“Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline

There’s something about books steeped in nostalgia that just sucks you in. It might be the fact that I know a lot about past decades, but I think it might be more universal than that. The idea that you could create a new world but imbue it with references to things that we appreciate in this one seems to appeal to a wide audience of people.

The world set up in Ready Player One is drowning in references to the 80s, in particular the music, movies, and video games. It’s set in a futuristic world where humanity is falling apart (of course) but there’s an immersive video game called the OASIS that people escape to. In the OASIS, you can choose what your avatar looks like, what your username is, and buy yourself fancy cars and clothes. You can teleport to an insane number of different worlds and go on quests to level yourself up and boost your stats. You can be whoever you want, and are not limited by physics or your location. The only limit is the computer code that runs the system.

Kicking off the story’s plotline though is the death of the creator of this immense system, Halliday. He decides to leave his inheritance to whoever can complete a quest through this game world that he set up. There are three keys, each opens a gate. Whoever finds all three keys and completes the challenges behind every gate wins millions of dollars.

Naturally, everyone starts trying to find the keys. And corporations get involved as well, a group called the Sixers wants to find the keys and then use their resulting power in the game to charge people money to have an account on it. They fight ruthlessly and cheat incredibly well.

Up against these guys is Wade, a poor kid living in the Stacks, which are literally stacks of mobile homes to accommodate people who flooded to the cities in search of work but didn’t have the space. Wade is obsessed with the quest for the keys, but his lack of money prevents him from leaving Ludus, the planet he goes to school on. His online friend Aech is a comparable nerd to him, and sometimes helps him out with a lift. There’s also Art3mis, a girl looking for the keys as well who runs a blog chronicling her quest.

The situation set up in this book seems absurd and far-fetched, but the attention to detail is so incredible that just maybe I could see it happening. Wade mentions in passing how everything manages to function, from the immense OASIS servers to the privacy of the information on it. Clearly Cline thought all of the details through, and has no problem including them to convince us that this is a plausible scenario. As a result it walks a fine line between dystopian fiction, sci-fi, and just a plain novel about our future.

One of the recurring themes is the disconnect between online life and real life. Users change their appearances whenever they want to in the OASIS, and the end when Wade, Art3mis, and Aech finally meet in person is really well done. Cline shows that it really doesn’t matter all that much what you look like, because ultimately it’s the person’s personality that you are getting to know and care about.

There’s also intimacy. Wade goes through a rough patch and tries having sex in OASIS brothels for a while, but then realizes that its really just glorified masturbation. What he needs is real human contact. Art3mis insists that she and Wade can’t date because they don’t really know each other, they could just be lying about who they are. That doesn’t stop Wade from craving contact with her, as he’s fallen for her persona, regardless of whether she really is that or not.

As can be expected, there are references in the book to kids that ignore the outside world and shut themselves inside playing on the OASIS all the time. For a while, it seems that Wade is going to turn out that way as well. But the ending of the book cements it, the real world is far more important than any game because its real. Any happiness gained is more meaningful when it’s based in real life, and not in a fantasy game. The game was created by someone unable to adequately cope with life outside a game, but ultimately, it transforms Wade into someone who doesn’t need games anymore to thrive. The real world holds many more exciting possibilities for him now.