Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline

What a game!  I don't consider myself a gamer, although I wasted plenty of hours with my Atari 2600 and later with a Nintendo.  Now I play with my kids sometimes on their Wii and PS3, but it doesn't quite have the appeal as it once did.  Ready Player One is a novel for gamers, especially for those who fondly remember those Atari 2600 days, but the story will draw in non-gamers as well.

In Ernest Cline's world, about 3 decades in the future, the internet has become a virtual reality environment.  It started with the OASIS, an online game, which became the standard operating system/ web browser/ social environment for virtually everyone.  The creator of the OASIS, game programmer James Halliday, a fabulously wealthy, childless recluse, hid an "Easter egg" somewhere in the OASIS and, when he died, had a video released in which he stated that whoever finds the Easter egg would inherit his fortune.  The hunt would require an encyclopedic knowledge of 1980s pop culture, including video games, TV shows, movies, music, and more.  The world goes crazy for 1980s fashion and culture, as everyone would love to have a piece of that fortune.

Cline's protagonist, Wade Watts, known in the OASIS as Parzival, is about to finish high school, and as a poor orphan in a bleak world, lives in the OASIS as an escape.  He has dedicated the 5 years since the start of the contest to learning every bit of Halliday's favorite 1980s culture.  Finally, he has a flash of inspiration and becomes the first person to find the first clue, making him not only an overnight celebrity, but also the target of a ruthless corporation with the aim of taking over Halliday's company.

Cline's Delorean doesn't travel through time, as far as I know.

Ready Player One makes for a fun read, a roller-coaster ride of Wade's adventures, avoiding threats both virtual and real-life.  A child of the 1980s will love some of the tasks he has to perform in his search, like playing the Matthew Broderick character in an interactive version of War Games (if he misses a line, he loses points; luckily Wade has watched the movie enough that he has it memorized) or playing against Halliday's avatar in the arcade classic Joust.  All of his research pays off time and again.  Many of the cultural references, on which the story hinge, will be lost to readers older or younger than Halliday's generation, but it's still a fun story.

This is a fun read, sure to satisfy readers like me, fans of Cory Doctorow, and players of online multi-player games.  I'm sure it will make a great movie, coming to theaters sometime in 2012.  In the meantime, let your imagination run wild as you picture life in the OASIS, where you can drive a time-traveling DeLorean, go to school exclusively in a virtual reality school, fly your own X-wing fighter, and make your virtual living room look just like the one on Family Ties.  Enjoy!