Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

My second book for January is Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. A film adaptation of the book directed by Steven Spielberg is slated to premiere in March.

Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel by American author Ernest Cline. It is his debut novel. The story is set in a dystopian future (2044) wrecked by an energy crisis. It follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a virtual reality game whose the discovery will lead him to inherit a fortune.

Several years ago, I read a USAToday article predicting three technical trends for the future: big data; self driving cars and virtual reality. This story takes virtual reality to an extreme. The world is so bleak that many people live in a virtual reality known as OASIS.

The book is full of the 1980s pop culture references, mainly from classic video games and movies. While I played a few video arcade games and dabbled with Adventure and Zork in the 1980's, I was never really a video gamer. It has never been a passion.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it. It is a solid "B," maybe even a "B+."

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