{"id":811,"date":"2013-02-03T22:15:46","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T05:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=811"},"modified":"2013-02-03T22:46:39","modified_gmt":"2013-02-04T05:46:39","slug":"ready-player-one-by","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=811","title":{"rendered":"Ready Player One by"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another audio book down!\u00a0 This time it’s Ready Player One<\/em> by Earnest Cline.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Plot:<\/strong>
\nThe year is 2044 and the world has not fared well. A global recession has struck and poverty is rampant with all resources scarce.\u00a0 The protagonist of this story is an 18 year old named Wade Watts who has fared worse than most. Wade lives in abject poverty with his abusive aunt who simply keeps him around for extra food vouchers. Wade has one escape – the OASIS.\u00a0 The OASIS started as a massively online multiplayer game, but has become all things in this dystopia. He goes to school there, works there, and plays there.
\nYet the OASIS has no leader.\u00a0 It’s creator, an unbelievably rich and reclusive programmer, James Halliday has died and left an easter egg in this world of the OASIS.\u00a0 The person who finds it gets control of the OASIS, and all his worldly goods – a sum of billions of dollars.\u00a0 Wade becomes a ‘gunter (egg hunter) in his spare time.\u00a0 Hunting down the egg has gone on for years with little progress.\u00a0 It requires the collecting of 3 keys – and each key is hidden and protected with challenges.\u00a0 Halliday’s only hints lay in his obsession with all things 80’s: movies, D&D, music, styles and most importantly, their games.
\nWhile the independent Gunters are searching for the egg, so are the Sixers – a group of corporate lackeys – that are out to get the egg for themselves and change the utopian free OASIS into a commercial vehicle.\u00a0 So the race is on.\u00a0 Will Wade (Parzival as his avatar is known), along with fellow hunters Aech and Art3mis beat the Sixers and win the most amazing game prize ever?<\/p>\n

Summary:<\/strong>
\nThis was one of the most enjoyable reads I’d had in a long time.\u00a0 I was apprehensive when I read that it was a book about 80’s culture and games.\u00a0 Often times the well-meaning author butchers or panders the topic.\u00a0 But not so with this book Every great 80’s reference to classic cult\/nerd content is there: Dungeons and Dragons, movies such as Wargames and The Quest for the Holy Grail, classic video games such as pac-man, and joust, and music and pop-icons such as Max Headroom and the Cap’n Crunch hacker – as well as more modern advancements such as massively multiplayer online games.\u00a0 All the greats are in there in all their shining glory.<\/p>\n

Best of all, Earnest Cline was clearly a lover and know-er of all these as well – his descriptions and treatment of each piece of history is accurate and spoken of with the same reverence as I knew and loved them.\u00a0 As a nerdy child of the 80’s, I loved this trip through memory lane – and it’s clear Cline was just as much a lover.\u00a0 I found myself knowing and able to play along as Wade walked through the challenges and puzzles.\u00a0 I too had run the D&D dungeon The Tomb of Horrors, had played through some of the PC-based games he mentions – although I was not a very good master of classic arcade games.\u00a0 Still, watching the young Wade and others of his generation learn to fall in love with the awesomeness of the 80’s was like falling in love again myself.\u00a0 It made me want to whip out my old D&D set, pull out my Tandy coco and play Dungeons of Daggorath (which I DO have a copy of and a working Tandy!), and all the other great games and adventures I had as a kid.\u00a0 It re-vitalized and reminded me of why I got into computers all those years ago.<\/p>\n

I give this book a solid A.\u00a0 Sure, it’s not a heady examination of the deeper things of life nor Pulitzer-quality writing – but it’s an absolutely romp if you were a child (and especially a nerdy child) of the 80’s.\u00a0 I found myself sitting in the car long after I’d got home and listening to ‘just one more chapter’.\u00a0 I haven’t always had that recently – and it was a great pleasure to have that much fun with a book again.<\/p>\n

Highly recommend for the child of the 80’s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another audio book down!\u00a0 This time it’s Ready Player One by Earnest Cline. Plot: The year is 2044 and the world has not fared well. A global recession has struck and poverty is rampant with all resources scarce.\u00a0 The protagonist of this story is an 18 year old named Wade Watts who has fared worse than most. Wade lives in abject poverty with his abusive aunt who simply keeps him around for extra food vouchers. Wade has one escape –…<\/p>\n

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