"Ready Player One" by Ernest Cline

Publisher:New York : Crown Publishers, [2011]
Edition:First edition.
Copyright Date:©2011
ISBN: 9780307887443
Characteristics: 374 pages

I've read this book a couple of times, but never got around to reviewing it until now. Why? I have no idea, because I think it is a great novel (Ernest Cline's first by the way), and well worth the read.

The story is set in a dystopian but not too distant future (2044) where the planet has essentially gone to hell in many ways including: environmentally and socially. The unemployment rate is ridiculous, and so on. Pretty much everybody now lives and interacts though a virtual utopian world called OASIS. One of the inventors of OASIS has died, and has left his entire fortune to the one person who can solve a series of puzzles that he has built into the OASIS (an easter egg to those who are gamers). However, these puzzles can only be solved by an intimate knowledge of 1980s culture.

At the start of the story it has been a number of years since the inventor had died, and virtually everybody thought the puzzles would never be solved. But when the protagonist Wade Watts, stumbles onto the solution to the first clue and solves the problem. This triggers some unfortunate events such as his discovery that there are numerous people in the world willing to kill to learn the secret he has uncovered, and where this leads him is a fascinating look into 1980s culture in the form of video games, television, music, etc.

This book is well worth the read. It was made into a movie that was released in 2018 starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn, but I haven't seen it yet so I can only hope that Mr. Spielberg has done a good job.