Ready Player One
Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American author Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopia in 2045, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a worldwide virtual reality game, the discovery of which would lead him to inherit the game creator's fortune. Cline sold the rights to publish the novel in June 2010, in a bidding war to the Crown Publishing Group (a division of Random House). The book was published on August 16, 2011. An audiobook was released the same day ; it was narrated by Wil Wheaton, who was mentioned briefly in one of the chapters. In 2012, the book received an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association division of the American Library Association and won the 2011 Prometheus Award. A film adaptation, screenwritten by Cline and Zak Penn and directed by Steven Spielberg, was released on March 29, 2018. A sequel novel, "Ready Player Two", was released on November 24, 2020, although to a less positive reception compared to its predecessor. Synopsis. Setting. In the 2040s, the world has been gripped by an energy crisis from the  depletion of fossil fuels and the consequences of pollution, global warming and overpopulation, causing widespread social problems, poverty, and economic stagnation. To escape the decline their world is facing, people turn to the OASIS, a virtual reality simulator accessible by players using visors and haptic technology such as gloves. It functions both as an MMORPG and as a virtual world, with its currency being the most stable in the real world. It was created by James Donovan Halliday, founder of Gregarious Simulation Systems (formerly Gregarious Games), who made a prerecorded video of his will stating to the public that, after  he died, 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, which is worth trillions. The story follows the adventures of Wade Watts, starting about five years after the announcement, when he discovers one of the three keys which unlock three successive gates leading to the treasure. Plot. Teenager Wade Watts lives with his aunt in Oklahoma City in the "stacks", a poverty-stricken district constructed of trailer homes piled on top of each other . He spends his spare time as a "gunter" ("egg hunter"), logging on to the OASIS as an avatar under the moniker Parzival, reading Halliday's journal "Anorak's Almanac", and researching details of the 1980s pop culture, mainly classic video games and movies, that Halliday loved. One day, he realizes that the first key is located on Ludus, the same virtual world as his own online high school, in a re-creation of the "Dungeons & Dragons" module "Tomb of Horrors". He meets Art3mis, a famous female gunter and blogger who has been exploring the place, and advances further than she  does when he defeats the AI Acererak at the video game "Joust". He is awarded the Copper Key, and Parzival appears on the "Scoreboard", attracting the world's attention. Parzival completes the Copper Gate's puzzles by teleporting to planet Middletown, which was modeled after the real life town where Halliday grew up, playing through the "Dungeons of Daggorath" video game in a recreation of Halliday's parents' house and then role-playing Matthew Broderick's character in the film "WarGames". Art3mis clears the gate shortly afterwards, as does Wade's best friend Aech. Wade’s fame enables him to  make a living by endorsing virtual products. It also brings him to the attention of Nolan Sorrento, head of operations at Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a multinational corporation bent on a well-funded effort to find the Easter egg in order to take control of the OASIS and monetize it. When Wade refuses to join IOI, Sorrento attempts to kill him by blowing up the stacks where Wade lives, killing his aunt and disguising the explosion as a meth lab accident. Wade escapes and moves to Columbus, Ohio (hometown of both GSS and IOI), where he lies low, assuming the  pseudonym Bryce Lynch and living in an anonymous apartment designed for hardcore OASIS users. He considers an alliance with Aech, Art3mis, as well as Daito and Shoto, a duo of Japanese gunters who have also obtained the Copper Key, but Daito coldly refuses out of stubbornness and paranoia and Shoto follows his "brother's" lead. Instead, he and Art3mis begin a wary friendship, but when he asks her out, Art3mis declines. IOI operatives, called Sixers because of their six-digit avatar name and the names always beginning with the number "6", attempt to assassinate Wade and Art3mis's avatars at  the birthday party of OASIS co-founder Ogden Morrow. They are stopped by Morrow, who has special privileges and powers within the OASIS. Art3mis abandons Wade due to the competition being more personal for her. Five months pass. Neither Wade nor anyone else has found the next token, the Jade Key. When Art3mis finally finds the Jade Key, Parzival scrambles to planet Archaide, a planet containing a copy of every video game ever made, where he plays a perfect game of "Pac-Man", receiving only a quarter as a prize. Aech, who was the second player to find the Jade  Key, provides a hint leading him to the planet Frobozz where he solves a recreation of the text adventure game "Zork" and whistles a 2600-hertz-sound through a Cap'n Crunch Bo'Sun Whistle. Sorrento, who had tracked Art3mis and Aech using a premium locator artifact, establishes a base there to farm Jade Keys for their company's avatars, unlocks the second Gate, and rapidly acquires the Crystal Key as well through trial and error. Shoto tells Parzival that after he had gotten the Jade Key, the Sixers infiltrated Daito's real-life apartment and threw him out off his balcony , killing him and passing it off as a Japanese suicide. Parzival unlocks the Jade Gate, a Voight-Kampff machine, by entering a privately-owned "Blade Runner"-themed building, and completes the arcade game "Black Tiger" as a character from the first-person shooter perspective, being given a virtual mecha as the prize and another clue: a red star in a circle. Using his knowledge of Halliday's favorite band, Rush, he acquires the Crystal Key on planet Syrinx (the red star being the symbol of the Solar Federation in the song "2112"), and after playing "Discovery", the third movement of the  song, finds a clue regarding the conditions to unlock the final gate. As he messages Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto with instructions on how to get through the Jade Gate and obtain the Crystal Key, Sorrento ends their covert attempts to clear the third gate, which is located in the fortress of Halliday's avatar, Castle Anorak, on planet Chthonia (a planet based off of the world made for Halliday's original DnD game), and places an indestructible force field around it that can only be taken down from the inside. Wade manipulates his assumed identity in order to be arrested  and placed in indentured servitude in IOI's tech support department. While inside IOI, he uses black market passwords and security exploits to hack into IOI's intranet: he acquires a wealth of incriminating information, including footage of Daito's murder. The information also includes the attempt on his own life, as well as plans to abduct Shoto and Art3mis and force them to find the Easter egg for IOI in real life, then kill them afterwards (IOI doesn't know who Aech is due to him using a pseudonym and staying mobile). After escaping the corporation, he shares his  information with his friends and publicizes a gathering of avatars to storm the castle. They are interrupted by Ogden Morrow, who offers them a safe haven at his home in Oregon. Wade meets the real-life Aech and Ogden, but not Art3mis and Shoto, who are already hooked into Ogden's immersion pods. The day of the battle, Wade uses his planted hack to bring down the barricade, and a massive fight among avatars ensues. After Parzival uses the mecha Leopardon (accompanied by Art3mis's Minerva X, Aech's Gundam, and Shoto's Raideen) to fight against Sorrento's "Mechagodzilla  Kiryu, though Shoto's avatar is killed and Leopardon is destroyed during the fight. Parzival then uses an ace up his sleeve: a device that temporarily transforms him into Ultraman. With this power, he utterly destroys Sorrento's mech and kills his avatar. Parzival and his friends unlock the gate, at which point the Sixers use an artifact called the Cataclyst to destroy the castle and all avatars in the entire sector. Parzival survives because having the Pac-Man" quarter granted him an extra life. As he enters the Crystal Gate, he announces that if he wins he will share  his fortune with his three friends. With Sorrento and his Sixers on his heels, Parzival plays "Tempest," role-plays King Arthur and various other characters in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", and retrieves the Easter egg in "Adventure". His victory grants him control of the OASIS, including the ability to instantly "kill" his enemies' avatars, resurrect his friends, and a Big Red Button that can shut down the OASIS forever. Sorrento is arrested for the murder of Daito and for conspiring to kill Wade and the others. Back in Oregon, Wade and Art3mis, whose actual name is Samantha, meet  in person and rekindle their relationship with a kiss. Reception. "Ready Player One" was a "New York Times" bestseller. Among those praising the book were "Entertainment Weekly", "The Boston Globe", "The A.V. Club", CNN.com, io9, and "Boing Boing". "USA Today" wrote that the novel "undoubtedly qualifies Cline as the hottest geek on the planet right now." NPR said that the book was "ridiculously fun and large-hearted". Cline "takes a far-out premise and engages the reader instantly" with a "deeply felt narrative [that] makes it almost impossible to stop turning the pages." Janet Maslin of "The New York Times  wrote that The book gets off to a witty start" but noted that it lacks at least one dimension, stating that gaming had overwhelmed everything else about this book. Rebecca Serle of "HuffPost" described the book as "the grown-up's "Harry Potter"" and that it "has it all – nostalgia, trivia, adventure, romance, heart and, dare I say it, some very fascinating social commentary." The book has also polarized readers. Nick Shager, writing for "The Daily Beast", offered a scathing review that criticized the book's narrative style by stating "It’s... a terribly written piece of adolescent fantasy that , at heart, exemplifies everything wrong and repellent about modern nerd culture" and challenged its coming-of-age premise by calling it "a stunted-adolescent story". Regarding the abundance of pop culture references, Shager called the book "an unbearable celebration of nostalgic juvenilia". He summarized his argument against the book by stating "It’s a lionization of immature things (and immaturity) as an end to itself, rather than as the building blocks of more mature – and worthwhile – creations". Shager also lamented the book's "Peter Pan-ish infatuation with childishness, which comes coated in a stench of stale Doritos, Jolt Cola  and lowbrow smugness". Michael J. Nelson's and Conor Lastowka's podcast series "372 Pages We'll Never Get Back" dissected the book, criticizing it for defective worldbuilding, repetitive and excessive pop culture references in place of descriptive writing, and weak plot. The book has been translated into over 20 languages. In 2018, the book garnered negative reception from critics who believed it pandered too much on the male demographic, which other online publications later disputed. Writer Chris Isaac of "Tor" disagreed with the criticisms, stating "So, if you don’t like Ready Player One and have criticisms about it , that’s totally understandable" while adding "I’ll certainly point out the issues I have with his stories, but I’m not going to delight in mocking his work or hoping for his failure like many did with Meyer and "Twilight"." Constance Grady of "Vox" described in an article about how Gamergate have changed the perception of the book over time: "For readers in Cline’s target demographic in 2011, that message felt empowering. For readers who weren’t, it felt like a harmless piece of affirmation meant for someone else. Everyone deserves a silly escapist fantasy, right?" to "But  in this world [...] only things that affect straight white dudes really matter". Continuation. Short story. "Lacero", a fan-fiction short story by Andy Weir, was published online in 2014, and later included in the 2016 limited edition of "Ready Player One" published by Subterranean Press. It functions as a precursor to the main novel, and is considered canonical to the "Ready Player One" fictional universe. Sequel novel. As early as 2015, Cline had been reported to be working on a sequel to "Ready Player One" from screenwriter Zak Penn. Cline confirmed the sequel was in progress by December 2017, and  would have a different story-line involving all of the characters, while still exploring pop culture references like the first book. Penguin House released the sequel, "Ready Player Two" on November 24, 2020. The plot follows Wade as he embarks on a new quest after discovering a new technology developed by Halliday. For the second week of December 6 that year, it was number one on Amazon's fiction chart. In other media. Easter egg hunt promotion. Ten months after the first edition's release, Cline revealed on his blog that "Ready Player One" itself contained an elaborately hidden Easter  egg. This clue would form the first part of a series of staged video gaming tests, similar to the plot of the novel. Cline also revealed that the competition's grand prize would be a DeLorean. The Easter egg was a URL hidden in the book for anoraksalmanac.com. This was the first stage of the contest where the 2011 Atari 2600 game "The Stacks" by developers Mike Mika & Kevin Wilson was featured. The game "Ultimate Collector: Garage Sale" by Austin-based developer Portalarium was featured in the second stage of the contest. The final stage of the contest was announced  on August 1, 2012, and was to set a world record on one of several classic arcade or Atari 2600 games. This was completed on August 9, 2012 by Craig Queen, who set a new world record in "Joust". He was awarded the DeLorean on the TV series "X-Play". Film adaptation. The film rights were purchased by Warner Bros. on the same day Cline finalized his publishing deal with Random House, one year prior to the novel's publication. Dan Farah brought the project into the studio and produced it with Donald De Line. Cline adapted his novel into  a screenplay. Over the years, Eric Eason and Zak Penn assisted Cline with rewrites. Steven Spielberg signed on to direct in March 2015. Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger of Amblin Partners also joined Deline and Farah as producers. Warner Bros. initially announced a release date of December 15, 2017. On February 9, 2016, the release date was pushed back to March 30, 2018, to avoid competition with "". The movie began production in the spring of 2016 and was filmed in both the United States and the United Kingdom. On June 9, 2016, "Variety" stated that Spielberg's regular collaborator John  Williams was planning on composing the film's score. However, scheduling conflicts with another Spielberg film, "The Post", led to Spielberg signing Alan Silvestri for the score. The film stars Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, T. J. Miller, Simon Pegg, and Mark Rylance with Philip Zao, Win Morisaki, and Hannah John-Kamen in supporting roles. It premiered at South by Southwest on March 11, 2018, and was theatrically released by Warner Bros. in the United States on March 29, 2018. It received generally positive reviews from critics who praised its visuals and brisk pacing, the performances of  Sheridan and Rylance, and noted it as an improvement on the book. The film nonetheless received criticism for its lack of character development and its "achingly regressive" view of pop culture fans.