Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

 

This is the first time, I think, that I’ve ever blogged a novel after seeing and indeed blogging the film adaptation, something I vaguely try to avoid. But I enjoyed this.

I’ve not read any twenty-first century science fiction novels, really, having focused more on the classics, so I’ve no idea whether cyberpunk is still a thing in our online age. This could certainly be a cyberpunk novel, but one written in an an age of MMORGs, augmented reality and a general blurring of real life and online life, which is a theme here. The Oasis is a refuge from an environmentally devastated corporate dystopia, but said dystopia is making incursions into said refuge.

What makes the novel such fun, though, is the quest for the egg and its twists and turns… alongside the pop culture references which appeal to this fortysomething geek.

This is a lightweight read, nothing particularly clever or groundbreaking. But it’s fun, and just being fun is no crime.