Ready Player One

As a fan of the eighties, a part-time gamer and a bit of a geek, I was recently pointed in the direction of a book by Ernest Cline called Ready Player One by a colleague at work.

We had been discussing computer games and when I’d mentioned and showed him the BBC emulator running Chuckie Egg on my mobile phone he asked if I’d read or even heard of the aforementioned book.

The book is set in a near dystopian future when there’s been a global energy crisis and to escape it all, people spend their time in a virtual MMO world called OASIS. When the creator of OASIS dies he reveals that he has left an easter egg within the game which consists of three quests. Whoever completes all three quests wins his estate.

The story follows one particular character, Wade Watts and his avatar Parzival, and his journey to win the competition. It is littered with hundreds of eighties references of films, music, tv and general pop culture and they throw up “I remember that” recollections throughout. This is the highlight of the book to me!

There was even a real world competition that was announced by the author upon release of the paperback edition. He had left his own easter egg in the book that when found would point the reader to a website where the first of three challenges awaited. The overall prize for this, while not as big as the $27billion prize in the book, was pretty cool…a 1981 DMC DeLorean as seen in the Back To The Future trilogy complete with replica flux capacitor!

Ready Player One has been a brilliant read (I’m nearly at the end of it) and if you’re into movies, gaming or anything eighties related then you should search it out and give it a shot.