God and Pac-Man in ‘Ready Player One’

For several years, Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One has been a novel that I’ve loved and recommended. But after recently rereading the book, in preparation for reviewing the movie, I realized I had missed the point. Judging by the newly released film version, Steven Spielberg—one of our most hopeful artists—didn’t get it either.

The story itself is straightforward enough. Both the book and film are about the Hunt, a global quest carried out within a virtual reality game called the OASIS, with the winner inheriting both the game creator’s fortune and even the game itself. To win, contestants living in the year 2044 must become experts on 1980s pop culture. On almost every page there’s a reference—Duran Duran, an Atari 2600 game, a John Hughes movie—that will appeal to those who love the 1980s.

Perhaps I was initially too distracted by the novel’s cheery name-check nostalgia to notice the darkness underneath. I originally thought what made it a dystopian story was the setting: “The ongoing energy crisis. Catastrophic climate change. Widespread famine, poverty, and disease. Half a dozen wars.” It wasn’t until a second reading that I recognized the dystopian was embedded in the nihilistic nothing-matters theme.

(continue reading HERE)