2011’s Ready Player One is both an ode to 80’s culture and old-school gaming, and a love letter to cultural touchstones for readers of a certain age. You don’t need to be that old to get it, nor do you have to be a gamer to enjoy it. Ernest Cline’s debut novel hits a rare sweet spot that appeals to a wide demographic.

Set in a dystopian near-future, the world of Ready Player One is in shambles. Energy crises and climate change have ravaged the United States. Poverty has run most cities into decay and suburban life replaced by a series of “stacks,” which are trailer parks that have RV’s stacked on top of one another to the sky. To combat the despair, most people go to the OASIS, a persistent, immersive, and constantly evolving interactive game world that uses souped-up virtual reality technology. The OASIS has reached Facebook-like ubiquity; so many people use the OASIS that it’s in-game currency is treated as actual money, with a 1:1 exchange rate to the US dollar. Five years ago, James Halliday, the reclusive genius who created the OASIS, revealed on his deathbed that he had hidden an Easter Egg inside the OASIS, accessible by three keys. The first to find these keys and get to the egg would inherit his company, Gregarious Games, as well as his fortune (estimated at over a billion dollars) and complete control of the OASIS. That leads to a mad dash by egg-hunters—or “gunters”—and Gregarious Games’ chief rival IOI to find the egg. The story centers on Wade Watts, an awkward teenager living in the Oklahoma City stacks. Wade’s life, for lack of a better word, sucks; his parents are dead, he has no friends and poor social skills, and he lives in abject poverty with his indifferent aunt and her boyfriend-du-jour. Wade frequently escapes to the OASIS—he attends school there and spends his free time as a gunter in hopes of finding Halliday’s Egg and improving his life. So when he becomes the first to stumble onto the first key, Wade (via his avatar Parzival) is revered by the gunter community, earns lucrative endorsement deals, and is targeted by the head of IOI’s egg-hunting division, Nolan Sorrento.

There is plenty to love about Ready Player One, especially if you are or were a gamer, or happened to be alive during the 1980’s. The nostalgia button is mashed hard, and there are references aplenty for 80’s goodies like the Atari 2600 or the film works of John Hughes and Robert Zemeckis. The story revels in all the high points of the 80’s without the low points—the politics, the greed, and the scandal that pervaded the era. I also appreciate the commentary Cline makes on several modern issues. For starters, the OASIS is a digital universe where anyone can customize their look and their voice until they are seen as they wish to be. That is not unlike modern social media, and James Halliday bears a pointed similarity to the janky and socially awkward portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network. The OASIS is integral to that future society the same way Facebook and Twitter are today, and one can argue that OASIS is the logical end-point of social media’s evolution. Cline warns of the inherent dangers of not being able to connect with real people. Cline also uses the OASIS to make a powerful and pointedly self-aware statement: it’s easier to be a white male in the world than it is to be anything else. That statement is crucial in the reveal of one of the novel’s main characters, and in a world where Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Alton Stirling, Philando Castile, and Stephon Clark are names we know for all the wrong reasons, a direct and tacit admission of this fact is important (and one of the reasons the film adaptation fell flat for me, but that’s a rant for another post).

However, engaging as the plot and retro nostalgia may be, I can’t completely get behind the villain. Nolan Sorrento is the typical ruthless businessman, the face of the otherwise faceless IOI. He and his group of egg-hunters (nicknamed ‘sixers’ because their avatars are only identifiable by their six-digit employee number) are out to get the OASIS and turn it into an ad-supported, tiered-membership, for-profit venture. Cline’s sendup of Big Business is so cliché, it borders on parody. The subplot of tech titans at war feels like an Android vs. Apple analog—the villain in that scenario depends on your personal preference—and it’s been done to death. With such an inventive premise, I would have preferred a less conventional antagonist. Also, in early parts of the story, I found the pacing to be slower than I liked. It’s important to establish the rules of a world early on, but the first 50 pages could be cut out, and you wouldn’t care miss much. Once the action starts, it comes fast and furious; it takes a little too long getting the car out of the driveway.

Overall, Ready Player One is an enjoyable read and is charming and compelling enough to suck you into its world. Despite the slow start and the cardboard cutout villain, you’ll want to follow Wade’s journey to find Halliday’s egg from its initial Joust to the center of the maze at the end of the game.

Pros: Smart plotting, likable hero, 80’s nostalgia.

Cons: Slow start. Cliched villain.

Rating: 4/5 stars.

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