of triumph tempered nicely with the warm 80s backdrop. The pace varies throughout the book which adds some great dynamics of tension, elation, as well as calm moments of reflection in-between.

I’d recommend this book to anyone who loves 80s movies ranging from the science fiction of Back to the Future series to the teenage revelations of The Breakfast Club. There is an assumption that the reader is familiar with these. The geeky elements are also there to please old gamers too. Even after my flight landed, I was still glued to this book. It literally made me grin later when I realised that the author had actually followed up with running a competition and had given away a real customised DeLorean!

Reading this book was indeed a thoroughly enjoyable journey, which left me with a sense of nerdy excitement that makes you want to go and play old arcade games and hack away on a computer to 80s music. Read it now!

Ready Player One [by: Ernest Cline] is available paperback and for the Kindle.
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diaf23
Retro, science fiction, horror movie fan and breaker of things.

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