I recently finished reading Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, and despite being a
light read (I finished it in less than a week), I have a lot of thoughts on it.
This review isn’t so much a commentary on the quality of the novel so much as
an analysis of some of the ideas presented in the novel and where I feel those
ideas fall short. I fear this review will make it seem as though I have an
overwhelmingly negative opinion on the book so let me just say off the top that
it was a thoroughly enjoyable read despite several issues and I’d recommend it
to just about any geek out there. With that out of the way let’s dive into it.
Ready Player One is a YA novel set in a near-future
sci-fi dystopia (around the year 2044). An energy crisis combined with severe
climate change has set off a domino effect of catastrophes that have pushed
humanity to the brink of collapse. The daily lives of most people on the planet
is one of constant drudgery and suffering with only a select few of the wealthiest
citizens enjoying a decent standard of living. To escape this miserable
existence the majority of humanity plugs into a hyper-realistic, massive
virtual world called the OASIS. It originally began as a VR MMO videogame, but
it evolved overtime to encompass almost everything. In the OASIS you can play
any game, watch any movie, listen to any song, shop, socialize, exercise (with
the right peripherals), travel to distant or fictional locales, or even go to
school. A person can spend the vast majority of their time in the OASIS, only
needing to unplug to eat and sleep.
The story begins when the lead architect of this world,
James Halliday, dies without heir so he creates a maddening scavenger hunt
within the OASIS. Whoever completes it first will inherit his vast wealth and
control of the OASIS. Needless to say, many people the world over get caught up
in the hunt including our hero, Wade Watts (known online as Parzival), a sad,
lonely, geeky teenager living in poverty. While most of his competitors are
individuals like him (including his only friend, Aech, and his eventual love
interest, Art3mis), the real threat comes from an evil multinational
corporation called IOI; an ISP and media company with vast resources and no
ethics. IOI employs an army of people to win the contest in their name so they
can take control of the OASIS and milk it for every penny, turning it into a
world that only the wealthy can enjoy much like the real one. So Wade and
friends must solve the clues, complete the challenges, and reach the end before
IOI does or they’ll lose the only thing they have left that brings them joy.
With that summary out of the way, lets get into the meat of
it. Overall, I’d say Cline has laid the groundwork for a very cool (albeit
depressing) world. The OASIS is especially appealing to the gamer in me, and
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to see something like it brought to
fruition in reality. Of greater interest perhaps, is the near-future dystopic
setting which allows Cline to draw on the issues of today and predict where
they might lead us in the future. Economic inequality, corporate monopolies,
environmental collapse, and the rise of the celebrity politician are already
taking us down a very dark path. Its not difficult to see how these problems could
lead us into a world not unlike the one presented in the novel. However, Cline
doesn’t dwell on these ideas for too long, sometimes only mentioning them in
passing. The only contemporary issue to take center stage, and indeed the only
social issue nerds seem to get passionate about, is net neutrality (more on
that later). Otherwise, Cline seems more or less content to let these themes
fall by the wayside or just sit in the background after he’s done explaining
them.
This segues into my next point, and perhaps the biggest
technical issue I have with Ready Player
One: endless exposition. Evidently Cline never got the memo on showing
versus telling because he devotes a maddening amount of space to explaining his
world and all the nitty-gritty elements within it. Now, to be fair, some
exposition is absolutely necessary in any story, and that’s especially true
when building a fantasy or science-fiction universe, but at some point you have
to let that universe breathe. You don’t need to explain every little quirk of
the OASIS or provide a Wikipedia article on every notable person or event
mentioned. Just lay the groundwork, let the characters explore the world, allow
the story to unfold naturally, and believe in the reader’s ability to fill in
the blanks.
Of course the question of “the reader” presents another
problem that compounds the issue of over-exposition since this book is
simultaneously directed at two audiences. Cline uses a framing device to tell
his story. Ostensibly, Ready Player One
was written by Wade after the events depicted in it have already occurred as
his attempt to “set the record straight” so to speak. As such, he goes into
great detail explaining cultural references from our era for the benefit of his
fictional audience, information that the actual readers are already familiar
with. Conversely, much space needs to be devoted to explaining things from the
future era unfamiliar to us, information that the fictional audience presumably
already knows. This all adds to up to a lot of unnecessary exposition and a
rather bizarre read at times as the book jumps between audiences.
All this exposition comes at the expense of themes,
characters, and story. For instance, at one point Wade has a big falling out
with his best friend, Aech. In most works this would be a major turning point
and would serve as an emotional climax for the protagonist. In Ready Player One, its only brought up in passing well after the
fact as a sort of minor inconvenience for Wade now that he can’t bounce ideas
off of him anymore. At another point, Wade goes on an adventure with two
Japanese competitors, Daito and Shoto, wherein they fight giant monsters from
Ultraman. This would be the perfect opportunity to both have a fun action
sequence, and explore Daito and Shoto’s character who otherwise barely rise
above stereotypes. Instead what we get is a complete rundown on the specs of
Wade’s VR setup. That sort of information only has appeal to a limited group of
tech enthusiasts. Granted, they probably make up a sizable portion of the
book’s audience, and indeed in many ways this book is geared towards such
futurists as I shall now outline.
On the surface this book seems to be about a group of
scrappy nerds taking on a giant conglomerate for the future of the OASIS (which
is essentially the Internet), but if you look a bit deeper you’ll see a third
party at play. The OASIS doesn’t exist on its own, it was created by a
tech/gaming company called GSS which was founded by Halliday and his best
friend, Ogden Morrow. The duo are compared to Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs
respectively, and both are presented as being champions of privacy and consumer
rights. Their motives are benign or even humanist, and this is where I feel
this book starts to date itself, moreso than with any pop culture reference.
Ready Player One
was published in 2011, and its clear to me that Cline very much subscribes to
the view popular at the time that silicon valley companies like Google, Amazon,
and Apple were the shining beacon on the hill that would redeem humanity and
usher in a new era of enlightenment. Now we know that is not the case, and this
idea strikes me as quaint. Their corporate practices are just as shady as any
other, if not worse in some cases (especially when it comes to privacy), and
its debatable whether the effect they have on human psychology or society is
beneficial. In the context of the book, GSS isn’t just one of these companies.
Its all of them all rolled into one: Apple, Facebook, Valve, Amazon, Blizzard,
Netflix, Google, and then some. The idea that GSS created a virtual world that
is used by almost everyone, is practically free for the average user,
guarantees complete anonymity and privacy, and even provides a free education
for those who want it to boot just seems far too good to be true.
Still, GSS, in the form of Morrow, takes the side of Wade
and friends in the battle against IOI which seems to perfectly mirror the net
neutrality debate raging today wherein Comcast, TimeWarner, and friends are
pitted against the aforementioned tech giants and an army of internet users. In
this case, the position of the tech giants is in line with consumer interests,
but its foolish to believe they’re doing it because they care about us. For
both Comcast and Netflix it all comes down to money. Some tech companies might care about protecting users and their
privacy, but they seem to be the exception rather than the norm.
There is also a dark side to the anonymity many of these web
companies provide which has come to the fore in the wake of Trump’s election. It has become abundantly clear
that the Internet has many dark corners and the people who hide in them are
hardly harmless. If we’ve learned anything from Twitter, Reddit, and 4Chan in
the past couple years its that a lot of these people are geeks and gamers, the
very same people we’re supposed to take for heroes in Ready Play One. To be fair, Cline does introduce some trolls, but
they’re presented as mere greifers, a minor nuisance more than anything. If he
were to write this book today post-gamergate, I feel he’d have to address these
issues in a more substantial way. Questions like,” Where do the Nazis live in
the OASIS?” would need to be answered.
Cline’s naïve attitude about how beneficial the Internet is
to society can be seen most blatantly with the reveal that Aech is in fact a
black woman, and not a white man as Wade had thought. Aech gives a long speech
about what a boon the OASIS had been to people of color, allowing them more
opportunities thanks to the anonymity it provides. Its genuinely presented as a
solution to racism, but hopefully I don’t have to explain how it fundamentally
is not. At best it just puts a mask on the problem. Wouldn’t it be great if we
could all just be white dudes all the time? That would solve everything!
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of Cline’s ode to gamers
is Wade’s treatment of Art3mis. He develops a crush on her before they even
meet just by reading her blog. After they do finally meet (in the OASIS, not in
person), his fixation with her morphs into an obsession. He pursues her
relentlessly even after she severs all communication with him. Eventually, he
manages to learn where she lives and what she looks like in reality (though to
be fair, he does this mostly inadvertently) which is understandably quite upsetting
to her. Its all very disturbing to say the least, and you don’t need to read
the cover to know that a man wrote this book. It bears mentioning that Wade is
aware of how creepy his behaviour is to some degree, but in the end he’s
vindicated when she reciprocates his feelings. There appears to a shocking lack
of awareness of what its like to be a women in society, nevermind on the
Internet. There isn’t a doubt in my mind, that Art3mis contends with an
unending stream of dick pics, rape threats, sexist jokes, and online stalkers
on a daily basis. What makes Wade any different from the rest of them?
The world of Ready
Player One has a lot of potential and its not surprising that Cline is
working on a sequel (creatively titled Ready
Player Two). I have high hopes for this next novel and that Cline will take
the lessons of the past couple years to heart. The biggest obstacle he needs to
overcome is his greater interest in the world he’s created over the characters
and stories that inhabit it. I think a great start would be to make Art3mis the
central character in the sequel as she is the one most interested in saving the
world, and perhaps has a far greater understanding of the dangers of the OASIS
than Wade ever possibly could. There are some heady ideas at play in Ready Player One, and Cline has the
opportunity to address some of the biggest problems of our time in a fun and
interesting way if he’d only take the leap.