Ready Player One (2011) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Summary edit see section history

Characters/People edit see section history

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• Wade Owen Watts (Known as Parzival in the OASIS): Main Character. 18 years old
• James Donovan Halliday: Creator of the Oasis as well as many other video games including the hunt that takes place within the Oasis. He is present in the game after his death through the continued survival of his avatar Anorak.
• Aech: Gunter, primary competitor in the hunt, and Wade's best friend. Aech runs a "chat room" where he and Parzival frequently meet to talk and laugh.
• Art3mis: Gunter and primary competitor in the hunt. Wade's romantic interest.
• Nolan Sorrento: CEO of IOI and head of the Sixers
• Ogden Morrow: Long time friend and partner of James Halliday. Helped create the Oasis. His avatar is known as "The Great and Powerful Og"
• Anorak: James Halliday's character name when playing RPG's as well as his avatar's name in the Oasis
• Daito: Gunter and primary competitor in the hunt.
• Mr. Ciders: Wade's Advanced OASIS Studies teacher
• Mrs. Rank: Wade's Latin teacher
• Mr. Avenovich: Wade's World History teacher
• Todd13: A jerk that goes to Wade's school.
• I-r0k: A 'friend' of Aech. Aech keeps him around for humor. A noob gunter who knows (compared to other gunters) nothing of Halliday or the 80's.
• Steven Pendergast: A MIT student that shared a "discovery" he found with the media for his 15 minutes of fame. After that when a person goes public with a clue it is known as "pulling a Pendergast."
• Karen "Kira" Underwood: Odgen's high school sweetheart that he later marries. She is the 1st Gregarious Games employee.
• Aunt Alice: Wade's aunt that really doesn't want him living with her.
• Richard Strauss: Alice's live-in boyfriend
• Mrs. Gilmore: Wade's sweet neighbor several trailers down.
• Dave Theurer: Add a description of this character.
• Charles Ardai
• Tommy Queue: Main character in the IOI training videos (faux situation comedy).
• Patsy
• Max Headroom: 80's computer generated character from a sci-fi series called Max Headroom. He was the alter-ego of a character called Edison Carter, who was a reporter for Network 23 in a post-apocalyptic future. Both were played by actor Matt Frewer.
• Michael Wilson
• Mechagodzilla: Torrento's mech, Very Powerful
• Warren Robinett
• Johnny Sokko
• Howie
• Acererak: Lich that is the boss in the D&D module "Tomb of Horrors".
• Ms. Rank
• Bryce Lynch: Alter-ego of Wade, used when he goes underground hiding from the Sixers.
• John Draper
• Chuck
• Akihide Karatsu: Gunter and primary competitor in the Hunt.
• Samantha Evelyn Cook
• Archaide
• Toshiro Yoshiaki
• Marie
• Mr. Lynch
• Mr. Parzival

Quotes edit see section history

• “No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.”

  Wade/Parzival

• “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn't know how to connect with the people there. I was afraid, for all of my life, right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it's also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real”

  Halliday/Anorak

• “Whenever I saw the sun, I reminded myself that I was looking at a star. One of over a hundred billion in our galaxy. A galaxy that was just one of billions of other galaxies in the observable universe. This helped me keep things in perspective”

  Wade/Parzival

• “The once-great country into which I’d been born now resembled its former self in name only. It didn’t matter who was in charge. Those people were rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic and everyone knew it”

  Wade/Parzival

• “You know you've totally screwed up your life when your whole world turns to shit and the only person you have to talk to is your system agent software!”

  Wade/Parzival

• “People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”

  Anorak's Almanac

• “So I remained stuck at school. I felt like a kid standing in the world’s greatest video arcade without any quarters, unable to do anything but walk around and watch the other kids play.”

  Wade/Parzival

• “I never ran out of ammo, because each time I fired a round, a new round was teleported into the bottom of the clip. My bullet bill this month was going to be huge.”

  Wade/Parzival

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• “People who live in glass houses should shut the fuck up.”

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• Douglas Adams. Kurt Vonnegut. Neal Stephenson. Richard K. Morgan. Stephen King. Orson Scott Card. Terry Pratchett. Terry Brooks. Bester, Bradbury, Haldeman, Heinlein, Tolkien, Vance, Gibson, Gaiman, Sterling, Moorcock, Scalzi, Zelazny.

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• “No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful.”

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• I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal. —Groucho Marx

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

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• Like most gunters, I voted to reelect Cory Doctorow and Wil Wheaton (again).

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• Technically, this wasn’t part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.

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• Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation was a big place.

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• “You have been recruited by the Star League to defend the Frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan Armada.”

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• Going outside is highly overrated. —Anorak’s Almanac, Chapter 17, Verse 32

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

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• Oasis: The primary "game" which everyone connect to.
• Middletown, Ohio: James Halliday's home town which appears inside the Oasis
• Columbus, Ohio: IOI Headquarters
• Chthonia: The setting of James Halliday's D&D games. Also recreated in the OASIS on a planet of the same name.
• Archaide: Planet where Halliday's five Game Designer of the Year awards are kept.
• Frobozz: OASIS recreation of the TRS-80 Model III game, Zork.
• Ludus: OASIS Public School Planet, Wade goes to school on this planet.

Organizations edit see section history

• IOI: Evil corporation chasing the egg to gain control of the OASIS.
• GSS - Gregarious Systems Simulations: Halliday's Company that created the OASIS.
• Halcydonia Interactive: Ogden and Kira's non-profit educational software company They created free interactive adventure games for children.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Gunter: Short for Egg Hunter. The name for those that avidly participate in Halliday's Easter Egg Hunt
• Sixers: The name for those egg hunters that work for IOI. Also termed Suxorz among gunters
• MMOs: Massively Multiplayer Online games
• The Stacks: Trailer homes that have been stacked on top of each other, to maximize space utilization of the 'trailer park homes' area, which had become overpopulated with lower income groups at the height of the energy crisis.
• The Basement: Chat room hosted by Aech, favorite of Wade/Parzival's
• The Scoreboard: The High Scores screen on Halliday's website that tracked the gunters' progress in the hunt.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Virtual Reality Vs. Physical Reality: Describe this theme.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Ernest Cline (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Wil Wheaton (Reader)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• Alex Awards (2012)
• Prometheus Award (2012: Best Novel (tied))

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3603.L548R43
• Dewey: 813

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Recommended for mature teens. There is a substantial amount of language, though for the most part it's not all in one slurred sentence. The characters often use the s-word the most. There are mentions of masturbation and (briefly) porn. One antagonist boasts about how, in the real world, he's always getting laid. The main character visits a virtual brothel, but the details are not enclosed.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Number One Novels: An interview with debut author Ernest Cline.

More Books Like This edit see section history