The concept of a novel emulating a video game is—for better or worse—a familiar one in genre literature nowadays. Books such as Neal Stepehson’s Snow Crash , William Gibson Neuromancer , and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One have turned to computer games for inspiration the way earlier generations of sci-fi writers relied on the space race or Cold War arms escalation for plot lines. No surprise here: science fiction reflects the technological concerns of each passing generation, and the main thrust of innovation in the current day is in the fields of media and consumer entertainment. When I was a kid, young boys wanted to be astronauts; today they just want to pretend to be astronauts in a video game—and speculative fiction adapts to this changed reality…or virtual reality, as the case may be.
Author Cline envisions the ultimate game experience—a virtual reality simulation so appealing that most people prefer it to their ordinary, everyday lives. The year is 2044, and global warming, economic misery and environmental degradation have made reality a lousy proposition. Instead, hundreds of millions of people plug into the Oasis, where they can work, play, learn, socialize or embark on various adventures.
At the very start of Ready Player One , this utopian retreat is sent into turmoil by the death of the founder and owner of the Oasis, James Halliday. At his demise, an email is sent to all participants, announcing a strange competition. A mysterious “egg” is hidden somewhere in his simulated universe, and the first person to find it will inherit Halliday’s entire fortune, including control of the Oasis itself.
But at this juncture Cline adds a complication unusual in a futuristic sci-fi novel: a fixation on the distant past. Halliday, it seems, was obsessed with pop culture of the 1980s, and competitors who hope to find the hidden egg must demonstrate deep expertise in that period if they hope to overcome the many obstacles waiting for them in the Oasis. The end result is a peculiar novel that adorns its dystopian future-tripping with generous helpings of nostalgia.
Now comes the Oliver Twist twist: a poor orphan boy takes an early lead in the egg hunt. Wade Watts, eighteen-years-old, lives in a decrepit trailer park on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, and devotes all his spare time to mastering 1980s trivia, and trying to solve the clues Halliday left behind for participants in the Oasis competition. When Wade triumphs as the first person to solve the contest’s initial challenge—in a long series of puzzles set up by the deceased gamester—his avatar’s name shows up on top of an online leaderboard visible to all other Oasis users. As a result, a host of other competitors, some possibly friendly while others are clearly hostile, are on Wade’s trail.
If you were a geek back during the Reagan era, you will find that Cline has provided you with a pleasant walk down memory lane during the course of Ready Player One. If you missed out on that period of time, or lived through it immune to pop culture, you will frequently find yourself befuddled by the Oasis competition. Cline’s characters constantly look for opportunities to show off their arcane knowledge about Dungeons and Dragons , Pat Benatar, Monty Python, Pink Floyd, Rush, Schoolhouse Rock! , Pac-Man, Ferris Bueller's Day Off , Star Wars , Def Leppard and other bits of cultural detritus—good, bad, and ugly—from those now distant days. I picked up on some of the inside jokes, but no doubt missed many others. If this book does survive to the year 2040, readers will need an annotated guide of Joycean proportions to understand its allusions.
This kind of novel could easily collapse into a tedious exercise in recounting trivia. But Cline embeds his 80s nostalgia into a fast-paced adventure story, one that operates on two different levels. The contestants in his egg hunt run the risk of having their avatars killed in the Oasis, but they face even more deadly obstacles in the real world, where they are pursued by operatives working for an evil corporation that aims at global domination and exploitation. (Don’ t they always!) Innovative Online Industries has set up a whole business division focused on winning the competition, seizing control of the Oasis, and imposing its heinous rules (and user fees) on helpless participants.
Okay, maybe my comparison with Charles Dickens or James Joyce was a bit of a stretch. This novel reads less like stream-of-consciousness and more like a zany blog. The story in Ready Player One never lags, and if you get lost in the trivia—for example, if old Japanese anime isn’t your bag—the topic will likely shift dramatically in the next paragraph or, at most, the next page. Cline, for his part, is clearly having fun with his story, and it would be a rare reader who doesn’t respond in kind.
Fans also have the movie version to look forward to—the film rights to Ready Player One were snatched up by Warner Bros. the day after Random House secured the book deal. Negotiations were heated, with both Paramount and Fox also in the bidding. When the dust settled, Steven Spielberg signed on as director and producer. Terms weren't disclosed, but it’s safe to assume that author Cline also won something of an egg hunt with this high concept novel.
Ted Gioia writes on music, literature and popular culture. He is the author of ten books. His most recent book is How to Listen to Jazz (Basic Books).