An online friend urged me to read Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. He wanted to know how I’d react to it.

Well, having read it, I’d say it’s a geek fest – a video gamer’s fantasy wish-fulfillment story…

But it’s an excellent gamer’s fantasy wish-fulfillment story.

Wade Watts is a teenager living in a mid-21st Century American dystopia, in Oklahoma City. The world’s fossil fuels have run out, and the alternative technologies haven’t kept pace. So multitudes of Americans, like Wade, live in “the Stacks,” mobile home parks where the trailers are stacked high on steel racks. He shares a trailer with his aunt and several renters, but most of his time is spent in a hiding place, where he lives a virtual life in OASIS. OASIS is a sort of virtual-reality Facebook, where you can live an entire, ultra-realistic digital life, except for taking care of the most basic physical needs.

Most of his time is spent studying the life and work of James Halliday, the genius who developed OASIS. Halliday died several years earlier, and instead of a will he left a game. Clues, he said on a final video, are hidden in the world of OASIS. They lead to three keys, and the keys in turn lead to an “Easter Egg.” Whoever finds the Easter Egg first will inherit Halliday’s entire fortune and control of his company. Continue reading ‘Ready Player One,’ by Ernest Cline →