Synopsis from the Ready Player One website:
If you grew up in the 80s and have a single nerd bone in your body, you should at least give this book a try. I have read it twice already and I inhaled it both times. Everyone I’ve recommended this book to who read it, loved it.
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?