Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One — The Games Spielberg Changed

Korean audiences are likely to know Ready Player One first as a film.

Steven Spielberg’s adaptation reached cinemas in 2018. It had already drawn plenty of attention before release and found an audience around the world once it opened.

The film gives visual form to the world Ernest Cline imagined. It keeps the novel’s setting and basic premise, then follows a course of its own. There are stretches where they feel like two different works with the same title.

Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One

The novel first appeared in 2011 in hardcover, followed by paperback editions in 2012. It found a broad audience quickly and made its way to the screen within a few years.

Cline draws heavily on popular culture from the 1980s. Books, films and music all turn up, but the book pays particular attention to games and the people who came of age around them.

Old games come back one at a time. To a reader who grew up with them, each title can be a route back to childhood. Part of the novel’s pleasure is being old enough to recognise the feeling and young enough, for a few pages, to give in to it.

That use of nostalgia helped the book find readers among adults who still had some affection for the things they played as children.

A Dystopia in 2045

The world of 2045 is short of reasons for hope. It does, however, offer an escape: the OASIS, a virtual world you can enter with a headset and other equipment. Today we would probably call it a metaverse.

It’s designed to feel much like a world you inhabit physically, but each zone works by its own rules. Some allow magic. Others run on advanced technology. Moving from one to another means learning what is possible there.

People work and earn money in the OASIS. Students go to school there. Others roam it looking for adventure, with the physical world somewhere in the background.

When its creator, James Halliday, dies, he leaves a challenge. Whoever passes a series of tests he has hidden in the OASIS inherits his fortune and control of the virtual world. That is where the hunt begins.

The Challenges in the Book

The film keeps the basic format: find the way through three main challenges and the inheritance is yours. The challenges themselves are largely different.

The film chooses things that read quickly on screen. Cline can spend more time with an old game or with a film the reader encounters from the inside. On the page, the pleasure often lies in figuring out how a challenge works before anyone moves.

The Film’s Challenges

1. A car race
2. A challenge set inside a horror film
3. A classic video-game challenge

The opening race is the film’s showpiece. It introduces the OASIS at speed and makes its freedom obvious. The later challenges get less time to establish themselves as separate worlds.

The Novel’s Challenges

Cline begins with a different sort of contest. Wade must win at a real arcade game against a virtual opponent Halliday has left behind.

Later he takes a role inside a film and has to deliver the character’s lines. A larger number of intermediate tests gives the book space to build anticipation. You want to know what odd piece of knowledge the next clue will require.

Much of the music, film and gaming material comes from actual popular culture of the period, particularly the 1980s. A reader who knows those references can recognise the objects that Halliday and his followers take so seriously.

The Film Moves Fast. The Novel Shows Its Work.

The film has a little over two hours to carry the audience through the contest. The novel can take longer over Wade’s surroundings and his train of thought.

That gives Cline time for plans that would be awkward to show at screen speed. You can follow what Wade is working out, and why he chooses one risk over another.

One especially clear example is the rival company IOI. The film puts Wade’s ally and competitor Art3mis inside it. In the novel, Wade deliberately gets himself taken in so that he can carry out a plan.

A Return to 1980s Pop Culture

Someone who spent their childhood in 1980s America may read large parts of this novel with a particular sense of recognition.

Readers who gave themselves over to games and the culture around them have another route in.

I didn’t spend those years in the United States and wasn’t familiar with much of the music, games or film. The world, the challenges and Wade’s attempts to find a way through were enough to keep me reading.

Reading the English Original

I read the book in English. Much of the prose is direct and the vocabulary is manageable, even if a few of the references send you off to look them up.

The length depends on the edition. There is plenty of book either way, and no reason to hurry through it.

Book Information

“Ready Player One”

Author

Ernest Cline

First publication

16 August 2011 (US hardcover)

ISBN13

9780099560432

View the book on YES24

We may earn a commission on purchases made through the affiliate link in this article.