Book Review: Ready Player One

Ready Player One

By Ernest Cline

In a not too distant dystopian future, humanity’s only relief from the world’s ills is an immersive virtual reality world called the OASIS. This gigantic computer simulation allows people to be whoever they want to be and play a seemingly endless variety of games. Children even attend virtual schools in the OASIS. The game’s creator, a computer genius named James Halliday, was obsessed with the pop culture and trivia of the 1980s and filled the virtual world with hundreds of references to his favorite movies, books, TV shows and video games from that era.

When Halliday dies, his vast fortune is left to whoever can complete a series of game-like quests within the OASIS. The quest consists of three increasingly difficult puzzles whose solutions are all rooted in knowledge of 80s pop culture. Wade Watts, a high school student who spends most of his waking time logged in to the OASIS, becomes the first person to solve the quest’s initial clue. After that, he is in a race to finish the quest, meeting new friends along the way (who he has never met in person) and trying to avoid dangerous enemies, including a greedy corporation intent on solving the puzzle and winning the prize first.

Your enjoyment of the book largely depends on whether or not you understand the myriads of 80s references. Anyone too old or too young probably won’t care. And even if you are a child of the 80s, a significant portion of the trivia involves video games so if you never played arcade games or had an Atari 2600, you also might feel excluded. Since I am a member of the target audience, I enjoyed the descriptions of 80s games and movies. I had a grin on my face when a game I loved as a kid (now largely forgotten) was a clue to one of the puzzles.

Cline’s prose is serviceable but nothing special. He writes in a “Hollywood” style that mostly describes the action to the reader. His characters are memorable even though many of them have only a few defining characteristics. The plot is fast paced for the most part, with a few slow stretches in the middle and an overlong finale. The OASIS is described in great detail and it does sound like an entertaining place to be. A huge opportunity for social commentary is missed as Cline only occasionally makes statements about how it’s actually not a good idea to spend your entire life logged into a computer game, no matter how difficult the :real” world is. Since the OASIS is presented as a super fun (albeit sometimes dangerous) game, the few comments about the necessity of going outside every once in a while are hollow. The theme that emerges from Ready Player One is that of “Games are cool!” While I enjoyed the book, I wish it had more substance. The 80s trivia was fun in a “Hey, I remember that movie/game/TV show!” way but there’s not much beyond that.

Content warning: There is quite a lot of profanity and crudeness in the novel, mostly of the “trash talk” variety. It adds very little.

Audio Book note: I listened to this book on CD read by Wil Wheaton, himself an 80s pop culture figure thanks to his role on the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Wheaton is an excellent reader and his enthusiastic tone adds to the enjoyment of the book. Never has a game of Pac-Man been narrated so vividly.

Morality: C-

Writing: B-