It is never healthy to get too big for one’s literary britches. (Professor Shapiro would not allow them in the classroom.) Fortunately, I was nudged otherwise to read Ready Player One. The Texas Instruments calculator was just invented as I sat down in my first actuarial class at Penn State. I grew up before the age of video games and the prevalence of computers. However, I would have shortsightedly passed on reading a novel set in a digitized alternate reality where the main characters are gamers. I try to be both conscious of and careful in setting expectations when starting a book, whether fiction or nonfiction. Of course, he must also slay several skilled warrior avatars along the way in deep dark caverns. There was no personal problem, no world problem, whose eloquent solution did not exist-somewhere in the same hexagon.” Watts, with a virtual library at his fingertips, meets every obstacle with grit and ingenuity, solving every roadblock or battle programmed into Halliday’s puzzle through copious research and an increasing base of knowledge. All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure. “When it was announced the library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy. Perhaps Cline echoes Jorge Luis Borges’ short story The Library of Babel. The collected knowledge, art, and amusements of all human civilization were there, waiting for me,” Watts recalls. “Even a penniless kid like me had access to every book ever written, every song ever recorded, and every movie, television show, videogame, and piece of art ever created. But in the alternate reality world of OASIS, the importance of and access to education, as well as an inquiring intellect, are a consistent thread throughout the story. Watts is penniless, parentless and homeless and has almost no chance at a comfortable life. Recall Dungeons & Dragons, the television show “Family Ties,” and the breakfast cereal Cap’n Crunch? They are all there and more. Halliday was a child of the 1980s, and the pop culture references are ubiquitous in his computer software. The story follows teenager Wade Watts, shielding his true identity under the avatar moniker Parzival, searching for the egg and the massive fortune, studying everything he can about Halliday to unlock a succession of clues. The first person to find my Easter egg will inherit my entire fortune.” Halliday leaves behind a video message after his death announcing a treasure hunt for his immense wealth: “I created my own Easter egg, and hid it somewhere inside my most popular videogame-the OASIS. “It was the dawn of a new era, one where most of the human race now spent all of their free time inside a video game.” Most everything as we know it has been replaced by OASIS, an acronym for Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation. “He was the videogame designer responsible for creating the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality that most of humanity now used on a daily basis,” we learn in the opening of Ready Player One. The reclusive James Halliday, a video game designer par excellence, a nerdy rags to riches success story, has died.
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