Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)

by Ernest Cline

Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Neal Stephenson. Richard K. Morgan. Stephen King. Orson Scott Card. Terry Pratchett. Terry Brooks. Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Sterling, Moorcock, Scalzi, Zelazny.

Halliday’s favorites, like WarGames, Ghostbusters, Real Genius, Better Off Dead, or Revenge of the Nerds,

Cameron, Gilliam, Jackson, Fincher, Kubrick, Lucas, Spielberg, Del Toro, Tarantino. And, of course, Kevin Smith.

But the walls were almost entirely covered with movie and rock band posters: Real Genius, WarGames, Tron, Pink Floyd, Devo, Rush.

I knew from my research that the cassette recorder functioned as the TRS-80’s “tape drive.” It stored data as analog sound on magnetic audiotapes.

Rush had been Halliday’s favorite band, from his teens onward. He’d once revealed in an interview that he’d coded every single one of his videogames (including the OASIS) while listening exclusively to Rush albums.

We looked like extras from THX 1138.