Ready Player One online ebook 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 When I tell you what this book is about, most of you are going to think "That doesn't sound like something I'd enjoy. I'm not a gamer, and I'm not really a 1980s buff." Just forget all that. Seriously. I thought that too, but I was dead wrong. This is one of the most fun and exciting books I've read this year. The only reason I tried it was because Alyce at At Home With Books got so gosh darned excited about it that I felt like I had to read it. And I am so glad I did! Here is the basic set-up: In the year 2044, most of Earth's population are living in poverty and misery. One of the few ways to make life bearable is to plug-in to the OASIS--a fully immersive virtual reality world where people can attend school, shop, date, and play. Basically, anything that can be done in the real world can be done in the OASIS--minus the pesky boundaries of the real world (like gravity, lack of magic and so forth). (The OASIS is very much like the Matrix, except that people consciously and voluntarily log in to the OASIS.) Upon the death of primary OASIS architect, James Halliday, a worldwide contest is announced, with the prize being Halliday's entire estate, which includes his personal stake in OASIS and a fortune valued at more than $240 billion dollars. To win, all you have to do is be the first person to solve a series of riddles and puzzles that Halliday has hidden within the OASIS. Naturally, Halliday made the contest extremely difficult. Knowledge of Halliday's personal likes, dislikes, and life are the key to success. It turns out (in a stroke of genius by Cline) that Halliday was obsessed with the 1980s, particularly vintage video games (like those from Atari, Ms. Pac Man), Dungeons and Dragons, movies like War Games and Ladyhawke, and music by bands such as Rush and Oingo Boingo. Halliday grew up in the1980s, and his whole life was informed and determined by 1980s culture. To succeed at the Hunt (as the contest comes to be known), a new subculture of Halliday scholars and searchers called "gunters" is born. (Gunters are people who spent every free moment of their lives searching for Halliday's Egg, the virtual form of the prize that Halliday has hidden.) In addition, the villain of the book--the mega-corporation IOI--is also going after the Egg with everything they've got in an effort to seize control of OASIS and commercialize the hell out of it. However, five years have passed since Halliday's death and the start of the Hunt, and no one has yet to solve the first riddle. That is, until our hero, 18-year-old Wade Watts, an orphaned gunter who lives in poverty in the "stacks" on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, becomes the first person to appear on the Scoreboard when he find the Copper Key (the first of three hidden keys). And, as Wade says in the prologue: Dozens of books, cartoons, movies and miniseries have attempted to tell the story of everything that happened next, but all of them got it wrong. So I want to set the record straight, once and for all. The rest of the book is the breathless, deliriously fun, adrenaline-filled account of Wade's quest to find Halliday's egg. Filled with adventure, close calls, death, humor, romance, friendship, pain and a bajillion references to 1980s pop culture, the book is a kick to read. I enjoyed it immensely, and
found myself so caught up in the story that I abandoned any pretense of housekeeping and devoured the book in just a few days. (Yesterday, I just sat and read it until I was done because I couldn't wait to find out how it ended.) Too often, the thriller genre is filled with run-of-the-mill story lines such as "a lawyer found a secret and now he has to hide from the bad guys" or "a tough guy loner is in town to find the sniper who is picking off ordinary citizens" or "a serial killer seems to be loose in the PTA." Very few of these books are actually thrilling--where you literally feel your pulse quicken and you're on the edge of your seat waiting to see what happens next. Ready Player One is a true thriller. I was so caught up in what was going on that I just raced from page to page. It totally read like a movie ... and I mean that in the very best way. The other great thing about the book was how Cline built this dystopic future world that is totally (thank God!) unlike ours but then chose to make Halliday obsessed with the 1980s--thereby providing a motherlode of cultural touchstones that feel familiar and fun and fresh. By cleverly combining a unfamiliar future with the familiar past, Cline gives us the best of both worlds--allowing us to relate to Wade in a way that we could never fully relate to other dystopic heroes like Katniss Everdeen or Todd Hewitt. When Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail makes an appearance, I was smiling from ear-to-ear. I'm sure everyone will be able to relate to at least a few of the 1980s references, and if you can't, it still doesn't diminish the rollercoaster thrill ride that is this book. Do yourself a favor and read Ready Player One. It was one of the funnest and most thrilling reading experiences I've had all year.
Ready Player One, Ernest Cline's 2011 debut novel, is set in the grim future of 2044, where economic collapse and energy shortages make life unbearable. Or, at least, part of it is. In this dystopian future, most people spend their days connected to the OASIS, an online virtual world where people can forget their troubles and be whoever they want to be while exploring thousands of exotic planets. Several years before the story begins, James Halliday, the eccentric creator of the OASIS who was obsessed with the 1980's of his youth, dies, leaving behind a message that the first person to solve his cryptic riddles and find a hidden easter egg he's left in the OASIS would win his huge personal fortune and control of Halliday's company, Gregarious Simulation Systems. Our hero, Wade Watts - or, as he's known in the OASIS, Parzival (Percival was taken) - is an 18 year old who has only known misery in the real world, but has spent five years hunting Halliday's easter egg and mastering every bit of obscure '80's trivia he can find to try to solve Halliday's obscure clues. Parzival's friends Aech (mentor and best buddy), Art3mis (rival and love interest), Daito and Shoto (a pair from Japan working as a team) are also gunters (as the egg hunters are known), and become his friendly competition. The unfriendly competition comes from Innovative Online Industries, led by the ruthless Nolan Sorrento. IOI and their hordes of corporate lackeys known as Sixers are also looking for the egg, so that they can rule the OASIS and "monetize" it properly. Monthly fees, advertising everywhere, an
end to the guaranteed anonymity of the OASIS - it would be an end to life as Wade's generation knows it, and IOI will stop at nothing to reach the egg first and make it a reality. The novel is filled to the brim with '80's references from film, television, video games, books, Dungeons & Dragons, and more, and anyone who grew up in that era will appreciate many of them. Cline does a great job of explaining them so that even if you don't have the trivia mastery Parzival does, you can keep up, and he makes it entertaining. I was born in 1978 (or, to put in Ready Player One terms, my first video game system was an Intellivision, but I spent way more time playing on the NES), while the fictional Halliday and the real Cline and Wheaton were all born in 1972, so there are a few references to the really early '80's I wasn't initially familiar with, but it didn't slow me down. As fun as the fantastic voyages into the OASIS are, Cline does a great job of keeping the action in the real world important and exciting. Parzival finding the hidden keys, leveling up, and getting epic gear are very well done and entertaining, but the heart of the book is Wade's story and his personal growth and the struggle to juggle his quest for the egg and the need to survive and make personal connections in the real world. Those were the parts that really made me think (as I sit here typing the review to post in the internet - yes, I'm aware of the irony). Actor, writer, and geek Wil Wheaton narrates the book, and he does a fantastic job. His characterization of Wade/Parzival and his friends and rivals really makes the story come alive. You can tell that Wheaton loves the material as much as Cline and Parzival, and experienced it himself as he perfectly renders all the movie quotes and classic video game sound effects of the era. Truly, I cannot think of another audiobook narrator who could nail the Pac-Man death bwoop like Wil does. This is one of those rare combinations of book and audio narrator that really adds another level of enjoyment to the experience. Ready Player One is one of the best books I've read this year, and it has definitely put Cline on my radar as an author to watch. The film rights have been sold and Cline (who is also a scriptwriter) is working on the script. I'd love to see Ready Player One on the big screen. In the meantime, I heartily recommend you read Ready Player One, and if you are an audio book fan, definitely listen to it and enjoy Wheaton's fantastic performance. The only thing that would have improved the book for me would be if Parzival was a descendent of Erdrick.
To download now please click the link below. http://bluewildcat.com/RPO.htm