Worldbuilding and “Ready Player One”
A bit more than a review
A short while ago, I read Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One cover to cover in a little over a week, which should tell you just how much I liked its 374 pages. It started off slow, with Cline taking his time to build the world the story is set in, making the first seventy-odd pages of the book a bit boring. That’s understandable though — he’s faced with the arduous tasks of establishing a fresh dystopia, a whole new way of living, and introducing the main character Wade Watts and his motivations.
What made these uniquely challenging is that the world of Ready Player One is not one whose rules need to be described and set out. Rather, it’s one where the same rules that you and I live with need to be adapted to a completely different set of people with different driving forces and different backstories. Additionally, the premise of the story, Halliday’s Hunt, is not something that can be written off in a few sentences. It requires pages of describing how and why the OASIS all but took over everyone’s lives the world over and how the dystopia the characters live in has pushed everyone into the welcoming arms of virtual escape. Cline accomplishes this fantastically, developing the story into more than just a video game contest brimming with ’80s nostalgia — it’s a story about how Wade, like many others, grew up with the…
