Ready Player One by Ernest Cline arced brilliantly over the book world when it was published in 2010, not long after Cline’s first screenplay, Fanboys, went to screen. Ready Player One was full of fresh and exciting concepts, was as close to home as sci-fi gets, and was saturated with geeky references to 1980s pop culture and video game history. People went wild for it, for a hot minute, before some of them started to question Cline’s use of the 80s as a sort of high point of culture and patronization (I don’t really see it this way—it’s fantastical in concept, lighten up peeps) and accused Cline of talking way too much to his own self. Me, I got bored. Speculative fiction should keep most of the world-building in the background, so to speak, and Cline is proud of every word that he spends telling us about some pop culture factoid or about the components of his futuristic gamer rig. In the end, this yammering on about the world detracted from both the story (especially pace) and the development of the characters (the main one whom we have to hate after awhile because of all the obsessiveness and how much time we spend with just him in his head).

In a galaxy not so far away—in Ohio in 2045, in fact—a boy is growing up in the dangerous, poverty-riddled Stacks with his abusive aunt. His school—his entire life, in fact—is virtual and takes place in the worldwide, VR OASIS which is the only place to be for a humanity thrown into chaos and suffering. For five years, the isolated Wade has been trying to find the Easter egg that was hidden by the OASIS’s creator and released upon his death with the promise that the entire OASIS would be inherited by the winner of the contest. Wade is smart and is very knowledgeable about the creator’s life in the 80s and work as a game innovator, but Wade’s not quite ready for the day he stumbles upon the first clue and sets the world on fire with the hunt, especially now that the dominating IOI corporation has its sights trained on him. In a place where you don’t truly know your friends, where secrets are currency, where everyone is willing to cheat, where Wade’s only chance at love and life are online, will he even survive his attempt to box IOI out of world domination? Can he possibly win it all?

Have you seen the movie? You might already know about this book even if you haven’t read it, because the movie was pretty popular, too. There are some really major plot differences, but over all you get the idea if you remember the movie or watch the trailer. The book is much deeper into the 80s pop culture thing, but the premise is the same. My husband read the book before I did. I had it sitting on the shelf because I am currently revising a fantasy novel with a character who is into video gaming and so it plays a role in the story. I am not a gamer, myself, though I live with two. I thought Ready Player One would educate me a little. Well, Kevin really liked the book. And since he had just read it, I decided it was time for me to read it, now, too.

I was pretty starry-eyed at the beginning. Not only had Kevin liked it and I liked the premise of the book, but it does feel pretty fresh and exciting from page one. But let me tell you folks, I really struggled reading through the middle of this book. It was long, and it was filled not with plot or character development, but world-building details that should have stayed in the story bible file. For reals. I have already said this in the review synopsis, but I was overwhelmed by pages and pages of details about Pac Man game cabinets and artifact capabilities and every nuance and line of some Monty Python movie. Funnily enough, I love the eighties and I should have been the first person to enjoy all the allusions here while learning more about the video game side. But I did not ask to read reference material. I asked to read a story. Thankfully, we do return to a faster pace and the actual plot as the story goes on, but by then I was annoyed with the book and really didn’t like Wade—who is kind of the only actual character in the book.

Yeah, I’m givin’ Wade (or, as his gamer name, Parzival) a big thumbs down. In the beginning, he’s set up to be pity-worthy, which is a good, yet also brilliant. Classic. And he’s resilient. We’re all set. But the more time the reader spends with Wade, the more it’s clear that there is nothing underneath the intelligence, knowledge, and grinding intention to keep moving toward a goal. His heart is missing. Giving him a nice-old-lady neighbor who he kinda liked and mentions two or three times in the story does not give this character a relatable heart. He’s consumed by the OASIS and the competition and is completely incapable of normal relationships and even a healthy view of himself and life. I don’t blame him: his world made him. But I don’t like him, and I’m really only pulling for him because I don’t want the worse guy to win and I’m also concerned there might be some real humans behind some of his online “friends.” But I don’t really know. Because one of things this book does right is to keep us guessing. Not about the ultimate outcome, exactly, but about the identities of the players in the OASIS, including those Parzival is “closest” to. I kept waffling back and forth about who I thought they might be, which is a nice trick since on the internet we don’t know who we are dealing with, even if we’ve spent plenty of online time with them. But with both the good and the bad, I can’t really believe this isn’t going to end in tragedy (the moral lessons of Wade’s lifestyle and living on the internet are not really learned, btw).

And one other thing that really slowed me down for the bulky middle of the book: there is simply not enough time in a life nor enough memory in a brain to do and hold what this kid is supposed to have done and kept. He’d have to be a crazy savant to remember half the stuff he does, but that aside (because we can imagine it), if he said he watched an entire series of TV shows seventeen times one more time, I was going to throw the book across the room. I’m a modern person, yo. I know what it’s like to try to fit in too much to life and to want to see all the movies, shows, and read the books that are out there calling to me. I don’t care if Wade spent every waking hour doing these things, there is just not enough time in five years (plus, later) to do a small fraction of what Wade claims to have done. Author error. While Cline was so busy creating this super neat concept and believable, future world, perhaps he should have invested in an alternative way for poor Wade to consume information at an increased rate, or something. Because I am not buying it, Cline. You lost me. And since this is sci-fi, it takes quite a lot to lose me.

Though it may not sound like it, I didn’t hate this novel, not at all. I really enjoyed parts of it and liked it overall, but there were some really big problems for me that not only weighed down the center but then removed me from my investment in the conclusion. Most people still rate this sucker high, and I can understand why. It’s pretty impressive. And we want to like it. And there’s good in it as a compelling, sci-fi story with some neat bells and whistles, apparently really relatable to Gen-X geeks most of all. But then you have those one-star reviewers who just plow on in with their truth. If you are more likely to remain starry-eyed and buy the story/believe in Wade as a lovely human despite being annoyed with the book and dubious about his sense of right and wrong, then you probably will. If you are going to roll around in the gaming and 80s references without feeling like you’ve lost precious minutes of real life that you can never get back, then you will surely rate this book top-notch. It’s a sort of modern classic and it is worth a read. Unless you are the lone one-star guy calling into the void. Then it’s totally not.

I thought I had seen the movie (Steven Spielberg, 2018) before, but I’m wondering if I watched it in the background while I was making dinner or something and my son was watching it? I don’t know. I sorta recognized it, but definitely felt like I’d never seen most of it. It could have just been unmemorable, which I think is the bottom line for this movie, yet I couldn’t really tell you why. It seems like people would have liked it and the premise is still good. (The ratings are good too, actually.) The plot is changed quite a bit, but I honestly think for the better (at least for translation). The whole middle of the book is cut out and the quest had to be simplified, as well, for time, but they ended up making Wade a much more appealing kid and giving him more time with his buddies. Definitely a lot of the eighties references—the sheer obsession—is missing, but again that might be okay. It feels more futuristic than looking back. And, perhaps for trademark issues?, they went with different references, including a whole scene that takes place in The Shining. I was cool about all these changes, but the one thing that really freaked me out while watching was how the players transitioned from real life to the game and how many times the players were seen moving in real life in the same way/space as in the game! This doesn’t make any flipping sense. The OASIS does not correspond to the spaces of Ohio or whatever, so you wouldn’t, for example, walk up to the door of your OASIS car by heading to your real work console. You’d walk up to it once in your console. This kind of thing happened over and over and while I understand the visual appeal of this, it was just stupid. Also, the moral of the story was turned on its head, which felt bizarre to me. (Instead of learning to work together to beat the bad guy despite very real issues with trust and isolation, working together is a given from early on.) And it bothers many people that the obsession with 80s, pop culture is replaced by a date that didn’t go so well for ol’ OASIS creator (which, personally, I saw as more of a metaphor). Other than those stupidities, though, I thought it was a decent movie with amazing visual effects that was done and over in less than two hours. (And yes, like the book, it’s confused about its audience, but with the 80s references and teen characters, it was always bound to be.)