Ready Player One came out years ago - 2011 - and I've long wanted to read it. Not too long after it came out I picked up the book, the real kind with pages, not the Kindle version I usually read these days, and it has been sitting in my house for years, including through two moves across the country. Still in perfect shape. There's a movie coming out next year that's based on the book, and me being me I wanted to read it before the movie came out. But that wasn't what ultimately got me off of (or rather forced me to sit on) my duff and read the book. Rather, I had just finished reading Version Control by Dexter Palmer, a slightly mind bending exploration set in the future about the nature of reality and spacetime. And I really liked that book. All of a sudden I heard Ready Player One calling my name, beckoning me into its own version of the future, with its attendant lookback into the 80's culture I was steeped in as a teenager.
The book opens in Oklahoma City, where our hero, Wade Watts, is living in what is known as "the stacks". We quickly find out that the stacks are towers of mobile homes "stacked" on top of each other, held up by scaffolding and platforms that provide access to each trailer, which essentially is a "floor". The stacks serve as a symbol for the widespread and systemic decay that has hit the United States, where fuel and energy are incredibly scarce, jobs are few and far between, and infrastructure is crumbling. Wade's only escape is into a fantastical immersive virtual reality simulation, known as the OASIS, coded by one James Halliday. The OASIS consists of worlds, starships, realms, you name it - all populated by anyone having access to the tools needed to enter into it - essentially a VR visor and sensory gloves. A user of the OASIS creates an avatar, and Wade names his "Parzival". Wade even attends school in the OASIS, where he logs in from his hideout in an abandoned van in a junkyard. Wade has no friends in reality, and only one friend in the OASIS.
When James Halliday dies, he leaves behind a will that creates a contest - a contest that is essentially a treasure hunt through the OASIS in which the contestants are looking for an "egg". The one who finds the egg will inherit Halliday's fortune. The thing about the contest is James Halliday was also an obsessive 80's culture geek, and the contest as you might expect requires a good deal of knowledge about the 80's (Fun!). And Wade, growing up, made it his business to study James Halliday, and becomes obsessed with finding the egg as a way out of his meager circumstances, along with hordes of other egg hunters called "gunters". As you might expect, bad guys are also interested in Halliday's fortune, including the corporate behemoth known as IOI.
The contest quickly becomes an interesting play on the nature of relationships in the virtual world and the meaning of those relationships - including Parzival's relationship with "Art3mis", the book's heroine, other friends he meets along the way, and the interaction with the bad guys through the story. These relationships and interplay make the Ready Player One highly entertaining and a quick read. I also very much enjoyed the 80's geekiness throughout the book (maybe you won't but I absolutely loved it).
If you would like a combo of action, sci fi, fantasy, and a healthy dollop of 80's game and movie culture thrown in, I would highly recommend this book.
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