Ernest Cline's Ready Player One

WOW! My bookclub's most recent pick was Ready Player One, and I read this thrilling 372-page sci-fi novel cover to cover over the last several hours. Talk about a page-turner! I won't give away the main quest driving the plot, but suffice to say, it is action-packed and awesome.

The experience of reading this book was very self-indulgent for a cyberpunk nerd like myself -- it is a book about otaku, for otaku, and it has the works: a post-apocalyptic wasteland where everyone with enough money for a visor and "haptic gloves" escapes the filth and squalor of our used-up Earth via a full-dive VR universe called OASIS; brilliant teen hackers; a soulless corporate entity in full villain mode; and, in an unusual twist on your typical sci-fi novel, endless real-world references to obscure sci-fi, video games, and everything 1980s.

The British newspaper The Observer says that the otaku is "the passionate obsessive, the information age's embodiment of the connoisseur, more concerned with the accumulation of data than of objects." In Ready Player One, and in many nerd subcultures IRL, a player's ability to amass vast knowledge of game-related trivia is a sought-after mark of authenticity, and a status symbol within the group.

In one early scene, our ridiculously erudite, but chronically poor and therefore low-level hero, Perzival, spars with the braggart I-r0k in a VR chat room, about what it takes to be a "gunter" (egg hunter, or elite gamer):

"Poseur."
"Poseur? Penis-ville is calling me a poseur? ...This chump is so broke that he has to bum rides to Greyhawk, just so he can kill kobolds for copper pieces! And he's calling me a poseur!"
..."That's right, I called you a poseur, poseur." I stood up and got in his grille. "You're an ignorant know-nothing twink. Just because you're fourteenth-level, it doesn't make you a gunter. You actually have to possess some knowledge."

As Perzival's friend Aech would say, "Word."


This novel is recommended for everyone, but especially if you like:
- Stephenson's Snow Crash
- Sword Art Online (anime TV series)
- Gibson's Idoru

William Gibson's Count Zero

Count Zero, although at times confusing, is another Gibson masterpiece. The world he envisions is Tolstoyan in its richness, fullness, and complexity. He is strikingly creative and his vision of the near (although technologically distant) future is dark, grimy, and dangerous without being oppressingly alarmist. Gibson's characters ring true and his literary grasp is impressive, and far improved from Neuromancer - he convincingly weaves together multiple narratives to reveal a complex and fascinating picture of cyberspace and its potential. In this work, Bobby, aka Count Zero, is an aspiring cyber cowboy (or "hotdogger") who gets swept up in the veiled machinations of an incomprehensibly wealthy entity named Virek. ("Entity" because Virek's body is a pool of molecules in an enormous vat, and he "lives" in the matrix.) The story follows Virek's attempts to locate the maker of mysteriously haunting collage boxes through various hitmen and an art collector. The book's themes, largely introduced in Neuromancer, include AI, systems theory, the synthesis of man and machine, and the spatial nature of cyberspace. The religious potential of the matrix is also fruitfully explored. A real page-turner and a must-read!

Gibson's 3 Trilogies:

The Sprawl Trilogy:

• Neuromancer
• Count Zero
• Mona Lisa Overdrive

The Bridge Trilogy:

• Virtual Light
• Idoru
• All Tomorrow's Parties

The Bigend Books:

• Pattern Recognition
• Spook Country
• Zero History