This is more or less in line with my feelings on the book. I enjoyed reading it, but when it was over it was hardly in my top ten list.
For a creepier look at the intersection of 80s nostalgia and obsession, I thought Lucky Wander Boy was better.
My enthusiasm for RP1 waned the further I read into the book. By the end a book that I thought was pretty cool when I started it became pretty dumb when I finished.
If you guys think RP1 is bad, try his followup book Armada. So so much worse. That’s all I’m saying.
(I think RP1 is solid, but this guy clearly only has one decent book in him)
Considering I already think RP1 is terrible, I’ll pass.
Man y’all are a bunch of sour pusses.
I agree. RP1 is a fun book with an interesting premise. It is not high literature but it is wonderful reading. Or listening, in my case, since I read the Audible version narrated by Will Wheaton which made it even better.
Exactly! I wouldn’t rank it as an all time great by any means, but I thoroughly enjoyed it for what it was. Basically a love letter to all things I love. The Rush stuff in particular made me happy.
It was fun and entertaining, and sometimes that is enough.
So this seems to be referencing just any popculture instead of 80s stuff specifically?
I mean the book couldn’t stick to the 80s either so…
ya that’s true but this doesn’t even seem to try. Not that I’m complaining because the overreliance on 80s nostalgia in the book didn’t really work for me (not because I couldn’t appreciate any of it, it was just too much).
I do wonder how they handle the overall plot. In the books the main character is mostly doing stuff on his own for huge parts of the whole story and only in the final act does he really start to interact with the others. This obviously won’t work for a movie so I guess they’ll be forced to work together/interact with each other a lot earlier?
I’m about 20% of the way through the book and so far I’m joining the sourpuss club. Seems like the narrative is just in service to all the endless references. (Growing Pains! Hey, I watched that!)
And good old Halliday and Ogden and Gregarius Simulations really jumped impressively from Everquest to wireless VR lenses, haptic gloves, and browser-based online universe in just a couple of years. Not bad, guys!
I’ll just keep reading. Maybe it’ll get better!
Not war and peace but I really enjoyed the book. Tomb of Horrors reference. Hell yeah.
That trailer scares the crap out of me though. Was there a motorcycle death race in the book?
I read that they had worked hard to get permission to use a lot of different 80’s pop references. But I got a bad feeling about this one.
If anything this may be one of the rare cases where the movie is far better than the book.
I only read the book recently, and spent most of the 80s doing and watching the same things Ernest Cline did so it was a definitely a guilty pleasure. Fairly sure the skins/mods in OASIS stretched into more modern times too.
My take was that it got worse as it got closer to the end. Overall I enjoyed it.
And yeah, the whole VR thing is unbelievable. I guess the genius guy was like Da Vinci or something. Going from EQ to something close to the Holodeck was hard to swallow.
And then to think that a guy that brilliant would want to give away his empire to someone who could solve his puzzle, which was rooted in 80s pop culture? Why couldn’t he just make the software public domain and set up a trust to fund the servers for decades, with the provision that the game would never require any kind of payment?
The gameworld of Oasis had major issues design wise, as IIRC it had some pretty harsh death penalties, but the game was loaded with dumb easter egg weapons where someone could just blow up the planet you happened to be on. Fun!
Also, let us recall this bit of writing
“Standing on the left side of the runway was my battle-worn X-wing fighter. Parked on the right side was my DeLorean. Sitting on the runway itself was my most frequently used spacecraft, the Vonnegut. Max had already powered up the engines, and they emitted a low, steady roar that filled the hangar. The Vonnegut was a heavily modified Firefly-class transport vessel, modeled after the Serenity in the classic Firefly TV series. The ship had been named the Kaylee when I’d first obtained it, but I’d immediately rechristened it after one of my favorite twentieth-century novelists. Its new name was stenciled on the side of its battered gray hull. I’d looted the Vonnegut from a cadre of Oviraptor clansmen who had foolishly attempted to hijack my X-wing while I was cruising through a large group of worlds in Sector Eleven known as the Whedonverse.”
Remember folks, this is a published novel, not someone’s fanfiction.
Ha ha. Well, that’s deliberate. He’s writing to fans of all this stuff.
You know, another unbelievable thing about the book is that I think it takes place only 6-7 years after the MMO founder’s death, so the people working on the puzzle haven’t had that much time to figure it out, yet the protagonist talks about how he’s seen every single 80s TV show and movie multiple times, etc. He knows D&D modules backwards and forwards too. He has the entire script of a lot of 80s movies memorized. Plus he goes to school and does well and has some kind of shitty home life. Hard to swallow.
I find criticism of the book difficult to fathom,because the Oasis is a world that you can basically do anything you want and be anyone you want. And you criticize a teenaged main character obsessed with movie fiction? If I was 15 and in that place, you better believe I would be flying an x-wing to Dungeons and Dragons planet, Blasting 80’s music the whole way.
Ok, another excerpt and a picture of the author. Gary Stu?
I made a big entrance when I arrived in my flying DeLorean, which I’d obtained by completing a Back to the Futurequest on the planet Zemeckis. The DeLorean came outfitted with a (nonfunctioning) flux capacitor, but I’d made several additions to its equipment and appearance. First, I’d installed an artificially intelligent onboard computer named KITT (purchased in an online auction) into the dashboard, along with a matching red Knight Rider scanner just above the DeLorean’s grill. Then I’d outfitted the car with an oscillation overthruster, a device that allowed it to travel through solid matter. Finally, to complete my ’80s super-vehicle theme, I’d slapped a Ghostbusters logo on each of the DeLorean’s gull-wing doors, then added personalized plates that read ECTO-88.
I’d had it only a few weeks now, but my time-traveling, Ghost Busting, Knight Riding, matter-penetrating DeLorean had already become my avatar’s trademark.
