102. Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

By now you’ve gotten the hang of things here, and you know that I read just about everything that peaks my interest. So why, oh why did I read this decidedly man-boy-book? Well the film had just come out and several nerds I know had mentioned it and well, why not? This is a sort of gamer, 80s mash up of pop culture trivia with a good slap of teenage angst. Oh, and there’s a girl.

Of course! (Just be patient, the rant is coming in due time)

Don’t mistake me, there were things I enjoyed about this book, but many things that were lacklustre. Surely I should adore a world that prizes itself on its references from Blade Runner to the first text games? Partly. There’s a part of me that really loves imagining the pop culture references in this book as a Labyrinthine Bowie thrusting his codpiece in the faces of the general populous with glee and pretending it’s for the audiences pleasure. But it gets to a point where these things can feel like overkill and at times the novel feels like a nostalgia jerk off. It can be a likeable world if you turn your brain off, with a few twists and some moving parts that I appreciate. But on the whole, it had the potential to be so much better.

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

To jump right in, Wade’s life is a game. It is the Oasis, created by James Halliday as a free immersive multiplayer platform to take the people of 2045 out of their awful lives. But it’s also more then that, the player’s lives can be immersed into the Oasis, they can go to school in the Oasis, work in the Oasis, play in the Oasis, and have sex in the Oasis. After unchecked corporate power has swallowed society in an enormous wage gap and climate change (which we never really hear much of) has ravaged the planet most Americans live in shanty towns surrounding major cities. But can find a little fun and escapism in the Oasis.

The plot of the novel is: James Halliday has died and in his will he leaves the Oasis to one player who can find his Easter Egg. The Hunt is a test of knowledge, finding the clues through all the pop culture and 80s geek shit Halliday has loved through his life. But it’s also a matter of stopping the big bad corporation, IOI the global conglomerate from taking control of the Oasis and making it a paid, or sponsored experience. Whoever solves the puzzles wins the keys, you win the keys, you get closer to finding the Easter Egg, you win the egg you get to be the person at the top of the Oasis, make lots of money, have lots of money, and be something of a king. Seems simple right? It sure does right?

This is until you throw a bunch of teenagers at it. ‘If it weren’t for those meddling kids’ should be the tag line of this novel. Because I genuinely feel that it if weren’t for those meddling kids we’d have a better novel.

Wade Watts, or Parzival by his avatars name, is a poor kid from the shanties. He is socially awkward outside of the Oasis, goes to school in the Oasis so he can avoid social interaction like bullying, and has no money to speak of. He does have an obsession with the game though and is desperate to win Halliday’s contest. However, as a broke kid he has no money to travel from the world his school is on and level up. The odds are stacked against him, but he does have obsessive tenacity and has learnt every detail he can about Halliday’s life. He devotes hundreds of hours studying Halliday, watching tv shows and films, playing games, and generally nerding out to 80s shit.

Wade’s best friend is Aech, a higher level but despite Wade’s lower standings Aech has been impressed by him enough to invite him into his secret hangout.

Wade for some reason, being the most unlikely character in the entire universe, cracks the first clue and discovers the first key. It is pot luck the key is hidden on the planet he’s been stranded on! The planet of the schools! Because of course he can’t afford to travel anywhere else can he?

Wade is the first to get the Copper Key and as he is leaving he runs into his longtime crush Art3mis. She reveals she’s been trying to crack the game for weeks to get the key and after reading her blogs avidly and admiring her for many years Wade gushes over her and gives her a tip on how to beat the game.

From then on Wade’s name is on the scoreboard and everyone knows who he is and the story continues to revolve around him, Art3mis and gushing over Art3mis and not selling out to IOI and winning the game fair and square.

The big glaringly obvious fault in this novel is that Wade leads a charmed life. Any conflict and friction in his life is accompanied with “Hey isn’t this just like the goonies?” and then a wall will raise to reveal the easy route to the thing he is looking for. I don’t like YA books like this. I DON’T LIKE EASY. I WANT TO STRUGGLE and KNOW that this story has been worth it because it’s been emotionally traumatic. If I don’t put down a YA book feeling slightly abused then it hasn’t done it’s job correctly.

The 80’s nostalgia that I love and I believe is done correctly is in Stranger Things where people have more personality then flat surfaces and have actual complex emotional worlds. Ready Player One falls down time and time again because it refuses to give characters a hard time beyond the sphere of toxic masculinity tantrums because – some girl you don’t know won’t date you. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a thousand times, THIS DOES NOT A PLOT MAKE. If your character spends half the book over-eating, self torturing, and perpetuating the idea that just because YOU have feelings for THEM they belong to you or owe you something, just stop. That is not plot and that is not character development. What that is my friends is a waste of ink and paper and awful messages to give young people.

And then if you so happen to give it the ending of the boy gets the girl because he tortured himself SO much, you are the problem as a writer for even further perpetuating those broken down, exhausted story lines that we as a society (I hope) are moving beyond. It does not translate well. Her ‘coming around’ is not a narrative we need more of. Those are poor choices. Fetishising this sort of wallowing-self-torture-sadness as a plot device only works when you are Emily Bronte.

And I’m sorry, but who is the villain again? I’m really struggling to put a face on them because my entire memory of the book is dominated by angst and self pity and ‘why won’t she love me though?’ and ‘I’m such a loser’. The villain’s here seem to be unmemorable and faceless to me. But perhaps thats the beauty of a global corporation.

We spend a lot of time reenacting films word for word and playing games in this novel, but we don’t see much of the dystopia world it’s set in. I walked into this novel knowing nothing about it’s world and I’m really struggling to find details now because the Oasis is the forefront of this novel. And arguably to some of the characters that is the world. However there are whole sequences where we are running around the real world, but it’s too little too late to actually demonstrate what reality is. Cline spends so much time tapping away at the fantasy in this novel, he looses the foundation that it should be based on.

I didn’t get attached to the characters in this book or have much of any empathy for them because there is a lack of struggle beyond what is self involved. For some what Cline delivers is enough and is perfectly satisfactory. But for me I want something from literature that has a bit more bite. I really enjoy the set up of this novel, I enjoy the concept, I enjoy the little guys against the big-corporation-bad. But I think this is really poorly executed. And like Bowies codpiece, I don’t want that or any of this waving in my face.