Carie Juettner

Review: Ready Player One

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ready Player One entertained me from start button to game over.

Ernest Cline’s novel is set thirty years in the future. Like many of the futuristic stories these days, Cline’s version of our world in 2044 is distinctly negative. Poverty, crime, famine– the one bright spot in this bleak future, the one escape from the hopelessness of reality, is the OASIS, the enormous virtual world accessible by all. In Ready Player One, some people live most of their lives as their avatars, their “real” selves strapped into haptic chairs and logged into the system for hours at a time. Kids even go to school in the OASIS, including Wade, a.k.a. Parzival, an orphan whose only friendships are found online.

When James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS and an eccentric multibillionaire hermit obsessed with 80’s pop culture, dies, every OASIS user receives a video with the first clue to a hidden “Easter egg” located somewhere in the vast virtual world. The person who finds this prize will inherit Halliday’s fortune.

The story begins five years after the release of Halliday’s video when Parzival becomes the unlikely person to obtain the first of three “keys” to finding the egg. His discovery propels him into the limelight– fame, glory, and very real danger. Now he and the rest of the “gunters” (egg hunters) are racing for the prize against each other and the “sixers”, employees of an evil coproration that wants to turn the OASIS into an elite money-making machine.

The book is full of great twists and lots of action. It’s also full of detailed gaming lingo and a plethora of 80’s pop culture references packed into every page. I’m no novice of 80’s lore, but Ernest Cline is way out of my league. There were several allusions that went right over my head. But then again, what do you expect from a guy who owns one of the DeLoreans from Back to the Future? While you don’t need to be a gaming genius or a child of the 80’s to enjoy this book, some knowledge does help. Picking up on the subtle references and inside jokes is half the fun. I appreciate the fact that Cline does not stick only to the most mainstream media. It’s the attention to detail that makes the book great.

Flaws? Well, I was a little disappointed with Art3mis’s big reveal at the end. It didn’t live up to the hype. I actually found the whole ending to be a bit cheesy, and there was definitely a little “hand-waving” in the middle during some of Parzival’s more complicated and impressive capers, but these things can be forgiven. After all, what 80’s movie didn’t contain a little cheese?

Ready Player One is a great book. Check it out. In the meantime, I’m going to catch up on some of the 80’s movies I’ve missed. Believe it or not, I’ve never seen Blade Runner. It’s time to remedy that.

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Puzzling It Out

I love working jigsaw puzzles. Mostly, I love running my fingers through the box of puzzle pieces. There’s no sorting them into colored piles or turning each one right side up for this girl. Second only to the satisfying snick of two cardboard shapes locking together is the low rumble of a thousand unique pieces tumbling over each other, the dusty coolness against my skin.

This week, I took time out from my writing to complete a Ravensburger puzzle that has been sitting in my closet for a few months. Five nights in a row, I sat down at the table and slowly brought the picture together while my husband sat on the couch nearby, working his way through Uncharted 2 on his PS3. Each of us respected the other’s hobby from a distance and called out the occasional encouragement when necessary.

The first night of puzzling, I felt a little guilty that I wasn’t working on my book, but I quickly realized that I actually was working on it—in my head. The amount of brain power necessary to locate and connect interlocking shapes is rather low. With my hands and eyes focused on a task, my mind was free to wander, and it journeyed all over my novel while I worked.

Though I didn’t write anything down during those puzzle sessions, I didn’t feel like the time was wasted. When I sat back down at the keyboard in the mornings, the words were ready for me.

Maybe it’s because working a puzzle and writing a novel are so similar.

The beginning is exciting. You start with a big box of pieces. You pull out the flat-edged ones and form your structure, ignoring the strange shapes that you know must fit somewhere but, at first, don’t seem to belong at all.

Once the outline is done, you start to work on various sections, making progress little by little, feeling that rush of excitement when you finally see where a scene fits into the bigger picture. Occasionally you take a break or change seats to shift your perspective of the whole. It never fails to help you see something new, locate the piece you were looking for.

The middle is the most difficult—all the easy portions are done and you’re left only with those strangely shaped creatures you’ve been avoiding. But you power through piece by piece until the box empties and the holes fill in. Soon… or maybe not soon but eventually… you are putting those last few pieces into place—snick, snick, snick—until the whole thing is complete. The picture looks just like the one on the box, and at the same time, it doesn’t. It is larger, glossier, more majestic.

I haven’t arrived at the glossy completion of my novel yet. I’m still muddling through the middle, trying to get all those pesky pieces to fit. But the box is getting lighter, and the holes are starting to fill in, and I am anxious for that last, satisfying snick.

The Coolest Thing That Didn’t Work

Ok, this is barely even counts as a post. It’s totally random. (So random, in fact, that I had to create a new category called “Random” because: A) This does not fit into any of my other categories and B) I predict more future randomness.) It’s also more of a tease than anything.

Today, while having lunch at the Whole Foods near my house, I noticed this:

At first I thought it was a cigarette machine, but that seemed highly unusual, since the last working cigarette machine I saw was in Germany, and I was currently surrounded by organic foods, signs telling me to live a healthy lifestyle, and so many different waste receptacles that I almost got a little confused throwing away my compost-able lunch container.

It was not a cigarette machine, it was an ART MACHINE. !!! Check this out:

Pretty cool, huh? I couldn’t quite understand what was in there, but I knew I wanted it. I had no cash, so I bought a few things from the store, paid with my debit card, got some five dollar bills and went to work choosing my selection. It turns out it wasn’t that difficult. (Monsters! Duh.)

Here’s where the story gets disappointing. Whatever was in my cigarette-pack-shaped monster box got stuck in the machine. Ever an optimist, I put in another five dollars, hoping to unstick it and get a second one, but no. At that point nothing would work. I had, apparently, broken the art machine. 😦

The guys at Whole Foods were super nice and gave me my ten dollars back, but the man who “knows the machine” was not there, so they put a sad little “Out of Order” sign on it and I went about my day. But I will be back! I love this idea (despite the fact that it didn’t work for me today) and I can’t wait to find out what treasures await inside.

Has anyone else seen these anywhere? Has anyone successfully bought something from one? If so, please share!