A few weeks ago my friend and colleague Steve Bissonnette mentioned that he started reading a book called Read Player One by Ernest Cline. I hadn’t heard about it but when he explained the basic plot, I thought, hmmm, that’s something I think I can get into. The basic premise is that it’s a few decades into the future and the world has gone to hell but there is an amazing virtual reality world that most of humanity uses to escape the real world. The creator of this virtual world, called the OASIS, dies suddenly and leaves the world a challenge; if someone can find 3 keys hidden in OASIS and pass through the gates they open, they will inherit his vast fortune and control over GSS, the company that owns OASIS. The book begins a few years after this challenged is issued with no one having even found the first of the 3 keys.
I started the book a bit slowly taking a few days to get through the first 50 pages but on a train trip to and from Toronto, I devoured the other 334 pages. It’s not a literary classic but a fun sci-fi romp through multiple cultural references from my teen years. It got me to reinstall Stella and try out Adventure again (which was a lot more fun when I was 10). It was also good to tackle some quality fiction after reading nothing but non-fiction for about a year now.
I do hope there are plans for another few books in this universe and I look forward to how the film develops. 7.5/10.
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