#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg. “Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready? In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is … the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.
When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself.
Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club
“Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost
“An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN
“A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe
“Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR
“[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9
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Loved this book
Amazing
Hope the movie doesn’t suck cause this book is AWESOME. If you were a teen in the 80’s you will love the references. The audio book with Wil Wheaton is hard to put down, amazing job that won’t disappoint.
Wow! A flashback to my childhood! I got this book for my 12 yo, but ended up reading it myself first. Incredible dystopian concept and lots of fun. He read it, loved it too. Anyone born around 1972 will understand all the fabulous 80’s references! Can’t wait for the movie!
Clever world-building but the writing is ho-hum. The book is suspenseful and surprising, so overall I liked it without loving it.
Interesting premise, but the unending 80s nostalgia gets obnoxious at times
Great read.
Brought me back to the 80s with all the references.
Can’t wait for the movie!
Best I have read in years!
This is a fascinating look at the 1980s in a great story. As one who went from childhood to adulthood in that decade, the story brought back many fond memories. The story is well-written and unique in the approach. I love a good sci-fi story. Even better when it brings back so many memories of childhood.
For the longest I didn’t want to read this then I finally did and I kick myself for not reading it sooner. It’s great and full of nostalgia
This has turned into my favorite stand-alone novel!!!
19/1 – FANTASTIC!! Best book I’ve read in at least 20 books’ time. Reading Ready Player One shows me exactly why I should never attempt writing a book – the work Cline put into the world building of not only the dystopian future, but even more so, the world of the OASIS. The time Cline must have spent researching every aspect of the book; every book, movie, piece of music, tv show and especially ALL the games of the era, is amazing and daunting for anyone out there, like me, who thinks they might have a story in them.
While I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer, I am a child of the 80s, but born in the 80s rather than grew up in the 80s, so I missed out on experiencing the 80s firsthand. I was there (for 5.25 years), but was too young for most of the experiences that would be considered a classic 80s experience, most of which Cline has referenced in his book. Fortunately, my dad is pretty tech savvy, so we’ve always had a computer (for as long as I can remember, anyway) and he recorded all his favourite movies off the tv, giving me the chance to grow up watching them, as if I was a child of the 80s, even though I was watching them in the 90s. My earliest movie memory is of watching Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back to the Future or Mad Max with the ads of the time (dad hadn’t gotten the hang of pausing the recording at the beginning of an ad break and then restarting it just as the break was ending in order to ‘tape out the ads’, so a lot of the movies he taped when I was a young child, or even before I was born, included some very interesting/corny ads). I still love those movies and I love that Ready Player One gave me the chance to feel some nostalgia over the good ol’ days of VCRs and slightly snowy movies taped off the tv, with ads included. I can still watch those same movies today (as soon as it became clear what the future of VCRs was going to be, I went out and found DVDs to replace all my tapes), but I’ll never see those old timey car/beer/Home and Away ads again and although they were just ads, thinking about them reminds me of when I first watched the movies all those years back and how they made me feel.
While my dad unconsciously instilled a love of 80s tv and movies and a few specific examples of music (mostly rock – Bon Jovi, the Boss, etc – definitely no Pseudo Echo or any of their synthesising buddies), and he was good with computers he never understood the lure of gaming consoles. We had one of the original Nintendos with some kind of bulk game pack with over 300 games, my favourites were BurgerTime, Clu Clu Land, Excitebike, Tennis, Baseball, Hogan’s Alley, Lode Runner and Mario Bros. I do remember dad spending hours mapping out the correct way through the Colossal Cave, but that was on one of our earliest IBMs (we’re not a Mac family), unfortunately our version had a bug that allowed you to get to a certain point and then you could go no further, no matter which direction you attempted to go, so I never got to see how it all ended.
MY GOD!! I’ve just realised that I’ve been waffling on and on about my own 80s experience for two paragraphs, or about an hours’ writing time. Please excuse my slight sidetrackedness, I’ll get back to discussing the books’ merits now (well, actually later as it’s now after midnight and I was going to start a new book). To be continued (even though I’ve already finished the book)….
20/1 – If Cline can’t make a living as an author he should get together with some game designers and create the OASIS. I’d play, although I hope I wouldn’t become quite as addicted as Wade did. The world Cline created, the destroyed world of 2044, is a grim reminder of the crap we’re doing to this planet and how not-impossible that future really is. How close I could be to spending my dotage in a human sardine can, stacked like a supermarket shelf with the only entertainment coming from my online life. That’s a depressing thought and it’s enough to make me want to go out and save the world from ending up like that.
Entertaining…but I was a child of the 1980s.
Great action, likable characters, filled with 80s nostalgia, tantalizing clues. I’m old, but I still loved it!
Great concept, but it was written on the level of bad fanfiction. Like, really bad fanfiction. The fanfiction written About this world has better quality.
Love, Love, Love this book! You feel as if you are right there taking the journey with Wade. He is such a lovable character that you can’t help but root for him the entire book, inside and outside of OASIS. Absolutely must read book for everyone! Instant classic.
A good premise, packed with pop culture references, and an ending you can see coming from about the third chapter. Very disappointing; it’s practically a cliche.
Outstanding book. Page turned for sure. Scary how this seems more and more like reality.