Ready Player One

Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel by American author Ernest Cline. The narrative chronicles the life of 18 year old Wade Watts as he searches a virtual reality universe in an attempt to win the game creator’s fortune. The novel is set in 2045 in a dystopian future where the economic and societal complications from a global energy crisis have caused most of society to escape to a virtual world called the OASIS. The OASIS was created by the late James Halliday, a tech businessman and 1980s pop culture fanatic. Halliday has willed his half-trillion-dollar fortune and ownership of the OASIS to whoever can first find an Easter Egg he hid in his virtual world before passing.

The protagonist, Wade Watts, was inspired by a combination of Cline himself and several of his friends. The character James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS, was based on Willy Wonka in combination with the personalities of Howard Hughes and Richard Garriott. On March 29, 2018, a film adaptation of the novel was released in theaters. It was directed by Steven Spielberg, and screenwritten by Cline and Zak Penn. On November 24, 2020, Cline released a sequel to the novel, Ready Player Two. However, the sequel received a far more negative reception.

P3: Themes, Ethics

Plot

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