Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)

by Ernest Cline

Maybe it isn’t a good idea to tell a newly arrived human being that he’s been born into a world of chaos, pain, and poverty just in time to watch everything fall to pieces.

horrible. “It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,” he wrote. “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.”

I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal. —Groucho Marx