The OASIS is real! Well, in a virtual-worldy-mud-sort-of-way.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSo, it\u2019s not a great place to be growing up, but this particular Earth has one redeeming feature: The OASIS. This particular piece of software is what has subsumed the internet as we know it. Now, instead of building web pages and using a static, two dimensional browser to visit that site for it\u2019s information or wares, you build an immersive 3D simulation of the concept.<\/p>\n
Once the 3D simulation is built, you hop in using a pair of gloves and a visor which give haptic feedback. What this means is that if you touch something in the simulation, ie: some wood on a table, the gloves attempt to simulate the texture of that surface, transmitting it as vibrations or stimulations that run through your fingers and trick your brain into believing that you\u2019ve actually touched a wooden surface.<\/p>\n
The happy upshot of all of this is that the simulation is \u201cnearly real,\u201d but with limitless opportunities for non-real things to occur. Want your world to have no gravity? No problem. That\u2019s a setting you change if you buy a piece of land. Want magic to be a real force in the world? Go ahead. Turn magic on and technology off.<\/p>\n
This, in turn, leads to many, many worlds that can be visited, including \u2013 for example \u2013 World of Warcraft.<\/p>\n
And all of this costs twenty five American cents. It\u2019s \u201cvirtually free.\u201d The company that runs this elaborate system only ever charges for transportation fees. If you \u2013 for example \u2013 never want to enter a gaming zone, you never have to. Just travel over to a shopping district or a party district, park your avatar [\u201cyou\u201d in this simulation] wherever you want it to be and never worry about moving again.<\/p>\n
Naturally, there are those who don\u2019t like the way the OASIS is run \u2013 they don\u2019t feel it\u2019s making enough money, given the global reach it has This leads to a clash between the \u201cegg hunters\u201d seeking the egg for altruistic reasons [and to mostly keep the OASIS the way it is, now, media freedoms and everything intact] and IOI, a vast corporate bully that wants to bill you for everything you ever do within the system. [Sound familiar? ;)]<\/p>\n
This particular feud \u2013 with Wade and the egg hunters on one side and IOI and its cheating thugs on the other is what drives the novel. Every time the good guys make positive strides toward finding the egg, the cheating Sixers [a group within IOI devoted to finding the egg so they can corporatize the simulation] steal that information by hook or by crook.<\/p>\n
And this leads me to my only pair of real problems with Ready, Player One: the plot is fantastic, but the execution is a little flat. We\u2019ve seen this story writ large throughout cyberpunk\u2019s history: lone wolf with altruistic motives versus multinational with more money than they know what to do with. This particular part of the novel wore a bit thin for me. In a sense, I kind of wished that Ernest Cline \u2013 the author \u2013 built up someone inside<\/em> the egg hunting community that was a bad apple, instead. [It comes close \u2013 there\u2019s one character that\u2019s a little like that, but he\u2019s played for laughs.]<\/p>\nMy second problem with this novel is the romance. While it \u201chas reason\u201d to exist, [it nudges the protagonist along on his own personal journey] it just derails the entire book. There\u2019s a section in the middle which turns into a bottomless pit of teenage angst that \u2013 again \u2013 has reason to be there, but doesn\u2019t \u201csit well\u201d with the rather Spartan nature of Ernest Cline\u2019s storytelling.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the last thing I want to touch on, here. The writing is a little uneven. For the most part, Cline\u2019s descriptions are pretty dry. \u201cHere\u2019s a book-case, and I\u2019ll tell you a little about it\u201d \u2013 there\u2019s no flowery prose or anything that might distract the reader from what\u2019s happening and that is sort of a shame. There\u2019s such a great set-up here for description that it almost feels wasted. The bigger problem, though, is the dialogue. Some of it is quite cringe-worthy, but if you can navigate that, then Ready, Player One is a blast.<\/p>\n
So, should you read this book? If you: grew up in the eighties, or know a lot about eighties geek culture, you will be amply rewarded for your time. There are lots of little nods to all kinds of media from that decade. It helps a lot<\/em> to have played a good handful of the games Cline has mentioned as well, because apart from cursory explanations, he leaves you in the dark for those.<\/p>\nIf you love video games and are willing to do a bit of research into the games, movies and music of the eighties, again, you will be well rewarded for your time. There\u2019s a lot to soak up here that would give anyone interested in that decade a place to start.<\/p>\n
But if you\u2019re not into any of these things, then this book will probably just fall flat for you. Which is a shame, because it\u2019s a mostly fun, harmless jaunt through a re-imagined internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stop! We Are Good Times! At least, we were. The eighties was a time of growth for the computer game industry. It was also a little tumultuous. Right at the birth of the industry, Atari refused to allow their game creators to stamp their name on whatever they produced. One<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[54,61,62,63],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":428,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Ready,](\"http:\/\/greywolfe.co.za\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/ready_player_one_front.jpg\")
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