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
Another brilliant book by Gibson, and the first in the Blue Ant/Hubertus Bigend trilogy. The likable but neurotic protgagonist, Cayce (pronounced "Case"), is a coolhunter - a precog who uses her sensitivity to brands and logos to serve as a consultant to major franchises, helping them make branding choices based on what she senses will become trendy or not. In her spare time, Cayce and her online otaku friends obsess over "the footage" - segments of breathtaking, unearthly films scattered across the net, discovered a fragment at a time. Cayce's life changes when an exceptionally powerful employer hires her for a special consulting job, and draws her into a web of intrigue, Soviet mafia, and mystery...
