Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)

by Ernest Cline

READY PLAYER ONE was my first attempt at writing a novel. I never imagined that it would become an international bestseller or be made into a film. They tell fledgling novelists to “write the book = you’ve always wanted to read,” and that’s exactly what I tried to do. I wasn’t sure if anyone else would enjoy reading it. Thankfully, a lot of people all over the world did. And I’m eternally grateful to all of you!

Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion stars in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective. I’d started doing it after watching a science program from the early ’80s called Cosmos.

The ritual I’m describing here is taken from my own experience as a teenager, after watching the entirety of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos on PBS. Sagan’s work helped shape my worldview, and I wanted to pay tribute to him by having him do the same thing for my protagonist Wade.

“People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”

This is a line I unintentionally cribbed from one of my favorite novelists, Jonathan Tropper. I didn’t realize my mistake until after READY PLAYER ONE was published, at which time I emailed him to apologize profusely. He was incredibly kind about it and generously opted not to kick my ass up and down the block. Now I seize every opportunity to recommend his amazing work to others. (If you’re reading this, please check out his books—they really are great!) I finally gave him proper attribution for this line in my Acknowledgements in the back of READY PLAYER TWO. Thanks again, Jonathan!

The Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation was a big place.

This is a “backronym.” I had already decided to name the sprawling virtual world in my story “the Oasis,” because it served as an escape from reality for the inhabitants of my futuristic dystopia. Then I realized it might be fun if the name was also an acronym, so I spent a few weeks puzzling it out. I remember hitting up the “Sensory Immersive Simulation” part first, then making a long list of potential words starting with O and A that I thought might also fit. I thought Ontological was a fitting adjective, defined as "relating to the branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being." And so was Anthropocentric, defined as "regarding humankind as the central or most important element of existence." An Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory-Immersive Simulation was just what I had in mind. Plus it just sounded cool. And that’s how the OASIS got its full name.

You’d be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever.

This line is Wade being self-deprecating, but it also speaks to his mindset in the story, and my own mindset while writing it. Wade spends every waking moment doing “research” into James Halliday’s life and his interests, which means he spends most of his time playing old video games and watching old movies, cartoons, and TV shows. I spent a lot of my time doing the same stuff while I was writing READY PLAYER ONE, which is one of the reasons it took me so long to finish the book. It was always much easier for me to do some more “research” for my novel than it was to actually sit down and write it. Just like it was always easier for Wade to do more “research” than deal with his own reality.

There turned out to be one hundred and twelve of these notched letters scattered throughout the book.

A lot of people don’t know that there’s an Easter Egg hidden in the print editions of READY PLAYER ONE. In the story, Wade discovers a hidden message in the text of Anorak’s Almanac by finding notched letters hidden throughout the text. Ready Player One has notched letters hidden throughout the text, and if you find them and write them down in order, they spell out a website address that was used to host a contest to promote the release of the READY PLAYER ONE paperback. I gave away a DeLorean as the grand prize. You can read all about the contest here: https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/scifi/ready-player-delorean-contest-winner-announced.html

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

This has always been one of my favorite Groucho quotes. It’s even funnier when you imagine him saying it with his trademark delivery, while wiggling his cigar and his eyebrows. I used it for the epigraph of “Level Two” because it’s also weirdly fitting for Wade’s life in that section, when he retreats completely into the virtual world of the OASIS and only logs out to sleep and eat and attend to the needs of his physical body in reality. This line made it into the movie, too.

I’d come to see my rig for what it was: an elaborate contraption for deceiving my senses, to allow me to live in a world that didn’t exist. Each component of my rig was a bar in the cell where I had willingly imprisoned myself.

This line comes after Wade has described all the OASIS immersion hardware that he’s crammed into his tiny one-room apartment—a room he never leaves. He wears a full body haptic suit and gloves that allow him to feel simulated sensations inside the OASIS, and a VR headset that fools his eyes into see things that aren’t there. It’s a perfectly sad moment for him: as proud as he is of all this amazing technology, he’s also beginning to feel imprisoned by it, as he grows more and more disconnected from reality. But he chooses to remain inside his self-imposed prison cell, because he still feels safer there than in the real world.

“No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.”

This is a lyric from the song “Don’t Let’s Start” by They Might Be Giants, one of my (and Wade’s) favorite bands. It’s a very happy-sounding song with some very dark lyrics, and this seemed like the perfect line for Wade to recite as his password every time he logs into the OASIS, perhaps as a subtle reminder to himself that he’s probably never going to find find Halliday’s Easter egg and that he should prepare himself for that eventuality.

Besides, now that everyone could vote from home, via the OASIS, the only people who could get elected were movie stars, reality TV personalities, or radical televangelists.

When I wrote this back in 2011, several movie stars had already been elected to public office here in the United States, and it was becoming obvious that fame and familiarity had the power to sway a lot of voters. In trying to envision my future dystopian reality of 2045, I imagined that at some point, only movie stars, radical televangelists and reality TV personalities would be able to get elected. I didn’t expect that it would take less than a decade for a reality TV personality to be elected to the highest office in the land.

You know you’ve totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software.

This is another moment that for me, seemed like a perfect description for how sad and alienated Wade has become at this point in the story. In his relentless quest to find Halliday’s Easter egg, he’s gradually alienated his closest friends, and now he has no one to talk to but his system agent software, a digital recreation of Max Headroom. It’s like hitting rock bottom and having no one to talk to but Siri on your iPhone.

“I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real. Do you understand?”

This passage makes me think of a great little moment from the making of the READY PLAYER ONE movie: These lines summing up Halliday’s character weren’t in the script for the film. But Mark Rylance was reading the book on set and brought it over Steven Spielberg and told him “I really want to say these lines.” So Steven let him, and then I guess he thought they really worked, because—much to my surprise!—he decided to use them for the final movie.. Thank you, Mark! And thanks, Steven!

Acknowledgments

Everything you could ever hope would happen when you write your first novel happened to me after READY PLAYER ONE was published. It literally made all of my wildest dreams come true. My sincere thanks go out to everyone who read the book and recommended it to their friends, family, students, strangers, bookstore customers or library patrons. If you enjoyed READY PLAYER ONE, you might enjoy the sequel, READY PLAYER TWO, which will be out in paperback on November 9, 2021: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58980633-ready-player-two