28 August 2011

Ernest Cline – Ready Player One

Posted by Dirk under: books .

Set in America in 2044, an America that sucks.  The main character is an orphan that lives in a mobile home (along with his aunt and something like 14 more people) that is stacked on top of a dozen other mobile homes to make an apartment block of sorts.  The only good thing in the dude’s life is OASIS, the virtual game world/internet  (they sort of combined over the years) that was created by a reclusive billionaire game designer died 5 years earlier.  He left no heirs and instead left a final game for the people of the world.  A quest through OASIS to find three keys and unlock the final gate to get the ultimate video game ‘easter egg’.  The winner inherits his entire estate.

Of course, this causes a huge rush of people trying to figure out the puzzle and win the fortune, but after 5 years, only the hardcore still search.  They specialize in 1980’s pop culture because the dead billionaire loved that shit and the clues to figure it all out are in that old stuff.

In addition to the many solo searchers there are also clans of searchers and one evil mega-corp that has an entire department of searchers.

And after 5 years, our hero finds the first key and then it’s on like Donkey Kong.

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