Image from nerdist.com

Ready Player One is the story of a boy named Wade Watts whose reality places him in the year 2044 living in a world alarmingly not so unimaginable to us. A future in which an energy crisis and the consequences of global warming have driven humans to escape into a virtual world called The Oasis. This is an MMO game world created by James Donovan Halliday, a.k.a. Anorak, an incredibly smart game developer who happens to be the biggest 1980’s fan.

With no family to leave his fortune to, Oasis creator, James Donovan Halliday, leaves a video after his death inviting the whole world to join in on a search for an Easter egg he left in the Oasis. Whoever finds the Easter egg, will inherit his entire fortune and the Oasis.  And so, the story follows the adventures of this kid, Wade Watts, becoming a “gunter” and going after the Easter egg. The friends and enemies he makes in the way make for a great story but is the details on 1980’s pop culture is what takes the cake for me. A huge list of references to video games, music, TV shows and movies fills the reader with great nostalgia (if you were alive in the 80’s).  Even the younger crowd will greatly appreciate the games, the robots, the technology and the characters that are so brilliantly described in this majestic journey for readers of all ages. It is definitely a story worth creating for the big screen and lucky for us, it is currently in production with a release date of March 30, 2018. I’m so excited!

Ready Player One book cover, Wikipedia

This book was released in 2011 and I got to read it in 2013. I have been eagerly waiting for this film since it was announced and even went to a book signing Earnest Cline (the author of the book) had in Seattle a few years ago. He made his book tour in a DeLorean, this should give you an idea of this author’s personality. Listening to him talking about the inspirations for this book and his other one “Armada” was a real treat.  To all of you sci-fi lovers, this is one to watch for. With Earnest Cline involved in the movie as a screen writer and Steven Spielberg directing the film, the expectations are high. The cast has been announced and we can see Tye Sheridan (Wade/Parsival), Olivia Cooke (Artemis), and Mark Rylance (James Donovan Halliday) as some of the main characters. I think that T. J. Miller as i-Rok is definitely one of my favorites in the cast. I am really excited for the development of this movie and really hope, as many other fans, that they keep it as close to the book as possible.

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