The Little Book Club, a creation of Little Book Owl nominated Ready Player One as the book of the month. I had only ever heard great things about this, but I was still reluctant to read it. Sci-fi is not my favourite genre (although I have read quite a lot of it this year and have enjoyed everything I have come across) and I was expecting a rehash on Tron.
That was not what this was. I LOVED it! Ok, ok, ok, so a lot of the loving I felt was that I KNEW the 80s! I was a kid in the 80s! I had played some of the games and heard of more. I had seen the movies and could picture the scenes that were referred to - no problem. It was a trip down memory lane - that made me feel cool and not 'old'.
But that was not my sole reason for really liking this book. I see a cautionary tale between the pages. It isn't one of those preachy messages - don't get me wrong. It is just, in my opinion, a very well thought out probability of where we are heading to in the future. As it is, people are spending REAL money on dressing avatars (I am referring to games like Farmville). We are ignoring all warnings about the damage we are doing to the world. Many of us are are happier to live a virtual cyber life on the internet as opposed to socialising with real people in the real world. So, yeah. I think the world depicted in RPO is a pretty good guess of what could come - if we don't realise that we actually need to live offline too. This isn't a one-sided view on internet addiction though. Cline makes OASIS seem wonderful. I would love to have access to OASIS. (Personally I would KILL to be able teach with it!) It is the internet, but a gazillion-million-trillion times better!
The characters are great too. Wade surprised me many times through the book. He changed and developed and grew from the first chapter right to the last. He was a character I wanted to cheer for. What was interesting as far as characterisation went, was that this was a world where race and gender didn't matter - because your avatar did not have to look like you at all. Hell, it didn't even have to be human! It provided a very interesting way of looking at people. No prejudices. People were just people - like it should be.
The pace of the book slowed around the midway mark and it was the only time I was made aware of just how uncomfortable and hard my chair is after sitting on it for a few hours. The change of pace was necessary as far as character development went, but it is the only negative point I could think of.
A very good read that I would recommend to anyone who is a child of the 80s, a geek, a fan of Chuck, a Sci-fi lover or a fan of dystopian fiction.
No comments:
Post a Comment