Ready Player One

science fiction novel by Ernest Cline

Ready Player One (2011) is a dystopian novel by Ernest Cline set in the mid-twenty-first century, after the Global Energy Crisis. It details the quest of Wade Watts to complete the conditions set by eccentric billionaire-game-designer James Halliday to win his estate.

See also Ready Player One (film)

Dedication edit

  • We don't need a map because where we are going, there is no map

Prologue edit

  • Everyone my age remembers where they were and what they were doing when they first heard about the contest.
  • At first, these individuals were known simply as "egg hunters," but this was quickly truncated to the nickname "gunters."

Level One edit

  • Being human totally sucks most of the time.
  • Videogames are the only thing that make life bearable.

0001 edit

  • For me, growing up as a human being on the planet Earth in the twenty-first century was a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking.
  • These three words were always the last thing an OASIS user saw before leaving the real world and entering the virtual one:

READY PLAYER ONE

0002 edit

  • No giant two-headed hermaphrodite demon unicorn avatars were allowed. Not on school grounds, anyway.

0003 edit

  • Gunters who wanted help joined a clan, and Aech and I both agreed that clans were for suck-asses and poseurs.

0004 edit

  • A lot of kids owned their own interplanetary vehicles. School parking lots all over Ludus were filled with UFOs, TIE fighters, old NASA space shuttles, Vipers from Battlestar Galactica, and other spacecraft designs lifted from every sci-fi movie and TV show you can think of.
  • The Great Recession was now entering its third decade, and unemployment was still at a record high. Even the fast-food joints in my neighborhood had a two-year waiting list for job applicants.

0005 edit

  • The OASIS —it’s the greatest videogame ever created, and it only costs a quarter.

0006 edit

  • You’d be amazed how much research you can get done when you have no life whatsoever.
  • For the first time, I knew what is was to be a natural at something. To have a gift.
  • After that, going public with a clue became known as “pulling a Pendergast".
  • And then it finally happened. Right while I was sitting there daydreaming in Latin class.

0007 edit

  • And that was when it hit me. Like an anvil falling out of the sky, directly on my skull.

0008 edit

  • For years hunters had speculated that Anorak still roamed the OASIS, now as an autonomous NPC. Halliday’s ghost in the machine.

0009 edit

  • You look like a low-level wimpazoid to me, Juan Ramírez. And I think you’re hiding something.
  • Regardless, you’re a fellow hunter. And a clever one too, or you wouldn’t be standing here.

0032 edit

  • "Dude, you have balls of solid adamantium," Aech said. "Respect."

0039 edit

  • Some time later, she leaned over and kissed me. It felt just like all those songs and poems had promised it would. It felt wonderful. Like being struck by lightning.

External Links edit