Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Published by Arrow Books: London, England, 2012 (2011). A book I've heard a lot about, but one that I've neither read nor seen the movie version of before now. Ready Player One is set in a fairly dystopian near-future. The environment is in serious trouble, many people live in trailer park 'stacks' (where mobile homes are piled up on top of each other to save space), currencies are unstable, and crime is high. Is it any wonder, then, that people long to escape their world into the OASIS, an online virtual reality world that is far more appealing than the 'real' world they live in? Our protagonist, Wade Watts, is just such an individual. He is an 18-year old 'gunter' (egg-hunter), searching the OASIS for 'easter eggs' left by James Halliday, the now-deceased creator of the OASIS. The first person to successfully unravel the cryptic notes left by Halliday, finding three keys and using them to unlock three gates - and complete the challenges surrou...