A Review of “Ready Player One.”

by Kyle Pollard

Just finished Ernest Cline’s novel “Ready Player One.” The novel is, like a lot of novels these days, a dystopia where the world is running out of energy and suffering from an acute case of global warming. In the midst of this backdrop, everyone is addicted to and fixated on a virtual world called the OASIS. Earth society is in a state of major social upheaval, and the world is experiencing a widespread economic downturn. The OASIS thrives and even though it’s an MMORPG game (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game), it functions as the only thriving society on the planet. A place where people can interact without needing to go outside where the streets are unsafe and the air not fit to breathe. OASIS virtual currency is the defacto world currency trusted more than government-backed money. When James Halliday, the principal founder of the OASIS dies, it’s announced that he hid an Easter egg in the virtual world and willed his entire multi-billion dollar empire to the person or persons that can find it. An easter egg in programming jargon is an intentional hidden message or feature a programmer places in an interactive game. In this case, James Halliday hid an Easter egg coded deep within the matrix of the OASIS.

Enter Wayde Owen Watts, an orphan living with his aunt who dedicates his entire life to finding what comes to be known as Halliday’s Egg. He is joined by four other players in the game known as Gunters: H, Art3mis, Shoto, and Daito. To locate the egg players in the game must find three keys that unlock three gates where the egg is hidden. The quests the players must complete are hellaciously hard and only solvable in VR by knowing the most minute details of the eighties pop culture scene. Since I graduated from High School in the eighties, reading this book was pure joy. With so many references to eighties music, console games, movies, you name it; there were many good feels and memories unlocked by the words on the page. It’s a wonder how Cline managed the licensing in the book, or how Spielberg will tackle the issue of licensing in the upcoming movie. Fill me in if you know the answer?

The most interesting aspect of the novel to me was the subtle way that Cline works dystopia into the story. The OASIS is incredibly fun, and it’s an exciting game on the surface. The reader can quickly forget about the wasted lives of those who have forsaken existence in the real world to swirl about as zeros and ones in the virtual space. Players can use standard VR rigs to log into the OASIS, or they can use haptic form fitting suits/gloves/goggles and kick back in a suspended chair. Wealthy users of the OASIS have rooms designed with spherical treadmills that function like a gerbil’s exercise ball to produce an entirely immersive experience. You can run in any direction with simulated physical touch and smell served up like room service to the gerbil on the exercise ball.

So while the book covers the fun and exciting aspect of the OASIS, it’s easy to forget that beneath the fun surface veneer of the novel exist people that have shaven their entire bodies to include those pesky eyebrows to cut down on time needed for personal grooming IRL. In one scene Wade is forced to rent a public OASIS terminal. The assistant at the counter warns him that there is an extra charge for any waste left behind – feces, sperm, vomit – that sort of thing. The world of the novel is a dying world, and everyone is escaping their nightmarish existences by living their lives in VR as much as possible. In Japan, for instance, OASIS addicts are called “the lost generation” and count on families to bring food and water to keep them alive. Cline highlights none of this in his book, but the concept is always present, lurking in the shadows like an addict waiting to score.

Is this where we are now heading? Suspiciously, virtual reality, while still not capable of producing an instance as great and immersive as the OASIS, is getting its groove on and gearing up for production. The climate on our little blue grain of sand is at a critical tipping point, and there are signs that efforts to fight global warming may fail. We are of course not at the point of total collapse as you see in “Ready Player One,” but the warning signs are there. I guess we will have to wait and see if we plunge into dystopia.

Personally, I believe that Cline’s book will prove to be very prophetic unless we can learn how to concentrate on what life in the real world has to offer. Technology sings with the beautiful voice of the Greek Sirens that enticed sailors of long ago to crash into dangerous reefs. Virtual Reality may turn out to be the most gorgeous and talented singer of all. This Siren’s song will be powerful and all-consuming. We live in an uncertain world. The dogs of war are howling for more blood, more weapons, more death, as the oceans slowly rise. We may soon need the OASIS to plug in and tune out the crumbling world around us.

Ready Player One Part 2: Parzival’s Quests – Online Games You Can Play Now

Photo Credit: “Arcade Games” by Sam Howzit is licensed under CC-BY 2.0
Text added to the image that was resized and manipulated with photo filters.

Fiat Homo Free Online Audio

BBC Radio is currently running an audio version of the “Fiat Homo” section of Walter M. Miller, Jr’s hugely popular post-apocalyptic novel “A Canticle for Leibowitz.” The novel won the Hugo award in 1961 and is still in print to this day. Nigel Lindsay of BBC Radio is the narrator. Click the image above for BBC links to episodes 1 through 5. “Fiat Homo” is the first part of the novel. The story takes place in the Southwestern United States after a nuclear war devastates the planet. A thousand years after the destruction of the planet, a fictional Order of Leibowitz is preserving tattered remnants of scientific knowledge and plans to hold onto the kernels of knowledge until humanity is ready for it once again. Enjoy!

Photo Credit: “Walter M. Miller – A Canticle for Leibowitz”
by RA.AZ is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Image resized and cropped and placed as an object on top of background.

Photo Credit: “Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos”
by Thierry Ehrmann is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Image used as background, resized and cropped to fit required size.

Jennifer Lawrence was said to really have major hesitations when asked to sing “The Hanging Tree” on Mockingjay Part 1. Rumor has it she even cried before performing the song because she felt so strongly against singing on the film. I for one am very glad that she pushed through those fears and sang the song.I for one think its beautiful!

Take a listen below and let me know what you think?

Photo Credit: “Hunger Games by Mike Mozart”
by Mike Mozart is licensed  under CC BY 2.0
Image resized and overlayed with itself.

Keep Writing Dystopian Fiction:

There has been a lot of buzz recently concerning dystopian sci-fi and its effect on our view of technology and the future. Leading scientists fear the rise of artificial intelligence since they believe it will inevitably lead to terminator cyborgs rampaging through cities. Of course, the tech to destroy us was built in the 1940’s. To this day the nukes are prepared to fly, the tail fins howling doom as they scream like banshees slicing through the pre-apocalyptic air. The genie is already out of the bottle. There is no need to distress over dystopian fiction. That’s the least of our worries. The tech to destroy civilization still hunkers underground and beneath the ocean depths. Dystopian fiction allows to confront the horrors we face with an eye to how we can overcome them.

In a September 14^th, 2014 article in Wired, Michael Solana proposed: “Obviously science fiction is not the cause of the current mess we’re in. But for their capacity to change the way people think and feel about technology, the stories we tell ourselves can save us—if we can just escape the cool veneer of our dystopian house of horrors.”

Solana’s article “Stop Writing Dystopian Sci-Fi—It’s Making Us All Fear Technology.” Was countered two days later when Devon Maloney countered with his Wired article: “No, Dystopian Sci-Fi Isn’t Bad for Society. We Need It More Than Ever.”

If I had to pick a side, I would stand with Maloney on this issue.

Maloney is right on the money when he states:  “Solana’s accusation that an influx of dystopian science fiction as guilty of somehow exacerbating this fear is troubling. Dystopian fiction mimics what it actually feels like to be in the world, so if it ends up scaring people, well, that’s because the world is scary.”

The world we live in is indeed a frightening place to reside. My mention of nukes at the beginning of this post emphasizes that we live in a world where annihilation is just around the corner every second of every day we live on earth. Will we ever melt down all the nukes and turn them into coat hooks? I doubt it. Yes, the world is a scary place and we need to face those fears if we ever expect to overcome them.

That is not to say that Michael Solana is totally off base. There is a certain element of truth in his premise. I believe that dystopian literature, especially that which portrays technology gone berserk, promotes a mistrust of and outright fear of technology. The novel that comes to mind is Daniel Wilson’s “Robopocalypse” where a robot uprising threatens to wipe out humanity. Stories like this are unrealistic in that it’s highly unlikely an AI would be able to manage such a large number nodes spread out across the earth’s surface. Novels like “Robopocalypse”  promote the belief that we may unwittingly create devices that we cannot control. Stephen Hawking’s intense fear of Artificial Intelligence is well known. Hawking fears that if left unchecked, Artificial Intelligence could lead to the destruction of our planet and the fall of humankind. In “Robopocalypse,” Wilson sums up this fear nicely when the chief super AI villain Archos says:

“You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors’ lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby—they have all led you here, to this moment, where you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor. You have expired. You have accomplished what you were designed to do.” ― Daniel H. Wilson, “Robopocalypse.”

The fear that technology will replace us meaty humans could possibly retard the growth and development of technologies that can actually help mankind. Technology can either save us or destroy us. It’s that simple. How we feel about that equation just may decide the answer. Do we build machines and set them loose as unshackled AI’s with the capacity make their own rules? Or do we build shackled AIs, engineering in something akin to Isaac Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics” into any Artificial Intelligence we create? I vote for the creation of AI Intelligence that follows the three laws of robotics. There must be a way to make this happen.

Do not stop writing dystopian fiction because we need to see humanity as it is, warts and all, and face our biggest fears. Better to go down the path of dystopia via fiction than in actuality. Trust in the essential goodness that is within the core of humanity. We would never create a weapon or super intelligence that could wipe out all of humanity.  Wait a minute – see paragraph one! I guess that makes both Solana and Maloney correct in their assumptions.  Dystopia fiction does make a certain percentage of people fear technology. Plus, this is one scary place to live in the cosmos. In final analysis, however, I still cast my lot with Maloney and his view that we need to face our fears by writing about them, and what better way than through the vehicle of dystopian fiction.

Where do you stand on this issue?