Ready Player One - Ernest Cline [0]
for Ready Player One
“[An] adrenaline shot of uncut geekdom … sweet, self-deprecating Wade, whose universe is an odd mix of the real past and the virtual present, is the perfect lovable/unlikely hero.”
—Publishers Weekly
“The pure, unfettered brainscream of a child of the ’80s, like a dream my thirteen-year-old self would have had after bingeing on Pop Rocks and Coke.… I couldn’t put it down.”
—Charles Ardai, Edgar Award–winning author
and producer of Haven
“Pure geek heaven. Ernest Cline’s hero competes in a virtual world with life-and-death stakes—which is only fitting, because he’s fighting to make his dreams into reality. Cline blends a dystopic future with meticulously detailed nostalgia to create a story that will resonate in the heart of every true nerd.”
—Christopher Farnsworth, author of Blood Oath
“A fantastic adventure set in a futuristic world with a retro heart. Once I started reading, I didn’t want to put it down and I couldn’t wait to pick it back up.”
—S. G. Browne, author of Breathers
“Cline has somehow managed to jack into the nervous system of some great warm collective geek-dream nostalgia of the ’70s and ’80s and used the precious touchstones he’s rediscovered there to create an adventure that’s almost more experienced than read.… Ready Player One let me romp through some of the best memories of my youth.”
—Paul Malmont, author of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril
“Imagine that Dungeons and Dragons and an ’80s video arcade made hot, sweet love, and their child was raised in Azeroth. If you’re not already experiencing a nerdgasm at the thought, I don’t want to know you.”
—John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of Old Man’s War
“Ready Player One expertly mines a copious vein of 1980s pop culture, catapulting the reader on a light-speed adventure in an advanced but backward-looking future. If this book were a living room, it would be wood-paneled. If it were shoes, it would be high-tops. And if it were a song, well, it would have to be ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ I really, really loved it.”
—Daniel H. Wilson, author of Robopocalypse
“I was blown away by this book.… Ernie Cline has pulled the raddest of all magic tricks: He’s managed to write a novel that’s at once serious and playful, that is as fun to read as it is harrowing. A book of ideas, a potboiler, a game-within-a-novel, a serious science-fiction epic, a comic pop-culture mash-up—call this novel what you will, but Ready Player One will defy every label you try to put on it. Here, finally, is this generation’s Neuromancer.”
—Will Lavender, New York Times bestselling author of Obedience
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Dark All Day, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cline, Ernest.
Ready player one : a novel / Ernest Cline.—1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Regression (Civilization)—Fiction. 2. Virtual reality—Fiction. 3. Utopias—
Fiction. 4. Puzzles—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.L548R43 2011
813′.6—dc22 2011015247
eISBN: 978-0-307-88745-0
Jacket design by Christopher Brand
v3.1
For Susan and Libby
Because there is no map for where we are going
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Level One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Level Two
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter