Book info

• Title Ready Player One
• Author Ernest Cline
• Year 2011
• Genre Science Fiction

It's the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We're out of oil. We've wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty, and disease are widespread. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything you want to be, where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade is obsessed by the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this alternate reality: OASIS founder James Halliday, who dies with no heir, has promised that control of the OASIS - and his massive fortune - will go to the person who can solve the riddles he has left scattered throughout his creation. For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that the riddles are based in the culture of the late twentieth century. And then Wade stumbles onto the key to the first puzzle. Suddenly, he finds himself pitted against thousands of competitors in a desperate race to claim the ultimate prize, a chase that soon takes on terrifying real-world dimensions - and that will leave both Wade and his world profoundly changed.

Thoughts

Saw this film, ages and ages ago, so was interested in the source material. It’s interesting because there’s a character who is plugged into a virtual world, and at one point that avatar plugs into a robot and controls that too. It’s layers upon layers of fantasy and yet it’s so well written, it works. I didn’t know half the references being mentioned so some of it went over my head, but the story is good and the outcome even better. Working as a team for the win!

Rating: 4 / 5