By Ernest Cline
The story is set in a not so typical apocalyptic future, brought about by man’s excess. There are no robots or zombies or aliens, just hunger, poverty and desperation. People escape this bleakness by logging into OASIS. In broad terms, it’s a Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game, with emphasis on the Massive. You can do anything you want in OASIS. Go to a virtual school, be a virtual fashion designer, you could live your entire life in there. You can even play World of Warcraft or EVE Online – not as stand-alone modules – actually in OASIS. I’m assuming there are other zones dedicated to specific game universes that replicate the mechanics of their respective games, as well as zones dedicated to one-on-one fighting games, scrolling shooters, racing games and first-person shooters – it would stand to reason.
The basic premise is that the creator of OASIS dies, and being a nerdy loner, he never got around to having kids. So, there’s no heir to the estate. Obsessed by videogame culture, he created a competition based around 80’s pop-culture and obscure videogame references. The prize? Complete ownership of OASIS. On one hand you have Parcival, the hero of the story. With no real family, he’s dedicated his life to cracking the code and escaping his dreary existence. On the other hand you have IOI. A stereotypical evil corporation that want nothing more than total control over the most popular online game on the planet. Three keys open three gates. First player to open all three gates wins everything.
I loved the little details, like how OASIS players who were participating in “The Egg Hunt” where abbreviated from “Easter Egg Hunters” to “Gunters”. I loved that the actual “Egg Hunt” wasn’t actually an Easter Egg. Parcival randomly assumed that he’d find a key or a gate if he got to the kill-screen on a dusty, old (and oddly out of place) Pac-Man arcade machine. No key, no gate, instead he was rewarded with a mysterious quarter that was just stuck in his inventory. Real OASIS Easter Egg, right there. I loved how the IOI department charged with cracking the egg mystery was called the “Department of Oology”. Also, I loved that they were called “Sixers” because their employee ID numbers began with six, and were six digits long. Stuff like that screams “REAL” to me. Or at least whispers “VERY WELL THOUGHT OUT”. It’s the little details.
I loved most of the references. One of the first lines (describing the state of the real world) is “mass hysteria, cats and dogs living together” – a Ghostbusters reference. I say “most”, because a fair few references went over my head. Some made me cringe – A Delorean called KITT made to look like ECTO-1? Fuck off. Most of the American-centric ones just made no sense to me, and some of the Anime were lost on me too. Although it was awesome to do a Bing image search and suddenly have my mind filled with all these giant robots having a MAJOR rumble. Oh man, that scene. That damn scene. It makes me want to pick up a pencil again. I want to illustrate the epic, penultimate battle. I wouldn’t be able to do it justice, but shit, it inspires me to have a go.
Bottom line – well worth a read.
Edit: Apparently there’s a film of this in the works. I would be very interested to see how it turns out.
