Ready Player One

Ernest Cline 2011

Ready Player One is a fun, nostalgic romp through an imagined future that features plenty of references to books, television, films and video games from author Ernest Cline's formative years. I saw the 2018 film in theaters, and enjoyed the post-apocalyptic setting, immersive virtual reality, and the nods and references to Star Wars, Back to the Future, and 80's anthems. While I relate to the concept of a battle between passionate users against cold corporate vampires that want to monetize everything with ad revenue, I found the characters a bit tiring and didn't enjoy the film enough to go out and buy it on physical media. In late 2025, a few friends encouraged me to read the book, so I did.

To summarize, I found the book to be fun, but somewhat disorienting, because I could not decide if it was supposed to be silly or serious. I found that the film leaned more on absurdity, while the book tried to be more serious. I enjoyed the more serious tone of the book, but at its core, it still tells a story of millions of people trying to win sole control of a world-spanning online gaming empire by mastering 1980's trivia, and then demonstrating their mastery to a computer program made by a dead guy - which is a fun, but silly premise. That being said, I enjoyed reading the book, and my interest in the sequel, Ready Player 2 is piqued.