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Why So Much Backlash? Ready Player One is Basically Twilight for Nerds

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Why So Much Backlash? Ready Player One is Basically Twilight for Nerds

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Why So Much Backlash? Ready Player One is Basically Twilight for Nerds

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Published on March 12, 2018

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Chun Li and Tracer Ready Player One

In 2005, as many of you will recall, one writer’s wildly popular story created a gigantic cultural rift, even while many readers strongly identified with its teenaged protagonist. Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight had appeared on bookshelves everywhere and quickly gained mainstream attention for its depictions of fraught romantic relationships, and especially for turning horror icons like vampires and werewolves into romantic objects. The story strongly resonated with its target female demographic, and three sequels and a series of film adaptations followed, but this success nagged at people who took umbrage at the allegedly mediocre writing, overwrought love story, and sparkly monsters. Even while people endlessly mocked the divide between fans of Team Jacob and Team Edward, the true battleground was located between people who loved Twilight and those who had contempt for what many perceived as blatant indulgence in a cocktail of melodramatic romantic clichés.

Which brings us to 2011, where two more stories that struck an intense chord with readers’ fantasies—allowing many to picture themselves in the lead roles—hit our collective radar: E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey, and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. The former has been lambasted as literal pornography, while the latter is frequently labeled “nostalgia porn.” And yet they are also two of the most popular and widely-known books to come out in recent years, and both have strong fan bases despite all the criticism. That’s not so surprising when it comes to Fifty Shades, since the story started out as fan fiction based on Twilight—some cross-over between the fans and critics of Meyer’s books and those following James’ work is to be expected. But why Ready Player One? What did Cline do to get caught up in this very familiar looking crossfire between haters and rabid fans?

 

“It doesn’t have to be a literary masterpiece”

As you all probably know, Ready Player One is getting a theatrical release later this month, directed by Steven Spielberg, so attention on the story has inevitably intensified. The first trailer for the movie did little to actually explain the plot. Viewers were simply bombarded with cameos of King Kong, Harley Quinn, Lara Croft, Akira’s motorcycle, Gandalf, Overwatch’s Tracer, Back to the Future’s DeLorean, and an expectation people would love it. To be fair, though, that’s a pretty similar experience to reading the book.

When I first read the novel some years ago, I found it endearing, initially. Reading about a lower income guy having fun playing classic games like Golden Axe with his friends was relatable to me. The silly debates about superheroes and movies immediately provided some solid characterization and gave me a sense of who Wade Watts was, and I was ready to enjoy learning more about him. The problem is, I never really did.

The relentless references soon started wearing thin, and Wade’s ability to effortlessly conquer his challenges—like playing a perfect game of Pac-Man—started feeling empty and undeserved. By the time one of Wade’s obstacles for saving the world entails him and his friends reciting dialogue from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (a feat they accomplish with glee), I felt like a kid who thinks eating an entire cake by himself sounded fun—I was sick of it, and craving something of real substance. But the thing is, Cline really loves the ‘80s and expects the reader to feel the same. If he’s right to think that this affection is enough to carry the reader along on its own, then his deluge of pop culture references makes sense. If he’s wrong, the reader is left with references they either don’t know or don’t care about, an onslaught of nerdy nostalgia that often doesn’t advance the plot, and very simplistic writing. As in, even more basic than Twilight’s writing. In fact, film analyst Lindsay Ellis recently released a video apologizing to Meyer for getting caught up in the frenzy of bashing Twilight years ago, and acknowledging now that Meyer’s writing is really not as atrocious as everyone makes it out to be. A book Ellis mentions as having legitimately terrible writing, on the other hand? Ready Player One.

The most common defense I’ve seen of Ready Player One’s writing (and basically any popular book being critiqued for its writing quality) is that not everything has to be a “literary masterpiece.” Which is true enough. However, one of the problems that repeatedly yanked me out of enjoying the book were the many sections that couldn’t even be called mediocre prose, but instead read like Wikipedia entries awkwardly mashed into fan fiction.

I made a big entrance when I arrived in my flying DeLorean, which I’d obtained by completing a Back to the Future quest on the planet Zemeckis. The DeLorean came outfitted with a (nonfunctioning) flux capacitor, but I’d made several additions to its equipment and appearance. First, I’d installed an artificially intelligent onboard computer named KITT (purchased in an online auction) into the dashboard, along with a match red Knight Rider scanner just above the DeLorean’s grill. Then I’d outfitted the car with an oscillation overthruster, a device that allowed it to travel through solid matter. Finally, to complete my ‘80s super-vehicle theme, I’d slapped a Ghostbusters logo on each of the DeLorean’s gullwing doors, then added personalized plates that read ECTO-88.

Ernest Cline DeLorean ECTO88-Austin

The story frequently pauses to rattle off references like this. Wade’s car isn’t even some major plot point in the story. It’s just supposed to sound cool. In fact, Cline thought it sounded so cool that he made that monstrosity in real life. Which brings us to our next point—Ready Player One is just a book about Ernest Cline’s personal fascination with the past.

 

Mary Sues

Subpar writing can be saved by an interesting idea, and obviously Cline’s novel provides that for many people. Ready Player One does have its intriguing moments, like reality becoming so impoverished and environmentally unstable that even things like the education system have switched over to the virtual world of the OASIS. But these details are fleeting glimpses of worldbuilding that Cline doesn’t want to dwell on. He’d rather dive into the worlds of fictional ’80s stories. Although it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense why his characters share the same interests…

Ready Player One takes place in 2044 and is about teenagers. Now, I was born in the ’90s and have barely any feelings of nostalgia for the ’80s. So…why do kids 60 years distant from the 1980s care at all about that particular decade? Sure, James Halliday (the creator of the OASIS) loved the ’80s and left a lucrative prize for people who share his fascination with the decade, but the OASIS has clearly evolved beyond simply being a game. Teachers, musicians, and some in other careers have transitioned over to working full-time in this virtual world. There are people in the OASIS who have no fascination with the ‘80s and don’t waste any time obsessing over Halliday’s Easter egg. So it’s pretty bizarre that Wade and his friends would fixate on one time period so completely (which is probably why the movie has updated the OASIS to include more modern references as well, including Overwatch and The Iron Giant).

Furthermore, it’s dull to watch characters succeed without actually being challenged, rewarded purely for being preoccupied with the right bits of pop culture. Wade is never forced to grow or even made to step out of his comfort zone by Halliday’s trials because he’s just doing the same nerdy things he already enjoys, like reciting all the lines to WarGames and playing old games. People have often called Bella Swan a Mary Sue, but she’s got nothing on Wade Watts, who conquers all of his “challenges” with delighted enthusiasm. And at least Stephenie Meyer has never given fans any reason to think that she’s obsessed with werewolves and vampires in real life. Cline is a man who not only owns a DeLorean, but even tried to persuade a cop to alter one of his speeding tickets to serve as “proof that I did 88 miles an hour in a DeLorean with a flux capacitor” just for the Back to the Future reference. If collecting pop culture memorabilia brings you joy, have at it, but instances like this over-the-top response to being stopped for something illegal and dangerous have likely added to the backlash against Cline. There’s also the fact that Meyer’s other work as an author, like her 2016 thriller The Chemist, show that she’s not too stuck in the world of Twilight to try other things. Cline, on the other hand? His follow-up novel doesn’t exactly tread new ground.

 

She looks awfully familiar…

Twilight Bella Swan Edward Cullen Ready Player One Wade Watts Art3mis

Another point that’s frequently brought up in discussions of Ready Player One is the book’s treatment of and attitudes toward women. There are only two major female characters in the story, one of whom is digitally disguised as a guy until almost the end of the book; the other is a love interest who Wade winds up stalking before she ultimately falls for him. Those elements taken on their own could potentially be overlooked, but once I’d read Cline’s follow-up novel, Armada, his approach to writing women definitely gave me pause. Armada’s protagonist, Zack Lightman, first introduces us to his mom by thinking to himself how she’s always reminded him of Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley due to her protective personality. Fair enough. But then Zack mentally describes his mother’s appearance in the following terms:

My mother was also ridiculously beautiful. I know people are supposed to say things like that about their mothers, but in my case it happened to be a fact. Few young men know the Oedipal torment of growing up with an insanely hot, perpetually single mom.

It’s not often that I read a line so terrible that it makes me want to stop reading a book immediately, but that one brought me awfully close. And Cline clearly writes protagonists in a way that he thinks is relatable to his fellow pop culture-obsessed nerds, geeks, and gamers. So…does he somehow believe that guys who play video games and read comics normally think about having sex with their moms? If his poem “Nerd Porn Auteur” expresses how he really feels, then maybe he does:

I shall be the quintessential Nerd porn Auteur.

And the women in my porno movies will be the kind

that drive nerds like me mad with desire.

He’s definitely got the nerd porn part down, but his writing of women has missed the mark for many people. Even the love interest in Armada feels like a clone of Ready Player One’s Art3mis. Twilight has received a lot of criticism over how Bella holds up as a female role model and whether her relationships romanticize unhealthy or toxic patterns that young women and girls might be drawn to emulate. But, at the very least, Meyer’s women feel distinct in their roles and personalities. I’m hoping Cline’s next book has a female protagonist, because I’d be very curious to see how he’d handle a story from a woman’s perspective.

 

Mixed Messages

Ready Player One Wade Watts

Armada, while successful, was also far less well-received than Cline’s debut novel, with reviewers pointing out that it seemed derivative of stories like Ender’s Game and The Last Starfighter, so perhaps the author is not as adept at speaking for fandoms as he believes. Personally, I did manage to finish it, but sci-fi isn’t my genre, so now I understood more acutely what many of the people who disliked Ready Player One had felt: there’s little joy to be had if you don’t instantly recognize the pop culture references.

Rather than describe what spaceships or weapons look like, we are told instead that they look like props from Iron Eagle or Star Trek. You haven’t watched those? Too bad, that’s all the detail you’re getting while trying to visualize the story. Cline often simply name-drops his references into the text, as if readers might experience a thrill just by seeing things they might enjoy randomly acknowledged in passing. If the names being dropped aren’t familiar, however, the text is basically meaningless. Worse yet, the explanations he does provide can over-describe basic information, like the account of what a Rubik’s Cube is in Ready Player One. This reliance on these references makes even less sense in Armada than in Ready Player One because now there’s no plot device like the OASIS tying the world to the ’80s. So why are teenagers still referencing Space Invaders and Galaga instead of Borderlands and Mass Effect? Because the former are what Cline grew up with, so he expects the reader to love them, too.

Except this time, they didn’t. In the wake of Armada, critics began suggesting that Cline’s nostalgia-fueled fiction was a one-trick pony. And it doesn’t seem like his third novel will be doing much to dissuade detractors from that view, seeing as how he’s already announced it will be Ready Player Two. I should note that, despite everything I’ve said, I actually am looking forward to this sequel—I can acknowledge all of Ready Player One’s problems, but it’s an easy enough read that I can’t help being curious to see where the story goes next. That’s because there actually are brief flashes in Cline’s work that suggest he’s self-aware enough to realize that his pop culture-crazed characters aren’t living such great lives, which potentially leaves room for growth and exploration if that’s what Cline is intending.

Ready Player One’s snippets of social commentary include moments like Wade’s internet addiction leading to him becoming morbidly obese and viewing himself as pathetic once he starts masturbating with a sex doll. At the novel’s end, it’s suggested he might shut down the OASIS to find happiness in reality instead. I was relieved when I first read this ending because I thought it implied a sense of self-awareness and much-needed introspection on the author’s part. But then Cline wrote the same book in Armada. Not only that, but both his novels featured Easter egg hunts hidden in the text so the reader could live out an adventure like Wade and potentially be rewarded with a prize for solving the challenges revealed in the books. That seems to contradict, at least somewhat, the sense that there should be more to life than obsessive fandom and nostalgia porn—at best, Cline seems to be sending mixed messages when it comes to his characters’ capacity for self-awareness and growth, and perhaps his own.

Meanwhile the issues with Twilight’s themes and overall message have been well-documented. The enormous age difference between Edward and Bella, the perceived anti-feminism of the characterizations, the romanticized portrayal of obsession and reinforcement of regressive gender roles, and dubious moments like Jacob imprinting on Bella’s infant daughter are all commonly cited points of contention. But many people dislike or dismiss Twilight even before knowing about those details, so what is it about the story as a whole that gets people so worked up?

 

What it says about us

In Ellis’ analysis of Twilight, she attributes a significant amount of the scorn leveled at Meyer’s work to misogyny aimed at things teenage girls enjoy. She points out that terrible movies geared towards teenage boys, such as The Fast and The Furious franchise or the Transformers movies, don’t receive near as much impassioned vitriol, by comparison. People acknowledge that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen sucked, maybe make fun of it a bit and scratch their heads over why Michael Bay is still getting directing opportunities, then move on—it just doesn’t stir up the same levels of hatred and animosity. So maybe it really is as simple as that: “girly” things are viewed as stupid and mercilessly mocked, while stuff targeted to guys gets protected behind the label of “nerd culture.” But as the title of this article implies, I think Ready Player One will finally break down that barrier, for better or worse. I expect the Ready Player One movie to be profitable, very popular among its target audience…and also get eviscerated in reviews. Exactly like what happened with Twilight.

Honestly, I don’t think either story is deserving of scorn. The books aren’t great literature, but they’ve clearly brought a large number of people some joy. The Da Vinci Code arguably had the same effect back when it was first released in 2003. So when I compare Ready Player One to Twilight, I don’t mean to imply that either story deserves to be torn apart for fun. It’s simply to point out that we have seen this backlash before, and these fantasies haven’t harmed anyone (Fifty Shades of Grey probably shouldn’t get that same pass, though…but that’s a different conversation). If people want to indulge in reading about a story you think is stupid, why get worked up about it?

I’m a big fan of pro wrestling, so I know what it’s like to enjoy something a lot of people think of as the dregs of entertainment. I don’t blame people who say it’s not for them, but I always roll my eyes at the person whose only contribution to a conversation about wrestling is to say, “You know it’s fake, right?” That’s not a revelation to anyone, and I expect it’s no revelation to fans of Meyer or Cline to hear that these books will never win the Pulitzer. Sometimes something is just fun, and that’s all you’re looking for. That’s all Cline seems to need, as a writer, and that’s all many of his readers want from his stories. I don’t think the lesson from Twilight should be that Ready Player One needs to be blasted in the same fashion, but rather that you can acknowledge the flaws of something without joining a hate mob or attacking anyone else for enjoying it. By the end of Twilight’s shelf life, people talking about how much they disliked the series had become far more tiresome than those who enjoyed it.

So, if you don’t like Ready Player One and have criticisms about it, that’s totally understandable. If you feel that there were more deserving scripts for Steven Spielberg to work on, or authors more deserving of publication than Cline, that’s also fair. 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.

 

I do hope that Cline, as a writer, follows the moral of his own novel and moves on from an arrested development stuck in the 1980s, but I don’t begrudge the guy any of his success. He’s having fun playing with his favorite toys and he’s inviting other people to play along. If it satisfies you to have an author buddy with whom you can connect and celebrate the beloved touchstones of your childhood, I respect that. But I also feel the same as many others who just don’t find the joys of yesterday to be all that fascinating. Much like Wade, Cline is the equivalent of the kind of friend who’s always up for playing an old video game, and once in a blue moon I might take him up on the offer. But after hearing “How about one more game?” for the twentieth time in one night, I’m content to step away for a good long while, and let the screen fade to Game Over.

Chris Isaac writes for Screen Rant. His work also includes essays for USA TODAY, talking feminism in games for The Mary Sue, and examining mental illness depictions in the media for Arcadia University’s Compass. If these things interest you, you can follow him on Twitter.

About the Author

Chris Isaac

Author

Chris Isaac writes for Screen Rant. His work also includes essays for USA TODAY, talking feminism in games for The Mary Sue, and examining mental illness depictions in the media for Arcadia University’s Compass. If these things interest you, you can follow him on Twitter.
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7 years ago

In my opinion you left the most pivotal sequence in the book out from any of your reviews. When WW infiltrates the evil corporation as an imprisoned debtor. It’s where he gets the information to unite all the contenders. It’s the one place where he shows more initiative and creative thinking than the other contenders. It also gives him a nice healthy dose of misery, (that he intentionally dives into to achieve his goals and protect his friends) before he can triumph.

And no 80s references to be found. Yes, if you leave out this key sequence, it’s not much more than a nostalgia romp. But I don’t think that’s fair to do.

P.S. Iron Giant was on the list of available mechs, though no one picked it, in the original book. Not a movie add-on.

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Trevor
7 years ago

I can see why you didn’t like Ready Player One if you don’t like scifi and you were born in the 90s. I was born in 1973. My favorite movie as a child was WarGames. My favorite videogame was Pac-Man. I still collect anything that has the word Atari on it. And I love Ready Player One. I suppose I’m the target audience. I just hope they didn’t ruin the movie by trying to make it appeal to younger people.

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7 years ago

Interesting. I haven’t read RPO yet, though it is sitting on my desk just waiting for my current book to be finished. It sounds, however, like most of the issues with the book would not translate over into the film – especially given Spielberg’s skill.

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PresN
7 years ago

When Armada first came out, I commented somewhere that the big problem with RPO was that you never got the sense that the main character (or any of the characters) realized that, despite the big payoff they were chasing, they were wasting their entire lives memorizing the trivia that one dead man cared about from 60 years prior. It never had the moment of “if this doesn’t work out, what was the point of it all?” (The second biggest problem was the awful romance, especially at the end.)

I was really hoping that Armada would have fixed this- have the protagonist realize that the reason it all seems like The Last Starfighter is because it’s a setup meant to prey on his inability to pull himself out of fantasy life and see the world around him. He’s not clever for catching the sick references, bro- he’s just self-absorbed. But… it didn’t happen. Once again, the twist/bloom of self-awareness wasn’t there.

So… I mean, I’m not going to hate on them/RP2 online? But I’m not anticipating that Cline’s 3rd book is going to suddenly resolve or attempt to resolve his issues with female characters or un-critically self-examined characters. The author here makes a good argument that this is just who Cline is – he’s a guy who writes plots without a lot of depth or self-awareness that hang heavily on nostalgia for a specific decade, or rather for the specific things that Cline himself is nostalgic for. He’s successful enough that he faces no external pressure to change that, so… I guess that’s great for him? It does mean that I’m not going to bother picking up Ready Player 2.

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7 years ago

I agree with most of the review, and I am definitely a fan of the nerd culture and 80s reference (ie, I fit the target audience except for being female).

And yeah, the book is mediocre at best. I enjoyed reading it but it wasn’t great, for most of the reasons cited in the article. The prose was pretty bad, and I found WW to be a pretty uninteresting Marty Stu. And the love interest was clearly of the “male author who doesn’t have any clue how to write women” variety. (The “reveal” that she had port wine stains and thus thought herself HIDEOUS but otherwise didn’t change her avatar at all was kind of laughable…) Though, at least BFF girl using a male avatar the whole time made total sense, but it still could have been written better.

For me I don’t think it’s so much hate directed at the books themselves than it is at the fandoms. It’s why I disliked Harry Potter when it was being released. The fandoms’ ridiculous insistence that the book they love is actual good literature just makes me irate. Either it’s the only thing they’ve ever read and thus have no basis for comparison, or they need to take a lit class. But I guess in the end I try to at least appreciate the fact that it gets people reading, and maybe they will eventually progress beyond the bottom of the barrel offerings. Beyond that though, my feelings toward the books themselves are generally neutral or the “I wish you didn’t exist but you do so whatever” variety.

Back to the topic though, I did like RPO enough, but I’m mixed about the movie. I really don’t know what to expect, other than it will probably be awful. It would be nice if the movie could clean up a lot of the author’s mistakes: make the main character more interesting, less of a Marty Stu, etc, but I’m not really getting any of that from the trailers. I feel like they just doubled down on the easter egg references and expect that to carry the whole thing. 

 

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Caldera
7 years ago

I think it’s a matter of timing. A movie like this ten or twenty years ago would’ve been far more palatable. But we’re up to our necks in nostalgia these days. I mean, they’re bringing back Roseanne and Murphy Brown for crying out loud. So, Ready Player One: The Motion Picture feels like it’s being released closer to the end of a trend than the beginning.

Well, I certainly hope it’s nearing its end!

Jacob Silvia
7 years ago

Michael J. Nelson (MST3k/RiffTrax) and Conor Lastowka (also RiffTrax) do a podcast where they discuss Cline’s works, called 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back. It’s definitely worth listening to if you were lured by the siren call of nerd culture.

While I still enjoy the book (though I haven’t re-read it), I realize it’s more guilty pleasure than critical masterpiece.

michael_hicks
7 years ago

I agree with #1 that the belly of the beast sequence gave the book some much needed depth. But I also agree with #4 that some thematic self-awareness of the ridiculousness of the premise of the contest would be a welcome addition to the film. 

I just hope it doesn’t go fully go the opposite direction and do the same thing most movies/shows about nerds do: end with the main character deciding his love of nerddom is completely pointless and that he needs to grow up/ love is all he needs/ etc. 

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Andy
7 years ago

I think the difference in vitriol directed at Twilight versus The Fast and the Furious (to use your example), is that the former became a cultural phenomenon.  Especially when it comes to popular opinion and the internet, the intensity of reaction tends to correlate to the perceived popularity of what is being criticized. For all that no one is excoriating The Fast and the Furious, those movies didn’t have a hold on our collective cultural attention span the way Twilight did.  To merely excuse it as a gendered issue is irresponsible – just because one is directed at girls and the other at boys doesn’t mean that is the only possible reason for the difference in reaction.  

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kattw
7 years ago

Hmmm.  I agree with most of the conclusions, even while finding almost all the specific data points flawed.  To complain that we never see Wade struggle to complete his tasks is like complaining that Gary Kasparov doesn’t have to try very hard to win a chess match, or an olypmic athlete try very hard to win a medal, or perhaps most appropriately a mathematician try very hard to solve a logic problem.  This is what WW does: he studies the 80’s, like an academic, and masters his craft like any other craftsman.  In that PacMan perfect play, we hear how long it took him to do it – it wasn’t his first try – and we’re also reminded that he’s already pretty good at the game.  Other times, entire chapters are devoted to how he’s trying to figure out this or that puzzle piece – and how he is sometimes beaten to it.  As for effortlessly reciting lines from movies, again: he’s literally studied these things with academic ferocity.  This is what he DOES.  People can already recite their favorite lines from their favorite movies – imagine if they were studying those movies to true purpose, rather than just for entertainment?  Said another way: was it so utterly bizarre when we saw Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas win one battle after the next?  They were expert warriors.  We understood this.  That’s who they were.  We didn’t need pages upon pages of training montages to accept that.  Wade Watts is an expert on the 80s.  If Legolas can shoot two orcs to death with one pull of his bow, it seems reasonable to expect Wade Watts to be able to win at a game of Joust, even against a tough AI.

As for motivation to be so obsessed with the 80’s?  It’s not like that doesn’t exist.  You have an apocalyptic world – energy has almost run out, poverty is widespread.  And there’s this contest available which, unlike a lottery, can be won with skill.  And if you develop that skill, you take possession of the most valuable thing on earth – the Oasis.  Sure, plenty of people won’t care.  But it’s hardly surprising that plenty of people DO care – the Gunter clans are little different than MMO guilds, and those form around just winning things with little to no real world value.

That being said?  It’s a thin plot.  It’s a fabrication to enable a loving review of the 80’s.  The book is a big in-joke.  If you’re in on the joke, you might just love it.  If you’re not in, it’s just words and other people laughing.  It’s comfort food – and it’s a fun read for those who ‘get’ it.  But I certainly don’t see an easy way to help it branch out for those who don’t – and I imagine the movie will be much the same way.

The real question, to me, is whether the author knew that’s what he was writing or, like Jim Theis, thought he was assembling a work of significant literary quality.

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Clinton King
7 years ago

Teenagers from 2044 obsessed with ’80’s pop culture? That’s just like all those ’80’s kids (I was born in 1979) who could re-enact Charlie Chaplin’s routines from memory, and who knew the plot details to every Three Stooges movie. Oh wait….

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7 years ago

Probably the most important line in this article is “Sometimes something is just fun, and that’s all you’re looking for.” This sums up RPO (and even Armada) for me perfectly. As a huge fan of authors like Tolkien and King, I know that Cline’s books are never going to win any literary prizes. But as a nerd who grew up in the 80s/90s and never really had much of a social life before college, this book is aimed right at me. I am really looking forward to see what Spielberg does with it (I am betting he can fix a lot of the issues people had with it).

And I really hope Cline learns how to write women before RP2 comes out. He should ask Andy Weir for advice.

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highschoollibrarian
7 years ago

It might not be Faulkner, but it circulates.  In other words, kids find something to relate to, even if it’s nostalgia for a time they never experienced.  This book – sans the threat of a badly-casted movie adaptation – has been a springboard in our library, in the same way Harry Potter and Twilight was.  I’d rather have a dozen RPO’s than an (even shallower) Hunger Games.  A sideline that a lot of you are missing is that this is a generation that wasn’t engaged by other SciFi.  Because of RPO, Cory Doctorow, Jay Lake, and other lesser-read books are getting into the hands of the kids.  It gives me hope that they won’t be stuck in the rut that gave rise to 50 Shades…

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PamK
7 years ago

In general I agree with Chris Isaacs’ take, but I feel compelled to point out: _Twilight_ is “Twilight for nerds.”

A younger and more female population of nerds than RP1’s target audience, granted, but no less nerdy for that.

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Zac Wood
7 years ago

No kidding, I once knew a Sailor who loved pro wrestling. He was scarily obsessive, but I certainly wasn’t going to knock whatever it was that made him happy, especially while we were deployed. I never mocked him, but he did feel defensive enough to point out that he knew the fight moves were all choreographed – for safety, of course.

The thing is, he got really wrapped up in the inter-personal drama and the back-stage screaming matches. This, he explained, was not scripted. This was true, raw (sorry), reality. Those guys really did hate each other. That really was a betrayal. And yes, that lady really was a sweet girl-next-door looking for love in a regular guy like him.

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oz
7 years ago

RPO wasn’t for nerds, it was for entertainment brand ambassadors, self-aware or otherwise.

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7 years ago

And for our next nonsensical assignment, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to compare and contrast the new Chevrolet Camaro with the new Harley Davidson Sportster. 

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Pedrooo
7 years ago

Just reiterating what @1 said, because I couldn’t put it better:

In my opinion you left the most pivotal sequence in the book out from any of your reviews. When WW infiltrates the evil corporation as an imprisoned debtor. It’s where he gets the information to unite all the contenders. It’s the one place where he shows more initiative and creative thinking than the other contenders. It also gives him a nice healthy dose of misery, (that he intentionally dives into to achieve his goals and protect his friends) before he can triumph.

This is a pretty glaring flaw on the author’s review.

There are people in the OASIS who have no fascination with the ‘80s and don’t waste any time obsessing over Halliday’s Easter egg. So it’s pretty bizarre that Wade and his friends would fixate on one time period so completely (which is probably why the movie has updated the OASIS to include more modern references as well, including Overwatch and The Iron Giant).

This is the second flaw. The protagonist hangs out with characters who are interested with The Egg. That’s why “everbody” is obsessed with the 80’s. From his best friend to a certain hateful poser, to eventually the female lead. Why? Because Halliday’s has an almost fascination with that period of time.

I don’t get how you don’t get this because you wrote it just a couple of lines before!

Sure, James Halliday (the creator of the OASIS) loved the ’80s and left a lucrative prize for people who share his fascination with the decade, but the OASIS has clearly evolved beyond simply being a game.

Also:

I expect the Ready Player One movie to be profitable, very popular among its target audience…and also get eviscerated in reviews. Exactly like what happened with Twilight.

Well, if you could lend me your crystal ball, please. You comparison with “Twilight” is a bit laughable, but this takes the cake. We’re talking about a reputable director, one of the best of all times. So writing that it will be a bland movie is a huge leap of reason. You simply have no idea it will happen. In fact, Spielberg’s track record with sci-fi movies is very positive (on the critic side, not commercial because that’s guaranteed, nowadays). If it is a disappointment, that will be a surprise (which is obviously not impossible). Not the other way around. Who directed “Twilight” again?

Lastly, the Transformers do get plenty of scorn. Apart from the first, they’ve been as shallow as they can get, with as many special-effects as it can show. That is not only terribly obvious from the critic reception, but people in general (check IMBD to confirm this fact).

You tried to make a comparison with “Twilight” (for whatever reason) but ultimately failed. Not only you don’t seem to grasp major key plot points about the book, but you also indulge on futurology messing with the wrong person (again, for whatever reason), Steven Spielberg, and in the process drawing inaccurate conclusions about movies like “Transformers” (collateral damage, I guess).

BMcGovern
Admin
7 years ago

Just a reminder to please keep the discussion civil and criticisms constructive in tone–you can read our community guidelines here.

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Kevin feeley
7 years ago

@@@@@#5

As someone with 2 literature degrees I would read Harry Potter over most “top of the barrel” books any day.

But here’s the thing, the barrels are our own, aren’t they? What’s bottom for you is top for me. In my mind there is nothing that is “actual good literature”. There is only the books you love, the books you like and the books you don’t like.

I don’t understand the inclination to invalidate other people’s experience and appreciation for a book based on how you (the Royal you) felt about it. 

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Trumpet_Lord
7 years ago

There’s an early review for the movie posted on TheVerge:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/12/17109960/ready-player-one-movie-review-steven-spielberg-ernest-cline-tye-sheridan-sxsw-2018

Which is both positive and negative.

Positive: Basically, it makes it sound like it’s a very pretty movie with great action scenes, and the constant references are still there but not as annoying or called out because they just exist as a quick visual “Ah, a reference!” that you might not even notice rather than having to be grocery-list-described like in the book.

Negative: The characters are still pretty mediocre, and the romance is still really crappy, wish-fullfillment-y and unrealistic.

Which is about what I expected, honestly. It’ll probably be an entertaining movie, and may be better than the book in many ways, especially for the people who bounced off of the constant descriptions and detailed references of the book. But it still has a lot of the book’s flaws as well.

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Mybrid
7 years ago

“It’s a fun romp.” That’s my expectation of sci-fi fantasy. Ready Player One was a fun romp. Especially, for me with the first key in the D&D dungeon. Nice. I ran that dungeon.

Unless I’m cracking open a Neal Stevenson book or some such author a fun romp is my expectation for sci-fi fantasy. Even with Dune and other ham-fisted sci-fi I always appreciate them for the romp. Even Verner Vinge books are fun, with lots of dry spells.  My favorite author who is long passed is Roger Zelazny. I love a book when you know the author is having fun. Zelazny enjoyed his characters, his writing and it dripped from every word. That is a fun romp.  The fact that Zelazny was an excellent wordsmith who read poetry every day, all the better. Ready Player One is not a book I will read again soon, if ever. But if I do, it will be for fun. My biggest issue with George R.R. Martin’s writing in the The Song of Fire and Ice series is there is great technical skill and very little fun. His daughter asked him to put in the dragons. Martin’s better effort, for me, is the The Wildcard Stories he edited. Story telling is the objective I think for my taste.

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BRNZ
7 years ago

Find a die hard sportsball fan and then sit there and listen to them spout off on all the successes and failures of their favourite sports team.  You will get statistics, numbers, losses, fails, gossip, stories and all the opinions you could shake a stick at  ….. be it hockey, rugby, cricket, soccer, polo or anything.

And it will go back decades….. much like the data that WW has absorbed in RPO – no one will ever agree to it, but sports fans are sports nerds, they obsessively imbibe data for intensely personal reasons, but mostly so they can “discuss”  (argue over several beers) it with other fans.

Yeah for those on the outside its equally boring and uninteresting too.

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7 years ago

As a geek born in the mid-70’s, it seemed like I should be the target audience for RPO. I won’t claim 100% on reference recognition, but I came pretty close. And yet, it just left me alternating between disappointment and anger. I think if I had read a paperback copy, I probably would have launched it across the room, and I rarely have a reaction that strong to a book.

I’m still trying to unpack why I reacted so negatively to it. Some of it certainly is that I have become far less tolerant of weak plotting and characterization than I once was (like, for instance, back at the tail end of the 80’s). Mostly, however, I think it was the way it traded on my nostalgia.

On the one hand it felt like something that a thirteen year old geek wish fulfillment. Suddenly it turns out that knowing Monty Python scripts by heart and having spent hours mastering Joust was the key to success! I acknowledge the point made above that our protagonist had to apply himself to the material in a way that we didn’t, but I think the book has to be read in the context of when it was written (it is certainly possible that the reaction to the book would be different if the central conceit was an obsession with the 1580’s). 

On the other hand, I felt like I was being pressured into liking the book. There is something about cultural references that people really respond to. I know I am a sucker for a good geeky reference. There is something to them that says “you and I belong to the same tribe”. Clearly I am not alone, because the the amount of cultural references and nostalgia has certainly been cranked up to 11 recently. In RPO, however, the references were so heavy handed that it felt like I was being bludgeoned over the head: “I can write any old dross in here because you will love me for also liking WarGames — look, a flux capacitor”. The whole thing just felt cheap and presumptuous (and also didn’t help that there wasn’t any real differentiation, and all 80s/geeky nostalgia was treated fairly equally).

When taken together it led to a very negative personal reaction. I may be in the same tribe, but this book made me feel bad about that. 

 

 

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7 years ago

@11

I’ve got a 17 year old son obsessed with the Three Stooges, he can rattle off plots and cuts of every episode, and discuss what’s going on with the actual actors during the filming.

JLaSala
7 years ago

What bothers me most about Ready Player One is it has a way of making one feel guilty and embarrassed for being a nerdy guy who also likes a lot of ’80s thing. I sure wish it kept its hands off Rush, Ladyhawke, Dungeons & Dragons, and—

Wait, Gandalf‘s somehow in the film? For real? 

 

 

Argh. Go invent your own decade and franchises and then drag them through the mud!

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Bronwyn
7 years ago

This is a very intriguing and thought-provoking piece. I was also born in the 90s but I was brought up on a healthy dose of 80s nostalgia thanks to my parents, so when it comes to the references and the culture it drew me in, but I can see what you mean by the fact that we can’t entirely understand it. On the other hand, no book has had me hooked so quickly and to such an intensity since I read the Harry Potter series. 

I’m planning on seeing the film and I’m interested and maybe a little optimistic about how they present the story. We shall see. 

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7 years ago

I first read the headline as Why So Much Backwash?

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Mix
7 years ago

I personally have equal amounts of vitriol for both the Transformers movies and Twilight… because both bastardize things I love. 

I  love the Transformers. I adored all of the Transformers characters and character design. How their form affected their function which affected their personality which affected their form. I loved that Bumblebee was only a Volkswagen Beetle and he couldn’t keep up. But he tried. I loved Starscream as a character always trying to usurp Megatron while still falling to his knees in acquiescence. I loved that Megatron only kept him around because he grovelled the best which totally suited his character because the only reason Megatron exists is to stroke his own ego.

I love vampires. I especially love Anne Rice vampires. I love that each of them represented an age, a perspective, which without their brand of immortality –would have disappeared from the Earth. The ones who survived don’t thrive but endure as examples of an extinct generation.  I loved the lore, I appreciated the rules. They don’t have children – they don’t have sex, they can’t procreate – all they can do is infect. It’s not exclusive to Anne Rice. Lestat, Armand,  and Dracula all suffer from their agelessness. There’s a morbidity to vampires. There are supposed to be morbid.  They’re freaking murderers! Mass murderers who body demands human sacrifices be made.  There are rules. They don’t Sparkle, they burn. They don’t start out stronger and then get weaker over time. They aren’t a magical race of fairies, they are Damned and infected by malevolence! Bumblebee is not a silent ninja, he is a Volkswagen Beetle!!

JLaSala
7 years ago

@25 and @30, you two nailed it, I think. 

I also dig the Ricean vampires and felt like that interest was disparaged when Twilight made vampires lame. I would not resent it if the sparkly folk and lupine folk in those books/movies were just something else, some new beastie that did what the author wanted them to. Without mucking around with much cooler extant folkloric monsters.

And good point about Bumblebee

 

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Jan Arrah
7 years ago

No Ready Player One is not a great book. It’s a teen book first of all. The vast majority are just meant to get and keep teenagers reading and aren’t award winning novels or great literature by any stretch of the imagination. Ready Player One does what it really sets out to do.. try to get the reluctant boy teen readers to read.. and it succeeded for a number of boys. That’s it’s ONLY purpose and goal. And while characterization is not the best (neither is the characterization or writing in say.. Harry Potter or the Hunger Games), it does what it sets out to do.

Also.. couple things.. I am a child of the 80s and I, and many others in my generation, are obsessed with shows from the 50’s and 60’s (as well as the 80s.. we 80’s kids have terrible nostalgia).. why? We grew up with Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite, right after Snick, we’d get Get Smart, Dick Van Dyke Show, Mr. Ed, Green Acres, and other old TV shows.. and we ate them up. So.. THAT’S why these kids are obsessed with the 80s.. they grew up with it being important and something they watched and loved.

And while Ready Player One does pull heavy on the 80s, it references a number of things.. including Supaidaman which was a 70’s era Tokusatsu (and sadly absent from the movie) and Iron Giant.

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Doogie
7 years ago

I have not read the book and may see the movie when the dvd is on the library shelves but anything that pays any kind of tribute to Buckaroo Banzai has got to get some kind of upvote from me.

Is John Bigbooty in the book?

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ajay
7 years ago

No Ready Player One is not a great book. It’s a teen book first of all.

See, I don’t think it is. It’s rooted in references to a decade that ended before today’s teenagers were born. It exists to reward its readership of Generation X types for their vague and superficial knowledge of 80s nerd trivia, and make us feel clever for spotting the answers before Wade does. Seriously, there’s nothing in there particularly obscure. Tomb of Horrors is not some recondite bit of D&D lore, it’s probably the most famous dungeon ever written. I’ve barely played D&D and I’ve heard of it.

Ready Player One does what it really sets out to do.. try to get the reluctant boy teen readers to read.. and it succeeded for a number of boys.

Look, the sort of teenage boy who is interested in 80s nerd trivia is not a reluctant reader. Trust me on this. I was one.

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7 years ago

I heard great things about the book from various sources when it came out.  So eventually I bought it and read it and while I enjoyed it upon first read…I also didn’t understand all the hype and why it had received all the love it had.  Never tempted to do a re-read and eventually donated it(I have too many books as it is!).  So I can understand some backlash…as whenever something is hyped up beyond measure and then fails to measure up(in the opinion of some) then annoyance, bitterness and contrariness will result.

Also not really into this “80s” nostalgia craze – guess I’m a little too young for it(born in ’87).  I’m enough of a nerd that I did enjoy a lot of the references(especially War Games!) but at the end of the day I realized what a lot of people have already mentioned.  The references were a shiny wrapping around an otherwise hollow shell.  There’s lots of books like that though, right??  And it was a fun read and so I’m not going to fault anyone for being excited for the movie!  (Will I see it?  Probably not)

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7 years ago

After sitting on this for a day, one more thought came to mind. WW isn’t a Mary Sue. Sure he’s great at 80s trivia and arcade games, but otherwise he does have flaws. He has no idea how to go about wooing a woman. He’s beaten to the solution to every single riddle. He only wins because he’s a natural at arcade games, Joust and PacMan specifically. He goes from overly skinny to obese.

Once again, it’s only when his attention leaves the oasis and most of the story is taking place in the real world that he improves himself.

jddennis
7 years ago

I’m currently listening to Ready Player One — mostly because the movie trailer interested me.

There are a few major issues that I have with the book. First, is the short-hand approach to describing things. I know it’s a nod to the referential nature of the story, but it strikes me as lazy writing. If I have to hear Wil Wheaton say “a perfect replica of…” one more time, there will be hell to pay.

Speaking of Wheaton, he’s name-dropped in the book. To have him narrate it is just plain weird.

Second, I hate how the book contradicts itself. For example, money. Even after Wade gets his apartment, he says his endorsement deals are barely enough for him to live off of. But then he’s able to afford a plate-titanium WarDoor. Later, he’s able to drop $11,000 for the best-of-the-best service in an OASIS cafe.

The biggest complaint I have is with the book is the gatekeeping. In order to be worthwhile, a character has to have the right look, the right trivia knowledge, the right language. The one who one-ups the most is the best.

As someone who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, but was deliberately excluded from pop culture, that’s really personal. I already feel like an outsider in a lot of nerd culture because I never had the exposure common to others of my generation. I would rather be included because people like me as a person, not because I like enough “cool” stuff.

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AlferdPacker
7 years ago

After sitting on this for a day, one more thought came to mind. WW isn’t a Mary Sue. Sure he’s great at 80s trivia and arcade games, but otherwise he does have flaws. He has no idea how to go about wooing a woman. He’s beaten to the solution to every single riddle. He only wins because he’s a natural at arcade games, Joust and PacMan specifically. He goes from overly skinny to obese.

But his flaws don’t prevent him from accomplishing any of his goals. His flaws are purely cosmetic and are told about rather than seen. He’s terrible at wooing women, but ends up with the girl anyway. He goes from skinny to obese and then loses weight due to spending chunks of money and his incredible willpower. 

He’s good at the only thing that matters in the book, and that skill compensates for any other lack in his life. Literally. His skill at 80s trivia gives him enough money to pay his way out of every problem he has. 

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Ducky
7 years ago

What ruffles my feathers is that while READY PLAYER ONE claims it’s about nerd culture, it’s very limited as to what nerd culture contains. I grew up in the 1980’s but doubt I’m going to find any of the cultural touchstones that I remember fondly: Muppet Babies, Captain Planet, My Little Ponies, Ghostwriter. Instead what gets written about and taken into account as being geeky are the sort of huge and monolithic properties that have already taken over of the cultural imagination. But as someone who considers herself a geek but not into Star Wars/MCU and was routinely mocked for not liking the right geeky tv shows or movie as a kid, this doesn’t work for me. Maybe it’s also because READY PLAYER ONE seems like such an Old Boys Club. As @25 DrBlack mentioned, “it felt like something that a thirteen year old geek wish fulfillment. Suddenly it turns out that knowing Monty Python scripts by heart and having spent hours mastering Joust was the key to success!” which is cool for him and the many people who loved READY PLAYER ONE, but that was never really my youth nor my fantasy.

 Also, the backlash against Twilight was driven 80% by sexism. Nothing seems to be more deserving of mockery and hatred than what teenage girls earnestly love be it a book series, a movie, or band or singer, especially when the target of the teen girl’s affection doesn’t align with the taste or interests of what men think girls should like. And especially if it happens to feature the kind of Tiger Beat cover boy that guys seem to find perplexing because it’s not the kind of guy they would like to be. But wait, lots of women made fun of Twilight too. And it’s has terrible gender politics. Bella is a passive heroine who needs to stop thinking her only worth is whether or not a guy likes her. Which are all valid except we wouldn’t be talking about this series if girls didn’t like it. Nor is it enough to say these books are terrible. The Gatekeepers have to then complain that they aren’t reading books about real vampires. They should be reading a book where the main character does something. Teenage girls should spend their time reading books the Gatekeepers think are worthy because teenage girls invariably like the wrong things.

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Nameless
7 years ago

I digested RPO as audibook. Great travel guide to the 80s geek culture. Half of the references I knew, and for many of the other the book saved me plenty of time reading the wikipedia entries. I love fact books which make an effort to embed all the info dumps in a convenient easy to read/listen to story, and the RPO does. When it comes to characterization, one aspect to consider is that most of the time the characters interact in a VR with an additional need for secrecy to avoid their identification. The literal devices to provide character background in this setting are very sparse and I kind of liked how the author used the love interest blog entries and later the chat logs to circumvent this. No it is not great literature, but it more entertaining than plain wikipedia.

Regarding the movie, I am looking forward to see how a highly professional team will retell the story of an author who is still learning the craft.

JLaSala
7 years ago

To be fair, while I’m not terribly interested in the movie, it’s bound to be better than the book. It’ll be what you see, and hear, and what the characters say. The moviegoer won’t need to endure narrative sentences like:

When I was in the zone on a high-speed classic like Defender, I felt like a hawk in flight, or the way I thought a shark must feel as it cruises the ocean floor. 

 

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7 years ago

@39 If the standard is faults that prevent a character from reaching their goals, then any happy ending features a Mary Sue. I disagree with that premise. If the standard is any fault that makes it harder for a character to reach their goals, then I think these faults apply. Another one that applies to all contenders is their determination to win the contest alone. This approach allows the corporation to get a significant lead on them.

Of course a top contender in a world-wide 80s trivia contest would be incredible at 80s trivia. So are all of the top independent contenders. I would also argue that his awkward way with women is most definitely seen and not just told about.

Many people like more conflicted characters, the anti-hero, ones that don’t always choose good (to put it simplistically). Personally I always preferred Superman to Batman. There are people out there who are doing their best to do the right thing consistently.

When I described the book to my Dad a few weeks ago, my exact words were, “If you want a story where the good guys are really good and the bad guys are really really bad, this fits.” I understand many view this kind of story as simplistic and not true to life. But sometimes there is a stark divide between the right and the wrong and I enjoy that kind of story.

 

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ajay
7 years ago

Nothing seems to be more deserving of mockery and hatred than what teenage girls earnestly love be it a book series, a movie, or band or singer

Yes, we all remember the mockery and hatred that were heaped on teen-girl favourite musicians like the Beatles and Elvis Presley. Meanwhile, teen-boy favourites like heavy metal and rap are universally welcomed and never condemned as being satanic or violent or destructive at all.

 

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ajay
7 years ago

But this is absolutely right:

What ruffles my feathers is that while READY PLAYER ONE claims it’s about nerd culture, it’s very limited as to what nerd culture contains.

Even 80s nerd culture was a lot broader than RPO portrays it.

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AlferdPacker
7 years ago

@43 It’s not that he succeeds despite his faults, that’s how narrative works. It’s that his faults do not impinge on his progress to success in any meaningful way. 

His weight gain is entirely irrelevant in a completely virtual world. His falling behind on the scoreboard is even more ridiculous, since the winner is first past the post, making relative score pointless. He doesn’t overcome being bad with women to earn her love, she changes her mind because of how awesome he is. 

What makes him a Marty Stu is that his skills match perfectly with the world in such a way that he can’t fail, and his faults matter not at all. 

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hulivar
7 years ago

Why even write this article then?  You don’t like sci-fi yet you are writing a review on a sci-fi book?  I dislike self help books so this would be like me reading self help books and then saying they suck…I don’t get it?

 

For me and I’m guessing lots of others, it’s not about the 80’s references…at all.  People that are into that no doubt loved it, but sci-fi fans in general didn’t really care that much…it wasn’t bad but it wasn’t something amazing (80’s references).

 

The reason many people love this book is the story itself.  This story could have been written without any of the 1980 pop culture stuff and it still would have got the same reception.

 

So when you for some reason assume most of the fans of this book are obsessed Atari fanboys you got it all wrong.  I think you should stay away from sci-fi reviews…ready player one is not twilight for sci-fi people lol…my god you are so far off.  Just because this novel got super popular doesn’t all the sudden make it the hunger games of sci-fi.

 

I swear, the most popular novel in any genre all the sudden becomes “the hunger games” or “the harry potter” or “the twilight”.  Drives me nuts.

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18342772
7 years ago

Just google “Ernst Cline poetry”. That’s the quality of ideas and prose we’re dealing with here–hence the backlash. (Yes, I’ve read it. Working at a bookstore, and being the “SF person”, I had no choice. Frankly, though, it’s as sci-fi as a Coca Cola or Chevy commercial, insofar as it doesn’t really challenge or suggest anything, beyond that you are what you consume, and if you consume the right things, you can matter. This is not to say SF can’t be fun, or flimsy, or pulpy. It can be those things, and often great books are. The thing is, “fun” doesn’t exempt a work from critique. Maybe you had fun with RPO; that’s as maybe. But saying you enjoyed it doesn’t mean the criticisms put forward here–and all over the internet, for a while now–are less valid. 

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7 years ago

The problem I have with RPO is that it pretty much is just one giant entitlement-fantasy for the gamergater/techbro boys. It is all about the chosen boy, everything services them. It encourages the male readers to think in those terms too. I don’t think we need anymore franchises moulded around that fantasy.

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7 years ago

It would have been pretty boring from the POV of one of the thousands who sold out to help the corporations win.

The entire homage to the 80s is from the perspective of a single person – the guy who invented the OASIS and designed the treasure hunt. So of course it’s not going to encompass every single aspect – just his favorites. And of course anyone who has a chance to change their life if they know enough 80s trivia is going to do their best to learn all the 80s trivia they can, and know it inside out. And the fact that he already knows it inside out can be chalked up to – again – the Oasis is based on that particular perspective, and the guy who designed it was a gazillionaire, so maybe there’s something to be learned from him.

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7 years ago

@46 That’s like saying any story about a gifted athlete in the Olympics features a Mary Sue. His skills match perfectly with the world he’s competing in. The key point that would make such a person not a Mary Sue is they’re competing with people just as gifted.

It’s a world-wide riddles, video game, and trivia contest with millions gunning for the prize. Of course the top contenders are brilliant uber-nerds with great video game skills. But WITHIN that select few, he’s not smarter than Artemis who solves all the riddles quicker than him. He’s not a better fighter than H, who is a world class PvP champion. And he’s basically on par with the Japanese brothers in terms of gaming skill who I believe also win at Joust on the first try. If the story was written where he didn’t have the exact skills he has, he wouldn’t even be in the running for this contest.

And he does change, gain depth, and grow as a person once the story shifts to more in the real world. I understand feeling the romance with Artemis was unearned. But as far as I’m concerned, at the end of the book he’s just gotten to the starting line in their relationship. There’s nowhere I can find that says she no longer holds any reservations. Besides, romantic relationships have started over much less in the real world than shared trials, shared interests, saving the other’s life, and one-way physical attraction.

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AlferdPacker
7 years ago

@51 But again, none of the things you’re listing actually matter. In fact, that they’re better than him just reinforces my point, because not only does he still beat them, but he becomes the leader of their ragtag band of heroes. Based on what, exactly?

None of his flaws actually matter to the story. It’s like giving him a peanut butter allergy and then claiming he’s flawed. 

 

To get a little meta about it, it’s even tougher to claim he’s not an an authorial fanboy, self-insertion character when you look at the fact that EC built and drives Wade’s dream car. 

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7 years ago

@52 He becomes the “leader” because of his infiltration of Evil Corp. The information he gains there allows him to develop a plan before the rest of the contenders really know what’s going on.

I feel like we’re arguing crosswise. To me a Mary Sue is an unrealistically perfect character that is the best at everything. To quote one definition, “You can spot a Mary Sue because all the other characters are immediately dazzled by them.” That is not WW. If you’re saying a Mary Sue is a character that has things break their way in order to triumph at the end in service of wish-fulfillment, I think that description is so broad and encompasses so many characters that it loses most of its meaning as a critique. That definition encompasses Harry Potter, Rand Al-Thor, Bilbo in the Hobbit, etc.

WW is not unrealistically perfect. He is extremely gifted. So are many others in the story. He ends up on top as a combination of his initiative and creativity to infiltrate Evil Corp., natural skill at arcade games, and pure dumb luck. By no means is a character study for the ages, but to expand the definition of a Mary Sue enough to include him you really have to water it down from its original meaning.

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18342772
7 years ago

@53 I think the thing you’re missing, that is being pointed out in @52 and the article itself, is that a Mary Sue is necessarily a self-insert. Or at least, it was originally, literally that, back when Mary Sue was a wish-fulfillment character made text in Star Trek fan fiction. Of course language evolves, and now people use the terms to knock any character who might be perceived as overpowered in any fashion. Still, I think it’s important to examine the root, and at least remember it.

The reason this comes up in this case is that no author discovers their world, or their characters, no matter how organic their process might be. They create both, and when you create a world which demands and ultimately exalts a character with your own traits and interests, that doesn’t really reflect on or challenge any of them… well, that’s pretty much a textbook vintage Mary Sue. 

Still, that doesn’t make the book bad. (I would contend that enough other factors do that.) Self-insert and/or wish-fulfillment characters are rampant, in fun books, good books, etc. But I do think this is a particularly blatant example.

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CyphorX
7 years ago

  The reason RPO is such a successful book is because he created a character that millions of “average nerdy guys” can identify with, he is smart, loyal and a pretty nice guy but born into a crappy life in a world with limited possibility of upward mobility. 

 The reason there is no character arc is because he is already the person he is going to be, in the book we don’t catch him at the beginning of his story but close to the end, he has already gained most of the knowledge he needs we already know the life he is coming from, we enter the story at a point where circumstances have aligned for his moment to shine.

Not all stories have to have “character growth”  sometimes the reader just wants to see a character he identifies with have his day in the sun. It’s basically a “wouldn’t it be cool if” daydream of someone who is much like you. basically the hero saves the day for the same reasons many get called losers or man children for in real life. the reader gets to see someone like him get the girl instead of the handsome rogue or roided up jock. who is also the girl who not only does not ridicule the things you like but is equally into them.  many say the art3mas is proof cline does not know how to write women.

well:

1. that presupposes that all women are the same and there are no real life equivalent art3mes’s out there.

2. she is the nerdboy fantasy girl and this book for many is an escape, many do not want to read about a complicated relationship as they get enough of that in real life.

 So you have an uncomplicated love story, a clear cut villain who represents most of what the target audience hates,  a push toward monetizing the things you love and taking away the things you enjoy. .

The story is about a journey the reader would like to take. and for 15 hours(the read time of the book) the reader gets to imagine he is the hero(don’t worry real life comes and finds them soon enough).

 

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Ian
7 years ago

A number of the more common criticisms—a self-insert protagonist, loads of teenage male wish-fulfillment, thin plotting & characterization, ham-handed attempts at social commentary—certainly have merit, but they may be somewhat overblown when you consider that all of them are also significant characteristics of the games, TV/movies, books, and subcultures upon which the whole story is built. Mind you, I’m not suggesting they aren’t narrative flaws, merely that they are less problematic in this context than they would be for most other novels. Sadly, the author missed an excellent opportunity to own this angle (presuming it was indeed intentional) by not properly lampshading these aspects.

What I found to be a more glaring problem was that essentially every SFF, tech, or pop-culture allusion was immediately explained via an aside, a parenthetical, or a multi-paragraph infodump. (Double facepalm when you consider that extracting such background info and cataloging it in a set of “historical document” appendices at the end of the book would have reinforced the SFF-nerd cred!) C’mon, Mr. Cline, embrace the central conceit of your story: stop interrupting the narrative flow and just make the references with full confidence that your audience will figure it out! That seems like a clear show-don’t-tell aspect that even a mediocre screen adaptation is almost sure to fix.

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chris
7 years ago

I haven’t read the book, but I did see a trailer for the movie before Black Panther.  It didn’t particularly make me want to see the movie, but then, I don’t watch that many movies in theaters lately.

I do admit to a bit of annoyance that this is what gets chosen to make a movie out of and not The Fifth Season or Ancillary Justice or His Majesty’s Dragon or Cold Magic or House of Shattered Wings or The Goblin Emperor or… I could go on.  But people who make movies for a living have a keenly honed sense of what’s going to sell a lot of tickets and it won’t often coincide with my personal tastes.

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7 years ago

I wasn’t going to post here, because it’s been long enough since this article went up that I doubt anyone will actually see my comment, but I can’t get this thought out of my mind. I find this article very interesting as a reader who enjoyed the heck out of RPO when it came out (and for the record, also read Twilight back in the day and thought it was a fun read if not really my style), but I’m rather confused by what’s being presented as an example of “bad writing” up there. RPO does not have bad grammar. It does not have multiple obnoxious typos. The author does not talk down to me. (And off the top of my head I can give you examples of widely acclaimed SFF books that do the latter two things; bad grammar fortunately I haven’t had an up close and in personal encounter with in a published book since I stopped reading stuff in the kid section all those years ago) Yes, bits of it read like an overly excited teenager is nerdsplaining stuff to me, but the book is in first person, people. An overly excited teenager is nerdsplaining stuff to me. I see this as a feature, not a bug. I have read Armada, and while it may be a true fact that Cline is an over the top nerd/one trick pony (we’ll see; two books published is a small sample size), in terms of just RPO the wiki-entry style monologuing is part of the protagonist’s character; to use it as an example of how “the writing is mediocre/bad” is missing the main point. Any book in first person should be examined through the lens of “what is this narrator telling me,” not “what is this author telling me.” This has been one of my peeves since high school when I could not get 90% of my classmates to figure out that a first person narrator describing a pair of kids at their father’s funeral as ugly and obnoxious meant the narrator was a jerk, not that the kids were terrible kids. I read the above excerpted passage and say to myself, “yup, this narrator has too much time on his hands in the virtual world and direly needs to get a life in the real one.” And guess what? That’s kind of the direction the story takes. If you’d like to criticize the writing based on the language chosen, sentence construction, and worldbuiling I’d be happy to read that analysis. But please actually take into account the lens through which the story has been told.

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Ian
7 years ago

@58/kedaly: Many of the complaints about the writing stem from the narrator’s penchant for telling rather than showing. Wade tells us that a particular game matches some situation, rather than describing the gameplay. He tells us that people are wearing ‘80s fashions, rather than describing people wearing skinny ties and parachute pants. Etc. It has nothing to do with POV, it’s more about what’s generally accepted as good style.

Interestingly, I found this aspect to be more apparent and objectionable than my wife, who is herself a writer and typically quite aware of such stylistic issues. Apparently there were a number of allusions that I got but she would have missed had they not been ‘told’ (although she concedes that Cline’s editor probably should have pushed him to work these more cleanly into the narrative flow). Perhaps this partially explains some of the rancor in discussions of the book: it was so dense with a wide range of references and allusions that it became impossible to strike a show-don’t-tell balance that wouldn’t seem impenetrable to some and condescending to others.

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7 years ago

@58

Yes, bits of it read like an overly excited teenager is nerdsplaining stuff to me, but the book is in first person, people

Another black mark against it.

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Bill S.
7 years ago

Ready Player One is less like Twilight and more like the literary version of those terrible “________ Movie” movies;  Disaster Movie, Epic Movie, etc.  It doesn’t make jokes or do anything clever, it just makes references to things.  “Hey, remember THIS?” it says, and hopes that it’s enough to amuse you.  I was born in 1980, I get all the references, and I got about 20 pages in, then started skimming, then threw the book in the trash.

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Jeremiah
7 years ago

@@@@@ 61

agreed 100%, this book was basically just an excuse to cram in every single pop culture reference the author thought was cool and be like “yeah, wasn’t that awesome?” The writing is basic and very limited, characterization was weak and the plot was paper thin – it’s all just a framework for “hey, remember this?” ad nauseum, like a novel-length version of the “Chris Farley Show”.

also like someone else mentioned above, there’s this really crass and calculated sort of manufactured appeal where the author’s basically just exploiting geek wish fulfillment in having all this relatively useless information be suddenly super useful and sought after as a source of wealth and status. It’s an extremely contrived scenario specifically designed to play on nerd fantasies rather than telling any kind of decent story.

I love sci-fi/fantasy books, but I found RPO to be a dumb, pandering and irritating piece of work and deleted it off my Kindle after about 50 pages. There’s so much smarter and better written SFF out there that deserves the attention and sales instead – try some Peter Higgins, Laird Barron, Joe Abercrombie, Mark Lawrence, Martha Wells, Paul Cornell, Edward Erdelac, Tom Sweterlisch, Paul Kearney, and on and on.

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Z
7 years ago

George R.R. Martin doesn’t have a daughter, but yes, Roger Zelazny was the tops.

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ralphthenader
7 years ago

The Delorean most certainly was a major plot point in the film. It represents going back in time, doing things in reverse. It’s foreshadowed in the archives when Z is looking at Halliday talking about going back, in reverse, real fast. It’s also tied into the reference of The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai (the suit that Z wears to his date with Art3mis) in which there was a car that was used to cross through dimensions and goes through walls — just like the Delorean does in this race. Z is effectively in “noclip” (gamer reference) while he goes through the race — and you can see King Kong getting upset about it too from above, which is awesome. 

The vehicle is perfectly tied into the solving of the copper key and is a major plot vehicle, literally.