I'm consistently surprised to hear people saying positive things about "Ready Player One" - to me it was one of the most hackneyed and silly books I've read in a long time. My review at the time of reading (originally for private consumption only):
Terrible modern sci-fi about easter egg MMO quest for game creator’s fortune. Childish plot/dialog, cliches everywhere (e.g. ‘L337 Hax0r Warezhouse’), absolutely atrocious, really simple puzzles. The only positive thing I can say about it is that I didn’t give up on it immediately - although I was tempted, the main plot line was at least interesting enough that I wanted to hear the end. Unfortunately the ending itself was disappointing - the final puzzle was just a rehash of the first two. My main takeaways were: I hope the ‘MMO-scifi’ subgenre is finally dead, I should wait at least 10 years for more recent sci-fi to go through quality assurance, and that it seems like based on this, anyone with a half-baked idea and enough pop-culture-nerd knowledge to sprinkle throughout 300 or so pages should be able to write a best-seller. Meanwhile, the politics/worldview it espouses is basically boingboing distilled - big corporation bad, internet is free, knowledge is free, american culture and society is dead, cyber-elite should run world, pop-media is simultaneously in control of world and source of inspiration and true creativity.
It's an interesting contrast with The Martian: both are geek porn, but one says "Geeks are awesome because they might have a high-school level understanding of science which would be improbably useful if they were stranded alone on Mars." and the other says "Geeks are awesome because knowing the script to War Games demonstrates moral fiber." and believes it. (The character who established the challenges believing this is not problematic. The book believing it, heart and soul, is a knock on the book.)
Eh, I still think The Martian was a good book. It had the plot and humor to make its concept stand up. And the very fact that some people have made complaints about the accuracy of its science is a testament to the fact that it did take its science seriously to some degree: Most fiction doesn't show enough work for you to question it.
RP1 was okay. Cline's next book, Armada, was similar, and that's where it really starts to fall apart.
I thought it was entertaining but also wouldn't recommend it unless I think someone would enjoy the nostalgic bits.
One newer sci-fi trilogy I would highly recommend is The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin. The writing is a bit different but if you get over that the ideas are really novel and the story is epic and gripping. The Dark Forest (Book 2), in particular is one of my favorite sci-fi stories of all time. My Chinese coworkers all raved about the triology and for good reason. Note: the first and second book are out but the third's English translation is coming this fall (I am eagerly awaiting it).
I agree - I really wanted to like Ready Player One but the writing was just so difficult to enjoy. In the same way I remember thinking "wow this is really well written" when reading George R R Martin, I spent most of RP1 thinking, "I will get through this for the concept but this is not a good book."
Instead of Ready Player One, I recommend the Nexus trilogy by Ramez Naam. The action is a little overdone, but it's so much better than Ready Player One and it does a really good job of exploring very interesting technology questions!
Have to agree. RP1 has taken the ideas of VR past and synthesized them in a fun young adult novel.
Nexus paves a highway over our present into the biotech future. It makes you think about how free individuals harness technology and the culture/society/gov they live in.
My family and I thought the book was fantastic, but one thing I wanted to say is how cool the the author is (Ernest Cline). We went to a book signing at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hill, NC. Ernest spoke and gave a presentation for about 90 mins. He was very funny, had a bunch of great stories, and really engaged with all the kids as well. Warren Robinett (the creator of Adventure on the Atari 2600) is friends with Ernest and lives in Chapel Hill so he came to the event as well and spoke a bit. Another great guy. I was just totally blown away by how engaging Ernest was and how much extra effort he put in with the kids in the audience. You really get the feeling that he is super excited about whatever he is doing. His enthusiasm was contagious. Anyway, thought I'd share this. It does make me really root for the guy now.
I really enjoyed it myself. It was a big nostalgia fest. I wonder -- are you significantly older or younger than the audience that would've spent time enjoying these games?
I spent time on some of it. I'm only 35 so perhaps a bit young; or maybe I didn't spend enough time in arcades.
I found it heavy handed. Just dumping tons of references all over the place. Felt like he printed out a list of games and stuff and just made sure to check each one off.
I'm right dead center in the middle of the targeted age group and was extremely into arcade games at the time, but everything I've seen about "Ready Player One" makes it sound pandering at best.
I love scifi, and but I totally agree. I thought Ready Player One was terrible. My only explanation is that it's a huge nostalgia rush for a certain set of Gen X readers.
I really liked Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Book Store, but I think for the same sort of nostalgic reasons as people love Ready Player One.
Not to mention the love interest relationship, which is basically, "Love interest doesn't trust protagonist until the story reaches a climax and all of a sudden she's protag's girlfriend despite not having any new reason to be that."
Even worse, "love interest doesn't think she's pretty but only the protagonist is a nice enough guy to see past that." The whole book was a bunch of wish-fulfillment fantasies, but I found the romance the creepiest.
Have you heard of the Arthur C. Clarke Award? It's an annual written sci-fi award from the UK, but it's a judged award. People who know lots of sci-fi read all the UK published SF in a year, and pick a winner. You can't win by just appealing to pop geek voting base.
Terrible modern sci-fi about easter egg MMO quest for game creator’s fortune. Childish plot/dialog, cliches everywhere (e.g. ‘L337 Hax0r Warezhouse’), absolutely atrocious, really simple puzzles. The only positive thing I can say about it is that I didn’t give up on it immediately - although I was tempted, the main plot line was at least interesting enough that I wanted to hear the end. Unfortunately the ending itself was disappointing - the final puzzle was just a rehash of the first two. My main takeaways were: I hope the ‘MMO-scifi’ subgenre is finally dead, I should wait at least 10 years for more recent sci-fi to go through quality assurance, and that it seems like based on this, anyone with a half-baked idea and enough pop-culture-nerd knowledge to sprinkle throughout 300 or so pages should be able to write a best-seller. Meanwhile, the politics/worldview it espouses is basically boingboing distilled - big corporation bad, internet is free, knowledge is free, american culture and society is dead, cyber-elite should run world, pop-media is simultaneously in control of world and source of inspiration and true creativity.