Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1) in Beyond Reality

Sep 07, 2015 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: scifi-modern

it's like Ernest Cline decided to do something really nice for me, something really personal, and so he got together some of my favorite things - sympathetic yet highly flawed protagonist, diversity in race and sexual orientation, down-with-the-man anti-corporate sentiments, an absorbing dystopia, a breezy narrative - and then he put it all in the context of the decade where I formed my interests and essentially became myself. well he also put in a bunch of video games and I've never been a ...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Wealhtheow rated it it was ok

Shelves: sci-fi, ya, pocmaincharacters

A few generations from now, fossil fuels have run out for good and most of humanity lives in grim squalor, with few jobs and little hope of change. Most people have turned to living in OASIS, an immersive & sprawling cyberuniverse. The one hope Wade Watts, an orphaned nerd living in a stacked trailer park, has of getting out of poverty is to win the easter egg hidden somewhere inside OASIS. But he's not the only one looking for the egg--so too are millions of other desperate people, as well as t A few generations from now, fossil fuels have run out for good and most of humanity lives in grim squalor, with few jobs and little hope of change. Most people have turned to living in OASIS, an immersive & sprawling cyberuniverse. The one hope Wade Watts, an orphaned nerd living in a stacked trailer park, has of getting out of poverty is to win the easter egg hidden somewhere inside OASIS. But he's not the only one looking for the egg--so too are millions of other desperate people, as well as the sinister corporation IOI.

1980's American nerd culture is key to solving the easter egg's riddles and quests, and 80s references fly hard and fast. Cline is not particularly adept at explanations: they all seem dumped into the text and are usually absurdly detailed. Does anyone reading sf YA really need the concept of Dungeons & Dragons explained for three pages? I don't think so--most will already know, and besides, it's pretty damn simple.

Problems are solved really easily and quickly: Wade is so poor he can't even afford to travel in OASIS, which provides tension in the first few chapters, but then he gets an endorsement deal and can pay for even the priciest luxuries without worry. Or, later, Wade realizes spending all his time in OASIS has made him obese in the real world, and so he quickly gives himself a 6-pack by making his computer bully him. Transforming his entire body and lifestyle takes up about a paragraph, and he seemingly has no real feelings about it at all. Or, even later, Wade has been inside for so long that he has an agoraphobic attack from leaving his apartment. A few weeks later, he (view spoiler) casually declares he's going to spend very little time in OASIS ever after. How did that decision happen?

Cline drops the ball on a number of larger themes and plots, too. Periodically Wade will notice how the world is falling apart while everyone immerses themselves in OASIS. It's a vicious cycle: the world sucks, so people escape into virtual reality, but since they're not putting any effort in the world just gets suckier, so they spend more time in OASIS...Even the founders of OASIS make numerous comments about it. Yet in the end, nothing changes, nor does it seem that Wade will make any real effort to change the status quo. Another subplot that comes up is that people's OASIS personas do not necessarily match their "real world" characteristics, and the tension this causes. (view spoiler)

Overall, it's an ok quest novel, but it has far too many infodumps and a main character I never cared about or believed in. ...more

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Feb 11, 2016 Chessa rated it really liked it

Shelves: sf_fantasy, own_it, sf-f-challenge, debut, popsugar16

4.5 ⭐️! So fun. I was pretty sure I was going to love this, and I did. 80's references galore, dystopia, cool tech and a bit of romance? It's like it was written with me in mind!

Through the latter third of the book, I couldn't help but notice the idea of "CONVENIENT!" flash across my brain (often!) but the story was so fun and fast-moving that I just ignored that part of my brain and decided to enjoy the ride. This is going to be a great movie - it reads just like one.

Loved how Cline plays with ...more

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Oct 03, 2011 Sarah added it

Shelves: sf

Points for Misfits of Science.

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Jan 20, 2018 Carrie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, dystopia, best-friends, pop-culture, adventure, ammp-fairytale, video-games, 2018-s-l-scifi

What a ride....

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Dec 29, 2016 Oni rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, dystopia

The story is simple. An eccentric genius left his entire fortune to the first person who can find an Easter Egg in the biggest game that he created. Since that announcement, all gamers around the world (if not all the people in the world) try to solve the puzzle. Our protagonist is one of them. And the story follows his journey.

After reading several paragraph in the beginning, I have quite a high anticipation with this book. This book is definitely a tribute to the golden age of electronic games The story is simple. An eccentric genius left his entire fortune to the first person who can find an Easter Egg in the biggest game that he created. Since that announcement, all gamers around the world (if not all the people in the world) try to solve the puzzle. Our protagonist is one of them. And the story follows his journey.

After reading several paragraph in the beginning, I have quite a high anticipation with this book. This book is definitely a tribute to the golden age of electronic games and the 80's era, which I might say I am also a big fan. But after several more pages, it becomes quite boring. Let me tell you why.

First, the world building is terrible. The idea behind the book is awesome, but you still need a solid background. I cannot find the dystopian world in this novel believable. How come you have a high speed Internet connection for EVERYONE around the world while the world is having energy crisis! It should be only privilege to a few. The world building for the cyberspace is good, but still not nearly as good as Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash . That novel is ground breaking, not to mention that it is published in 1992. READY PLAYER ONE is written where SecondLife is already online; except adding immersive experience with Oculus-Rift like VR, haptic gloves, omni-directional treadmill, which are all available now. The author just make it bigger and faster, without any groundbreaking idea. And groundbreaking idea is a sign of a good scifi.

Second, the story. While it is quite engaging, it is without any big surprises or plot twist. The ending is as expected. Simple without flare. Given the story premises that the cyberspace is worldwide, being a god-like controller of such a world will indeed create some consequences, deliberately or not. Power will change people, and this is not explored in this novel.

The last but not least, the characters. While I can understand that the author write this novel for juvenile audiences, I cannot help but to compare it to Little Brother (it is free to download, you can google it yourself). Little Brother gives you a much more complex character, while in this novel you have a boring 2-dimensional character. Where Cory Doctorow succeeds in creating a rebellious teenage character, Ernest Cline fails. I also find that the single first person view used entirely in this novel cut a lot of the potential. If the author do it in multiple point of view, the story would become more interesting.

With all of those flaws, fortunately the plot is bearable, especially the puzzle. It keeps the story flowing and interesting. Without it, I would have throw this novel away.

So, a 3 star I think is appropriate.

...more

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Nov 02, 2016 Christy rated it it was amazing

Loved it. Appealed to my inner nerd, 80's enthusiast and futuristic drama lover. Main character was perfect hero. Love love love ...more

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Jun 11, 2016 John rated it liked it

This was a fun read. Cline takes us into a near-future world where climate change, resource depletion, and the widening gap between rich and poor have all shaped a pretty lousy world. Fortunately, there's The Oasis (think internet plus virtual reality), where people can get away from the troubles of the "real" world--it's not only more fun, with every fantasy world ever invented available to visit, but the schools are better too.

The action is driven by the death of one of of the founders of The ...more

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Nov 17, 2011 Michelle rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Mar 24, 2017 Christine rated it it was amazing

I really enjoyed this book; I probably would have enjoyed it more if I were 35 years younger and grew up playing computer games in the 80s, but still I enjoyed this book.

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Sep 10, 2011 Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides rated it liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

This book was all right. I feel like other people have done more interesting things with this kind of setting, but it wasn't bad. Not "awesome, exciting, run out and pay full price" good, though. (I got a copy from the library.)

After re-reading in December 2011, I can say that the book's all right. It's a decent adventure story and would probably make a great movie, though to me it felt like it bogged down in the middle a bit. You read it as an I-loved-the-80s kind of romp, not necessarily as a ...more

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Aug 19, 2011 Adrienne rated it it was ok

Shelves: first-person, science-fiction, disappointing, arc, sword-and-laser

Well, this book was an 80s name-dropping nostalgiorama. It was easy to read (too easy), suffered greatly from show-not-tell syndrome, and had flimsy main characters, but I did finish it in a day. Hence three stars.

Having been born in the early 80s I'm a little too young to catch all the references even though I recognized a number of them. I also didn't own any video game systems until high school (and my dad would probably have monopolized them anyway), though I have played snippets of some of ...more

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Jan 13, 2014 Tani rated it it was amazing

Shelves: male-author, scifi, favorites, five-stars, 2014

Yup, I think the hype was right on this one. Ready Player One is insanely readable. I loved how the action flowed, and although I didn't have the crazy connection to the characters that I get from some books, I enjoyed myself immensely reading this. A lot of the '80s references were things I wasn't familiar with, but Cline did a great job of explaining things so that I wasn't left in the dark. And although I didn't always agree with Wade's choices, I definitely had fun reading about them. A+ for ...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Brian rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I wanted to like this more than I actually ended up liking it. It hits so many of my core interests, it seemed like a natural and automatic "win" for me, but the myopic and somehow self-congratulatory worship of '80s geek culture and video game history was frequently so heavy-handed that it ended up turning me off rather than pulling me in.

Among the book's many virtues, though, I enjoyed the dystopian future, the concept of a shared virtual space which is malleable and fungible to the point whe ...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Selena Calingo rated it it was amazing

I may be biased, but the 80s was the best decade for movies, music, and video games. This book was a great homage to that time while still being a great sci-fi gamer adventure. Bonus points because the author was born same year I was!

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