Ready Player One Movie is a 2011 science fiction novel
This article is about the novel through Ernest Cline. For the movie based on the unconventional, see Ready Player One (film). For the radical through Douglas Coupland, see Player One.
Ready Player One is a 2011 science fiction novel, and the debut novel of American creator Ernest Cline. The story, set in a dystopiain 2045, follows protagonist Wade Watts on his search for an Easter egg in a global virtual reality recreation, the invention of which could lead him to inherit the game creator's fortune.
Cline sold the rights to publish the radical in June 2010, in a bidding struggle to the Crown Publishing Group (a division of Random House).[1] The ebook became published on August 16, 2011.[2] An audiobook become launched the equal day; it became narrated by using Wil Wheaton, who changed into mentioned in short in one of the chapters.[three][four]Ch. 20 In 2012, the e-book received an Alex Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association department of the American Library Association[5] and received the 2011 Prometheus Award.[6]
A film adaptation, screenwritten by Cline and Zak Penn and directed by means of Steven Spielberg, became released on March 29, 2018. A sequel novel, Ready Player Two, was launched on November 24, 2020, to a widely terrible important reception.[7][8]Synopsis[edit]Setting[edit]
In the 2040s,[9] the sector has been gripped by an energy crisis from the depletion of fossil fuels and the consequences of pollution, worldwide warming and overpopulation, causing full-size social issues, poverty, and economic stagnation. To break out the decline their world is facing, people flip to the OASIS,[a] a virtual fact simulator on hand without cost through gamers the use of visors and haptic generation together with gloves. It functions both as an MMORPG and as a digital international where people can go to high school, get a process or buy groceries, with its currency being the maximum strong in the actual global. It changed into created via James Donovan Halliday, founder of Gregarious Simulation Systems (formerly Gregarious Games), who made a posthumous video of his will pointing out to the public that he had left an Easter egg inside the OASIS, and the first man or woman to find it would inherit his entire fortune, possession of his enterprise as well as entire manipulate of the OASIS itself, that is well worth trillions. The story follows the adventures of Wade Watts, beginning approximately five years after the assertion, while he discovers one of the 3 keys which free up 3 successive gates leading to the treasure.Plot[edit]
Teenager Wade Watts lives together with his aunt in Oklahoma City[10] inside the "stacks", a poverty-stricken district constructed of trailer homes piled on pinnacle of every other. He spends his spare time as a "gunter" ("egg hunter"), logging directly to the OASIS as an avatar beneath the moniker Parzival, reading Halliday's journal Anorak's Almanac, and learning information of the Eighties pop culture, specially classic video video games and movies, that Halliday loved. One day, he realizes that the primary key's placed on Ludus, the same virtual world as his personal on line high school, in a re-introduction of the Dungeons & Dragons module Tomb of Horrors. He meets Art3mis, a well-known woman gunter and blogger who has been exploring the area, and advances further than she does whilst he defeats the AI Acererak at the online game Joust. He is presented the Copper Key, and Parzival appears at the "Scoreboard", attracting the sector's attention.
Parzival completes the Copper Gate's puzzles with the aid of teleporting to planet Middletown, which turned into modeled after the actual lifestyles town wherein Halliday grew up, playing through the Dungeons of Daggorath video game in a pastime of Halliday's parents' residence after which function-gambling Matthew Broderick's individual within the film WarGames. Art3mis clears the gate rapidly afterwards, as does Wade's nice friend Aech. Wade’s repute allows him to make a dwelling with the aid of endorsing digital products. It also brings him to the eye of Nolan Sorrento, head of operations at Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a multinational company bent on a properly-funded effort to find the Easter egg so that it will take control of the OASIS and monetize it. When Wade refuses to enroll in IOI, Sorrento tries to kill him by blowing up the stacks in which Wade lives, killing his aunt and disguising the explosion as a meth lab coincidence.
Wade escapes and actions to Columbus, Ohio (native land of each GSS and IOI), wherein he lies low, assuming the pseudonym Bryce Lynch and dwelling in an nameless condominium designed for hardcore OASIS users. He considers an alliance with Aech, Art3mis, as well as Daito and Shoto, a duo of Japanese gunters who've additionally obtained the Copper Key, however Daito refuses out of stubbornness and paranoia, and Shoto soon follows his lead. Instead, he and Art3mis start a wary friendship, however while he asks her out, Art3mis declines. IOI operatives, called Sixers due to their six-digit avatar name and the names usually starting with the wide variety "6", try and assassinate Wade and Art3mis's avatars on the party of OASIS co-founder Ogden Morrow. They are stopped by Morrow, who has special privileges and powers within the OASIS. Art3mis abandons Wade due to the competition being extra non-public for her. Five months bypass, and neither Wade or all people else has determined the subsequent token, the Jade Key.
When Art3mis sooner or later finds the Jade Key, Parzival scrambles to planet Archaide, a planet containing a copy of every online game ever made, where he plays a perfect sport of Pac-Man, receiving only 1 / 4 as a prize. Aech, who was the second one player to discover the Jade Key, gives a hint leading him to the planet Frobozz where he solves a exercise of the textual content adventure recreation Zork and whistles a 2600-hertz-sound thru a Cap'n Crunch Bo'Sun Whistle. Sorrento, who had tracked Art3mis and Aech using a top class locator artifact, establishes a base there to farm Jade Keys for their enterprise's avatars, unlocks the second Gate, and swiftly acquires the Crystal Key as properly thru trial and error. Shoto tells Parzival that when he had gotten the Jade Key, the Sixers infiltrated Daito's real-existence condo and threw him out off his balcony, killing him and passing it off as a Japanese suicide.
Parzival unlocks the Jade Gate, a Voight-Kampff system, by way of entering a privately-owned Blade Runner-themed building, and completes the arcade sport Black Tiger as a person from the primary-man or woman shooter attitude, being given a virtual mecha because the prize and every other clue: a purple superstar in a circle. Using his understanding of Halliday's favourite band, Rush, he acquires the Crystal Key on planet Syrinx (the red celebrity being the image of the Solar Federation within the tune "2112"), and after playing "Discovery", the 0.33 movement of the tune, finds a clue concerning the conditions to liberate the very last gate. As he messages Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto with instructions on how to get through the Jade Gate and acquire the Crystal Key, Sorrento ends their covert tries to clear the 1/3 gate, which is located within the castle of Halliday's avatar, Castle Anorak, on planet Chthonia (a planet primarily based on the world made for Halliday's original DnD sport), and places an indestructible force subject around it that could simplest be taken down from the internal.
Wade manipulates his assumed identification that allows you to be arrested and placed in indentured servitude in IOI's tech guide department. While internal IOI, he makes use of black market passwords and security exploits to hack into IOI's intranet and acquires a wealth of incriminating facts: pictures of Daito's murder, the strive on his own lifestyles, in addition to plans to abduct Shoto and Art3mis and pressure them to locate the Easter egg for IOI in real life, then kill them afterwards. Fortunately, Aech stays nameless due to his mobile setup and reluctance to expose something from his private life. After escaping the employer, he shares his statistics together with his pals and pronounces a gathering of avatars to storm the fort. They are interrupted by using Ogden Morrow, who offers them a safe haven at his domestic in Oregon. Wade meets the actual-existence Aech and Ogden, but not Art3mis and Shoto, who are already hooked into Ogden's immersion pods.