Book Review: Ready Player One

Even before I started reading Artemis, I listened to an interview of Andy Weir who recommended ‘Ready Player One’ by Ernest Klein as a must read. Spielberg must have thought so, too, because he’s doing a movie on the book which is coming out this April. But I’m not a great fan of movie adaptations, too much good stuff has to be left out which I thought was another good reason to read the book right now. The story is about a dystopian future, not one of my favorites topic to read about, about computer games, also not my favorite topic, I’m not a gamer, and about the 1980s – now we start talking! So despite some skepticism and a lot speaking against it I started reading…… and was sucked in immediately by the story. Dystopian and all, it was hard to put the book down. Without spoilering more than the trailer linked to above already does, the story is about a young high school student living in the not too distant future where the real world holds little appeal for most anymore. However, there’s the OASIS, think of it as Second Life 10.0, where most of humanity now seems to spend their lives. When the creator of the OASIS, who grew up in the 1980s, dies, he leaves his fortune and control over the OASIS to the person who can find his ‘Easter egg’, a term well known to computer gamers (a hidden secret to be found in a game). Needless to say there’s a bad corporation who’s after control of the OASIS and will do just about anything to find the Easter egg first. Lot’s of other people, including the protagonist of the book don’t like the idea and set out to find the easter egg first, by solving lots of riddles that require intimate knowledge of computer games, music and many other things of the 1980s. The story telling is superb, the characters are lively and a love story is intertwined into everything as well. First rate science fiction, a must read!