Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)

by Ernest Cline

The entire video was just over five minutes in length, and in the days and weeks that followed, it would become the most scrutinized piece of film in history,

The first individual to meet that condition will inherit my entire fortune, currently valued in excess of two hundred and forty billion dollars.”

why was my first thought “only $240B?” as if I can even fathom how much that is

People who had actually been teenagers in the 1980s, all now approaching old age, had the strange experience of seeing the fads and fashions of their youth embraced and studied by their grandchildren.

There, inside the game’s two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It’s just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

From that moment on, I was more or less raised by the OASIS’s interactive educational programs, which any kid could access for free.

Once I’d mastered those skills, it didn’t take me long to discover that the OASIS was also the world’s biggest public library, where even a penniless kid like me had access to every book ever written, every song ever recorded, and every movie, television show, videogame, and piece of artwork ever created. The collected knowledge, art, and amusements of all human civilization were there, waiting for me.

To be honest, the future doesn’t look too bright. You were born at a pretty crappy time in history. And it looks like things are only gonna get worse from here on out. Human civilization is in ‘decline.’ Some people even say it’s ‘collapsing.’

The OASIS kept me sane. It was my playground and my preschool, a magical place where anything was possible.

“Possibility space”…I am hesitant of the person I am becoming by saying this

Many of these vehicles had been in working condition when they were abandoned. Their owners had simply no longer been able to afford fuel for them, so they’d just parked them and walked away.

reminds me of Station Eleven

On the day the Hunt began, the day I’d decided to become a gunter, I’d renamed my avatar Parzival, after the knight of Arthurian legend who had found the Holy Grail.

Ugh this is such a missed opportunity to be "Indiana Jones" or something...it's from the 80s, too!!!!

People rarely used their real names online. Anonymity was one of the major perks of the OASIS. Inside the simulation, no one knew who you really were, unless you wanted them to.

GSS had won the right to keep every OASIS user’s identity private in a landmark Supreme Court ruling.

geez that's unheard of

At this school, the only real weapons were words, so I’d become skilled at wielding them.

at least it's a hell of a lot safer

The real public school system, the one run by the government, had been an underfunded, overcrowded train wreck for decades.

If you wanted to go somewhere more interesting, you had to pay a teleportation fare to get there, and that cost money, something I didn’t have.

control of space even in the virtual world

“Canon” was the term we used to classify any movie, book, game, song, or TV show of which Halliday was known to have been a fan.

“I don’t care if Spielberg directed it.

I love this irony

GSS had also licensed preexisting virtual worlds from their competitors,

It's like a Disney World or Universal theme park or something

I kept everything in a notebook (which I’d started to call my “grail diary” after watching the third Indiana Jones film).

ok finally an Indiana Jones reference

The lines of distinction between a person’s real identity and that of their avatar began to blur.

I devoured each of what Halliday referred to as “The Holy Trilogies”: Star Wars (original and prequel trilogies, in that order), Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Mad Max, Back to the Future, and Indiana Jones. (Halliday once said that he preferred to pretend the other Indiana Jones films, from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull onward, didn’t exist. I tended to agree.)

he'd prob say the same thing abt the matrix

You’d be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, is a lot of study time.

For the first time, I knew what it was to be a natural at something. To have a gift.

And any empty seats in the stands would be filled with randomly generated NPC fans who would wolf down virtual sodas and hot dogs while cheering wildly.

like basketball games in the bubble during Covid with Zoom fans

Triumphant horns were quickly joined by a stirring string section. I recognized the music. It was the last track from John Williams’s original Star Wars score, used in the scene where Princess Leia gives Luke and Han their medals (and Chewbacca, as you may recall, gets the shaft).

the fact that i know the exact song

It astounded me that fifty years ago, even lower-income families had an entire house to themselves.

Looking around, I wondered why Halliday, who always claimed to have had a miserable childhood, had later become so nostalgic for it.

A bookshelf stood just inside the door, overflowing with science-fiction and fantasy paperbacks (all titles I’d read, of course).

sounds like Joe Christopher

“Jim always wanted everyone to share his obsessions, to love the same things he loved. I think this contest is his way of giving the entire world an incentive to do just that.”

They’ve got us outnumbered and outgunned,

outgunned and outmanned, you could say

found a relatively inexpensive room in an old high-rise hotel, a relic from the days when people physically traveled for business and pleasure.

again, reminding me a lot of Station Eleven

Parzival: You’re just as famous as I am. And if I’m such a rock star, how come the media always portrays me as some unwashed geek who never goes outside? Art3mis: I take it you saw that SNL skit they did about us?

Lollll so funny that SNL would still exist in 2044

That’s because most gunters are male, and they can’t accept the idea that a woman has beaten and/or outsmarted them.

This is the OASIS. We exist as nothing but raw personality in here.

Lars Homestead on Tattooine.

omg not the home of the late great Kleeg Lars

she took me to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show in a huge stadium-sized movie theater on the planet Transsexual,

lol

At the center of all that gear was the opening DJ, R2-D2, hard at work, using his various robotic arms to work the turntables.

I’m in love with your mind—with the person you are. I couldn’t care less about the packaging.”

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.

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.

hate when this happens

There was an arboretum on the roof of my apartment building. I had never visited it, but I’d seen photos and admired the view via webcam. A transparent Plexiglas barrier had been installed around the ledge to keep people from jumping, but it was a joke. At least three determined individuals had managed to climb over it since I’d moved in.

“We live here, in the OASIS. For us, this is the only reality that has any meaning.”

When he spoke, I saw that his teeth had all been sharpened to points.

is this the Panem Capitol or something

In Marie’s opinion, the OASIS was the best thing that had ever happened to both women and people of color.

We’d known each other for years, in the most intimate way possible. We’d connected on a purely mental level.

“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?”

“Don’t make the same mistake I did. Don’t hide in here forever.”