Ernest Cline. Ready Player One. New York: Crown, 2011. Print.

One of the latest cyberpunk novels, Ready Player One is fun for sci-fi fans, computer gamers, and others who enjoy creative writing. In its course, the story gives a shout out to William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow, and other writers associated with the genre. The novel largely takes place in a virtual world that is the A.D. 2045 iteration of the Internet and online role playing games (RPGs). Most of the characters are known by their screen names or avatars (not to be confused with the original Sanskrit meaning of the word). Most of the relationships and friendships in the story are virtual—in the computer virtual world, not in real life (IRL). It may remind the reader of the short-lived TV show VR-5.

The online world of the future is known as OASIS—like so many other computer acronyms, it does stand for something or other.¹ It is set up like a massive RPG with thousands of planets to visit and monetary credit to earn by taking classes, working, or winning video games or war simulations. OASIS is largely the brainchild of two men; one of them, James Halliday, has recently died without heirs. He has left his multibillion dollar fortune to the person who can solve his devilishly difficult puzzle which consists of solving riddles, winning video games, and reciting film dialogue. The games and films are all from the 1980s. The riddles usually allude to songs or other things from that decade. The puzzle is hidden like other computer “Easter eggs” in the OASIS code. People who devote their time to solving the puzzle are called gunters, short for “egg hunters.” The rivalry, desperation, and anarchy are not unlike some of the historical gold rushes North Americans have experienced.

People from all over the world have been trying to solve the puzzle for five years. Our narrator—screen name Parzifal, real name Wade—is a high school senior who is obsessed with eighties movies and early video games. Like most Americans in 2045, he attends a virtual school on the OASIS planet Ludus and spends most of the rest of his time in OASIS. He has never met his two best friends and knows them only by their virtual names: Aech and Art3mis. They hang out together online and become adept at trying to solve the puzzle. (This reviewer is happy to say that I figured out one of the clues on the first level. There were three levels each with multiple challenges.)

Like these three online buddies, many gunters work by themselves. Others form cooperative groups, or clans, to work together to find the Easter egg. And then there is IOI: the Evil Empire of this story. IOI—which also stands for something or other²—is a corporate conglomerate/crime syndicate that is trying to gain control of OASIS. Much of OASIS is free to anyone with an Internet connection, and IOI sees and opportunity to monetize this for millions. (People have asked me why English Plus posts so many grammar rules online. Wouldn’t we sell more software and apps if we made people buy them? Maybe we are more like the OASIS creators than IOI.)

The letters IOI also look like the universal logo for a power button on consumer electronics. They are certainly interested in power and, like devotees of the ancient idol Moloch, will do just about anything to get it. The letters also represent the elemental binary code of ones and zeroes at the root of all computer programming. The IOI screen names are all six digit numbers that begin with the number six, so they are known as sixers. (Antichrist anyone? See Revelation 13:11-18). They will stop at nothing to find the Easter egg first. When Parzifal is the first to make it to the first level, IOI offers him a large salary to join them. When he refuses, they blow up the trailer his family lives in. He is seldom at home anyhow, so he survives.

That is the conflict. Parzifal tells his story pretty effectively. The non-IOI gunters not only have to solve challenging puzzles, they have to escape or hide from the IOI hit men. The story works.

As the protagonist’s name suggests, Ready Player One does hearken back to stories of the Grail quest. Beginning in medias res, it takes on characteristics of traditional epics like Homer’s Odyssey. It has allusions to these stories, and also to stories that mock them like Monty Python’s version of the Grail quest and Kurt Vonnegut whose tales mocked just about everything.

As an English teacher, in the last twenty five years I have read more than my share of video game tales. Students from as early as fourth grade have produced many such stories for me. As a result, I have become somewhat jaded about these stories. But this is done well, and I suspect that video gamers will get a kick out of it. I thought it was actually more satisfying than, say, Stephenson’s Reamde, which starts off in a virtual world, but ends up as more of a run-of-the-mill cross-country chase. More of Ready Player One is set in OASIS than IRL, and it may give us an idea of the possibilities of online gaming and online education.

Ready Player One has a strikingly grim view of the North America of 2045. Like so many other current works, including a few reviewed on this site, the sociopolitical future is nothing to look forward to. Not only is there the thuggish IOI, but cities are unsafe centers of crime and poverty, unless you can afford a fortress-like secure apartment. The rural areas are even worse—think The Road—with their predatory anarchy. Until the sixers destroy it, Parzifal’s home is a trailer stacked on other trailers, but few of the neighbors know one another.

At the beginning of the story, Parzifal briefly explains the prevailing philosophy, which he claims to embrace: survival of the fittest. There is no God. There are no moral absolutes. Anyone who does not believe in evolution is an idiot. “The whole God thing is an ancient fairy tale.” (17) What happens when we die? Nothing (his italics).

Yet the whole story delightfully disproves this pseudo-intellectual existential worldview. First of all, there is the whole existence of OASIS with its thousands of planets and mysterious Easter eggs. This did not appear out of a random “big bang.” Clever, intelligent beings assembled it and keep it going, even in spite of evil things going on.

Although Parzifal expresses a nihilistic view of things, he has a strong sense of right and wrong. Orphaned and raised by an aunt who is a drug-addicted prostitute and who spends his government-issued food credits on who-knows-what, he knows life has dealt him a raw deal. But he understands that that does not give him or anyone else the right to steal, kill, or destroy.

This illustrates the universal truth acknowledged in the American Declaration of Independence—it is “self-evident” that people understand right from wrong. People everywhere, regardless of their religion or philosophy, recognize that murder, assault, and theft are wrong. This universal understanding points to a moral Creator. Jefferson’s argument actually used inductive reasoning, a.k.a. the scientific method, even though nowadays it is now popular to say belief in a creator God is “unscientific.”

Without giving away too much of the plot, Parzifal and his buddies are rescued by a deus ex machina. In this case the “god” literally does come from the machine, i.e., the computerized world of OASIS. The avatars of one of Halliday’s partners with unlimited powers in the OASIS RPG appears in order to advise them.³ Our protagonists still have to act on their own, but now they have direction. They also know that someone overseeing their virtual world has a sense of justice similar to theirs. Yes, IOI still has a chance to win, but they know now that not everything is stacked against them.

And though at the beginning of the novel Parzifal contends that “heaven” (his quotation marks) does not exist, the story ends with Parzifal and his friends victorious,⁴ no longer fighting but in peaceful surroundings IRL not unlike a little paradise.

Even though the character denies creation, morality, redemption, God, and the afterlife, his own actions and his own experience falsify his own beliefs! As the Hebrew Scriptures say:

Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart…(Ecclesiastes 3:11)

Or in the New Testament:

For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. (Romans 1:19,20)

And to those student and former student writers who are inspired by video games, I say take a look at works like this or Snow Crash and use your imagination. Avoid the cartoon plot and think about what the future might be like. Incorporate science fiction and other story telling techniques like those analyzed by Joseph Campbell. Then you’ll have a tale worth telling, a tale like Ready Player One.

Notes
¹Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation
²Innovative Online Industries. Actually, they are more about copying and stealing than innovating.
³Both of the names of the OASIS founders, Halliday and Morrow, suggest a religious belief—holidays (“holy days”) and a future life (“to-morrow”).
⁴This is not a spoiler. By page nine Parzifal admits that this is a story of how he won, or at least was a top finisher.