Ernest Cline’s book Ready Player One takes place in a dystopia in 2045. It follows protagonist Wade Watts in his search for an Easter Egg in the worldwide, revolutionary virtual reality game. The discovery of such an egg would allow him to inherit all of the game creator’s fortunes (half a trillion dollars!). It’s the greatest virtual race among everyone across the world.

 The world has been seized by an energy crisis from the depletion of fossil fuels and the consequences of pollution, global warming and overpopulation, causing widespread social problems and poverty. To escape their collapsing, real world, everyone turns to the OASIS, a virtual reality simulator accessible by players (for just one quarter) using visors and haptic technology such as gloves. It is both an MMORPG and virtual world, with its currency being the most stable in the real world. It was created by James Donovan Halliday, video game genius and founder of Gregarious Simulation Systems (formerly Gregarious Games), who made a posthumous video of his will stating to the public that he had left an Easter Egg inside the OASIS, and the first person to find it would inherit his entire fortune, ownership of his corporation as well as complete control of the OASIS itself.

In the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation), there are thousands of different planets and you can do pretty much anything. You can acquire weapons, artifacts, vehicles, and loot. You can use magic and technology. You explore replicas of your favorite fictional settings, play any game within the game, watch any movie or tv show, the possibilities are endless and infinite. Personally, I would love to see something like this in the future (but I don’t want the energy crisis part).

Wade Watts is a young student who attends school through the OASIS. He lives with his neglective Aunt in “The Stacks.” The Stacks are a bunch of shanty homes stacked on top of each other and take place in Columbia, Ohio. The Hunt, as every Gunter (egg hunters) calls it, has been going on for 5 years but no one has found anything in the massive universe of the OASIS yet. To obtain the Easter Egg, you need to find three keys, a copper key, a jade key, and a crystal key. After finding each key, you have to find the gate to insert the key into and then clear the gate in order to attain a hint for the next key. Like I said previously, the OASIS is an entire universe, containing tens of sectors, each with thousands of planets, so it’s no surprise that people haven’t gotten anywhere close to finding the copper key.

I immediately fell in love with this book because I really enjoy playing video games, and this book does a perfect job at describing your standard MMORPG and depicting in great detail the fictional virtual universe that has been created. This book also contains hundreds of references to movies, tv shows, and other games which you might catch.

If you enjoy a good dystopian novel and love video games, this novel is perfect for you. It has an amazing plot, stunning detail, great characters, and elements that I found wildly entertaining. I know there is a pretty popular movie adaptation made by Steven Spielberg, and it has a different take on the book, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it and it is definitely worth watching. I highly recommend this amazing book to anyone!

Check out Ready Player One from NBPL!