Ready Player One is a Self-Indulgent-Self-Insert

I feel uniquely positioned to write this post as I’ve read both novels in the series, watched the film, and it’s initially (along with Sword Art Online) what sparked my interest in virtual reality. Looking back, the world Ernest Cline created is goofy to a fault. Having read the first novel in middle school, I remember it feeling far, far larger than it actually is. It ticked all the right boxes for 7th grade me, but college me has a hard time rationalizing where I derived my excitement. Wade, the narrative’s protagonist, lives in abject squalor. He’s a no-life, relegated to a small room in a trailer that’s one amongst a stack of numerous others. He then rises up, follows the hero’s joruney, takes down a megacorp, and wins the day—beacuse of course he does. The social commentary is a little too on the nose, that life is eventually going to suck and were all going to rot away amidst crude digital facades of happiness… unless we rebel. I don’t think it’s a bad message, I actually quite like that it’s anti-establishment, but it’s definitely for a younger audience. Therein lies the problem, though. The series relies far too much on nostalgia for things decades beyond the grasp of a middle school student. It feels like Cline got carried away in dreaming up a romanitized version of his own past to care if it worked well. It doesn’t—though in the film the visuals do aid a bit. It also feels like Wade is the type of person Cline so desperately wanted to be. It feels like a fanfiction of his own life, and the second novel just goes way, way off the rails into some seriously batshit stuff that had me rolling my eyes. Whatever my criticisms, though, I still have a soft spot for the original. It was a fun read/watch then, and I’d even reccomend it to people around the age I was when I read it. The novel, film less so, is a lesson in embracing absurditity. Master that, and maybe you’ll enjoy it.