Reality, Identity, Pop Culture &
Technology
Book Trailer
Ernest Cline
 Grew up in Ohio in the 1980s
 Named after a muppet
 Torn from mother’s arms by tornado
 300 yards away uninjured
 Youth spent reading a lot of comic books and sci-fi novels, programming
his TRS-80, hanging out in video arcades, playing an inordinate amount of
Dungeons & Dragons, and watching way too many movies
 Still doing all of this today!
Ernest Cline
 Slam Poet
 Two-time winner at the Austin Poetry Slam
 Has a spoken word album (2001)
 Writing
 Ready Player One
 First novel
 Published 2011
 Film in production by Warner Bros.
 Other writing
 Fan script for Buckaroo Banzai sequel
 Fanboys script
 Response to Star Wars prequel mania
Ready Player One - In a Nutshell
 RPO is a book that brings two different media –videogames and
literature- together into a crazy 3D explosion…in your mind!
 Bridges the generation gap between the 1980s and now
 1980s- games, movies and music
 A book with a retro, synthesized soundtrack and a breakneck
adventure plot straight out of your favorite classic movies
 Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Ladyhawke
 Published in 2011 by Ernest Cline
 Cline’s love letter to the 1980s
Why Should I Care?
 If you grew up in the 1980s, have a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man
keychain, Tron on VHS and LaserDisc, and listen to Oingo Boingo while
playing Pitfall! on your Atari2600, well, why are you still reading this?
You should be reading Ready Player One right now.
 Okay, now that they're gone, we'll talk to the rest of you—those who
either didn't grow up in the eighties or don't have fond memories of it.
See, neon pop culture isn't all there is to this book, which is a fastpaced, page-turning, sci-fi adventure. The fun references are just
technicolor sprinkles on the high-tech adventure cupcake. Mmm,
cupcakes. Oops. Where were we?
 Oh, that's right. Pop culture references. Whether or not you've heard
of the books, movies, music, and games, Ernest Cline loves them for a
reason. He's got some pretty good taste, and you might want to take
a look at a few of these hidden gems yourself. Who knows? You might
discover some new favorites.
Setting
Welcome to the OASIS!
A hyper-realistic, 3D, videogame paradise. It's
2045, and pretty much everyone logs in to the
OASIS daily to escape their terrible lives, lives
affected by overpopulation, unemployment, and
energy shortages. Eighteen-year-old Wade Watts is
one of these people, and he has a mission: to find
an Easter egg hidden inside the OASIS by its
wackadoodle creator, James Halliday.
In order to get to the egg, a player, using his
avatar, first find three keys and unlock three gates.
Themes
 Versions of Reality
 Is the OASIS inherently bad? Or good? Or is it what a user does with it that
matters?
 Is the OASIS real?
 Identity
 How does Wade's online identity, Parzival, differ from his real-life identity?
 Appearances
 Are people dishonest if their avatar differs in appearance from real life?
 Competition
 What drives millions of people to hunt for Halliday's egg?
 Lottery?
Themes
 Friendship
 Besides Halliday's quest, what do Wade and his friends have in common?
 Perseverance
 What drives Wade to persevere even when the odds are stacked against him?
 Dissatisfaction
 In a world like the one depicted in Ready Player One, is it possible to find
fulfillment outside of the OASIS?
 Immortality
 In what ways does Halliday achieve immortality?
 The Home
 What are some of the reasons Wade doesn't feel safe in the real world?
 Dreams, Hopes, and Plans
 What kinds of dreams can OASIS users achieve that they can't in the real world?
Characters
Wade Owen Watts
 Narrator
 Initials W.O.W.
 Avatar Name
 Parzival
James Halliday
 USA Today described Ready Player One as "Willy Wonka meets The Matrix“
 Eccentric billionaire co-creator of OASIS
 Halliday hides keys and Easter eggs like golden tickets
 Has a devious mind for tricks and puzzles
 Possesses a subtle hatred for children and humanity
Characters
Art3mis
 a.k.a. Samantha Evelyn Cook
 Wade is cyber-obsessed with her
 Blogs on '80s pop culture, called "Arty's Missives“
Aech
(Pronounced “H”)
 Parzival's best friend inside the OASIS
 Wade's best friend even though the two have never met in real life
 Common interests—movies, music, and video games
 And a common goal—the quest for Halliday's egg
 We don’t know much else about Aech
Characters
Nolan Sorrento
 Nolan Sorrento is the bad guy. There are no shades of grey here. He's all bad.
 Named Nolan after Nolan Bushnell, the founder of Atari and creator of Pong
 Not because he’s bad, just a tribute
 Head of Innovative Online Industries, also known as IOI, the world's largest ISP
 Employs a vast army of people called the Sixers
 All IOI employees us ID numbers as their avatar names
 All start with the number 6
 IOI’s goal is to gain control of OASIS
 According to Wade, if IOI finds the egg, then OASIS, would "become a
corporate-run dystopia, an overpriced theme park for wealthy elitists.”
 In other words, it would become the real world, and since the OASIS is an
escape from the real world, no one wants that.
Characters
Ogden Morrow
 Co-creator of the OASIS and founder of Gregarious Simulation Systems
 Unlike the reclusive Halliday, Morrow has better social skills, a more positive
public image, and a marriage.
 Left the company before it consumed his life and sanity as it did Halliday
Daito and Shoto a.k.a. Akihide Karatsu and Toshiro Yoshiaki
 Rounds out the High Five
 The first five gunters who find the Copper Key
 Japanese. Honorable.
 Not too much known about them
(avoiding spoilers!)
Minor Characters
 I-R0k
 What you would call a griefer…also known as…[Insert harsh synonym for jerk
here]
 Internet troll
 Aunt Alice Deppert
 Wade's only living relative
 No redeeming characteristics whatsoever
 Sister of Wade's dead mother
 Like Harry Potters Aunt Petunia
 Drug-addict who pawns Wade’s tech for money
 Only took him in to get extra food stamps
 Mrs. Gilmore
 Wade's only real-life friend who lives below his aunt
RPO Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy
 Science Fiction
 Stories about how people and societies are affected by imaginary scientific
developments in the future
 But where are the spaceships? The teleportation? The space travel?
 All of that stuff is in the OASIS, a computer game that has become the world's
escape.
 Dystopia
 An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a
totalitarian or environmentally degraded one (Anti-Utopia)
 5% of the book takes place in a dystopian world in the throes of an energy crisis and
suffocating from overpopulation.
 Fantasy
 Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural
phenomena as a primary plot element, theme, or setting.
 Ready Player One might not be your typical swords-and-sorcery fantasy; it's more of a
personal fantasy
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Keys and Gates
 Keys. They unlock stuff. Like gates. Which keep people out.
 In Ready Player One these gates are nested inside one another. You can't open
one without opening the one before it.
 Not only does it lead Wade and friends closer to their goal—Halliday's Easter
egg—but it also leads Wade further into his obsessions.
 With each gate, Wade gets a little crazier about finding the egg
 Because of this, these gates are almost a dual symbol.
 Progress in Wade's journey
 Regression as Wade becomes more and more of a creepy, anti-social hermit
 Gates can lead into something just as well as they can lead out of it
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
The Egg
 Halliday's egg is explained clearly in the book
 Based on the first videogame Easter egg, placed in Atari's Adventure game by its
sole programmer, Warren Robinett
 Whoever finds the egg Halliday hid in the OASIS will inherit his fortune. It's the
driving force of the whole plot.
 Symbolically, the egg reminds us of rebirth,
and that's kind of what happens in the story (spoilers)
Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory
Pop Culture
 Popular culture is the entirety of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images,
and other phenomena that are within the mainstream of a given culture
 Especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global
mainstream of the late 20th and early 21st century. Heavily influenced by mass
media
 Not sure how to quantify the amount of pop culture references in this
book
 "A lot" doesn't begin to do it justice
 There are over 350 pop culture references in this book
 Not counting any of the literary or historical references sprinkled in
 A lot of the references might seem arbitrary, just to say, "Hey, look what I
remember! Wasn't it awesome?"
 But some of them pop up at thematically appropriate times.
 For instance, Wade watches Whiz Kids, which he describes as a show about "a
teenage hacker who uses his computer skills to solve mysteries“ Familiar?
Ready Player One Narrator
First Person: Wade Watts
 From the prologue of Ready Player One, we learn that the narrator, Wade Watts,
is looking back on the events of the book from some point in the future
 We're not sure how far ahead
 Setting the record straight means making himself out to be an almost infallible
hero.
 Any of his mistakes and flaws are glossed over and sugarcoated and Wade, in
general, lacks introspection.
 He's also less concerned with telling us why the '80s were important to Halliday
and more interested in just saying that they were awesome, period.
 Frankly, since his narrative is focused purely on himself, we have to wonder just
how accurate his story really is.
What’s Up With The Title?
 The title of the book is also the first thing a person sees upon logging
into OASIS
 James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS, was inspired by the video games of his
youth, which greeted the player with this phrase.
 The author, Ernest Cline, got the phrase from the CAPCOM game Black Tiger,
which features in the novel
 It's not just a clever allusion, though. It also means something to the
reader, whether you're looking at the book at the bookstore, the
Kindle store, or on your coffee table at home. It's almost daring you:
are you ready for a wild adventure that will keep you up all night and
on the edge of your seat, just like the classic video games that inspired
it? If you are, then come and get it!
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