Ready Player One by Ernest Cline takes place in the year 2045 during an energy crisis on earth. With fossil fuels depleted and the overcrowding of cities and lack of food and work, life generally sucks.

Then, the Oasis was created, a home away from home. The Oasis is an immersive virtual reality videogame that allows players to shop, go on quests, explore different worlds, and more. The creator of Oasis, James Halliday, has recently passed. In his will, Halliday left a game, an “egg-hunt,” within the Oasis world, and the first person to solve the clues and win will receive the inheritance of his vast fortune. The story follows the young teenager Wade Watts as he tries to be the first to find Halliday’s egg.

Ready Player One depicts a dark, dystopian future. People rely on solar energy with there being no more fossil fuels. Many of the poor live in stacks of mobile homes piled dangerously high. Some people may even become indentured servants for the notorious internet company I.O.I. to pay back their debts. It seems like the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. Winning Halliday’s fortune could fix all the problems one may have.

This is an extremely nerdy and retro book, with references from anything and everything about the 80’s. From classic games like Adventure and Dungeons and Dragons, to movies like Revenge of the Nerds and LadyHawke, and classic bands such as Rush. The book was very entertaining with its wide knowledge of classic pop culture. It did get a bit slow though in some parts of the book, where it took pages to explain everything, before the action would pick up again. Overall, it was still a good book.

Ready Player One, the movie, comes out in theaters March 29, 2018.