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The Immersive Worlds Project: A Digital Anthology from the New Literacies, Technologies, and Cultures of Writing Classes at Valparaiso University
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Elizabeth Burow-Flak
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Ready Player One
1 2017-11-15T05:17:54-08:00 Elizabeth Burow-Flak 4f9877ad9886eb04a10ae8ec4926f06e5b50fc35 26279 1 book cover plain 2017-11-15T05:17:54-08:00 Elizabeth Burow-Flak 4f9877ad9886eb04a10ae8ec4926f06e5b50fc35This page is referenced by:
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Ready Player One
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2022-05-09T13:48:50-07:00
Ernst Cline's Ready Player One (2011) depicts the OASIS, an immersive gaming, education, and business environment, as a welcome release from an otherwise oppressive and environmentally devastated dystopia. An optimistic, young adult variant of a cyberpunk novel, Ready Player One depicts its protagonist, Wade Watts--known by his online moniker, Parzival--hacking into corporate corruption at the headquarters of the nefarious IOI, or Innovative Online Industries. He accomplishes this while questing against all odds with a fellowship of online buddies in a Willy Wonka-style competition.
Rich with references to 1980s film, music, and video games, the novel bakes into its plot an appreciation for 1980s culture: a time when, according to Cline, geek culture came into its own. In addition to celebrating the pop culture for which Cline and the fictional OASIS creator, James Halliday, are nostalgic, the novel questions, as is inimical to virtual worlds, what is virtual, what is real, and how developments in one impact the other. Cline is also the author of Armada (2015), which is set, like Ready Player One, in a gaming environment. Stephen Spielberg directed the film version in 2017,
Excerpts, Ready Player One
From opening chapters- Understanding the World of Ready Player One, with material from chapter 1
- Easter Eggs and Film in Ready Player One--compares the video version of James Halliday's will, Anorak's Invitation, to the fan culture surrounding the trailer for the film, Ready Player One.
- The Will of James Halliday, with focus particularly on differences between the book and the film. Contains material from chapter 1.
- From the beginning chapters, with focus on school in the OASIS and Wade beginning to solve the riddle. Includes portions of text in multiple formats, including Wordle to show word frequency.
- The Fictional Real World of Ready Player One, with focus on the dystopian environment in which the novel is set. Contains material from chapters 1, 5, and 9.
- The hunt for the key--from chapter 8
- from Chapter 30, in which Wade, posing as an debtor indentured to Innovative Online Industries, hacks into the system in true cyberpunk fashion.
- from Chapter 33, in which Wade has a real-life meeting with Halliday's former friend, Ogden Morrow, and still more surprisingly, with Aech.
- Gender and identity in Ready Player One
- Ready Player One and its parallels with Harry Potter
