Ready Player One ereader To download now please click the link below. http://bluewildcat.com/RPO.htm At once wildly original and stuffed with irresistible nostalgia, READY PLAYER ONE is a spectacularly genre-busting, ambitious, and charming debut—part quest novel, part love story, and part virtual space opera set in a universe where spell-slinging mages battle giant Japanese robots, entire planets are inspired by Blade Runner, and flying DeLoreans achieve light speed. It’s the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets. And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune— and remarkable power—to whoever can unlock them. For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday’s riddles are based in the pop culture he loved—that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday’s icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes’s oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig. And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle. Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt—among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life—and love—in the real world he’s always been so desperate to escape. A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?
Reviews picked up Ready Player One after having someone recommend it to me. As a kid who grew up in the 80's, I immediately identified with the themes of the book and the 1980's pop culture references were like a trip back to my childhood. The story is about a dystopian future, thirty years from now, when the Great Recession never got any better and most people live in poverty. In 2012, an inventor named Roy Halliday created a new type of immersive MMO game called OASIS, which changed everything. People started doing everything in the game- working, living, going to school, raising their children- all done through a wraparound visor and haptic gloves. Within a few years, nearly everyone in the real world was doing most everything through OASIS, and the man who invented it all was a multi-billionaire, and one of the most powerful men on the planet. Fast forward thirty years and Halliday has died without any heirs. Just before he died, though, he hid an Easter Egg somewhere in the massive world and encouraged the users to find it, promising control of OASIS and all of his money to the individual who found his hidden Easter Egg. With billions on the line, nearly everyone in the world engaged in the hunt, made even more fun by the fact that Halliday was a teenager in the 80's and left references to his favorite 1980's video games (Joust, Pacman, Galaga), music (Rush, ACDC) movies (Blade Runner, Terminator, WarGames) and tv shows (Family Ties). However, the challenge proved to be too great, and five years after Halliday's death, no one has made any progress in solving his riddles. Until one day, a high school student named Wade Watts stumbles upon the first key, reigniting the fervor for the game and setting Wade in a race against everyone else in the world who wants to beat him to the final prize. This book was ridiculously good. I started reading it Saturday morning and could not put it down. I read late Saturday night and got up early Sunday and kept reading and finished the 400 page book Sunday afternoon. It is a relatively easy read- the storyline is not complicated and it moves along at a very quick pace. The characters are well developed and engaging and of course, there is a great villain to root against. Lots of 1980's pop culture references made me smile as I remembered my own childhood. If you are at all a nerd or enjoy dystopian science fiction, do yourself a favor and pick this book up.
I just finished reading this book in one sitting. I've never done that before. I got to this cafe sometime this morning, bought an iced coffee for two bucks, sat down and began to read, and 8 hours later with a sigh I locked my Kindle's screen, whipped out my laptop, and here we are. I have no idea why the staff in this cafe haven't kicked me out yet: I haven't ordered anything else since that iced coffee BECAUSE THAT WOULD HAVE MEANT DISENGAGING MYSELF FOR A MOMENT FROM THE LITERARY MULTIPLE ORGASM THAT ERNEST CLINE HAS LOVINGLY COAXED OUT OF WORDS. I didn't want to do that. I do not ALLCAPS lightly. I am enthused. I LOVE THIS BOOK. There I go again.
I read people comparing this book to Snow Crash, and it has that same action-packed geeky urgent awesomeness, and I love that book, but I love Ready Player One better. It feels like this book is the reward I've earned for a youth spent geeky. Even though I missed the 80s completely, I've played many of the games mentioned (even the text adventures), seen the movies, and watched the television shows, so I can relate a lot with the main character and the subject matter. It was like reading a fantasy made directly for me, and it was profoundly, incredibly enjoyable. I don't know if you'd like it if you weren't an uber dork like me. I don't care. I feel light headed and happy and very satisfied and like I'm just emerging from the total immersion video game from the book into the real world here in the cafe. I notice that I haven't talked too much about the book itself, but hopefully my reaction to it has given you some indication of what to expect. I think you'll love it. I think my friends will love it, and I'm going to go tell them now.
To download now please click the link below. http://bluewildcat.com/RPO.htm