LOVE this book, one of my favorites.
I was just browsing around, and ran across the fact that Olivia Cooke (Emma, on Bates Motel) is cast to play Art3mis!
Wwhheheheeeeeee, best news ever! Only thing better would have been Summer Glau!111
dances a happy dance.
Polekatt I need to read this one of these days.
I JUST SAW THE TRAILER!!!
Its really a thing!! coming out in March!!!
YEAH!!1!!eleventyone!!11!
polekatt haha I wasn’t as big a fan as you seem to be. It was alright, but seemed more like an 80s nostalgia vessle than an interesting story. Felt pretty been there done that to me.
I dunno Shifty, I loved the book, I thought it was hugely interesting. Its a story that “could” happen, ya know- Think how technology is advancing, with VR, and what it has done in the last ten years alone. in 25 more years, you know it could happen. Its so believable. It reminds me of “Kilobyte” by Piers Anthony, a little bit sure, but better written, and all the 80’s references!
Just curious, about the 80’s nostalgia though- I went to high school in the early 80’s. what general age were you then? Not trying to pry, I’m just wondering if the references mean more because I lived through most of them, and if that has any effect.
The story might be interesting, but I honestly didn’t like the movie trailer.
It’s Steven Spielberg’s movie. He hasn’t disappointed me yet. 
polekatt it’s just a pretty typical story is all. I have a feeling the movie will be better than the book.
I can only hope that with all the hype it does not follow the usual trend of being disappointing. My experience tells me that if the hype train start so far in advance, the TV adds, youtube ads jam them down your throat so hard, the movie never lives up to expectation. Also if the advertising budget is a greater than a quarter of the production budget, then it is not a good sign.
Still hopeful that it is gonna be awesome.
polekatt said in /404:
Summer Glau
Summer Glau, Yum, loved her in Firefly and Terminator The Sara Connor Chronicles.
yeah, Trainsmash that is my real fear. That we end up with another Atlas Shrugged or Game of Thrones. Books that I love, and would love to see a visual of, and they then they bomb it or don’t do it justice. Narnia and Lord of the Rings are the ones that set the bar for me, in how to properly do a movie from a book.
ShiftySatchmo man I’m sorry to dwell, but your views just boggle me. hahah. I had never read anything remotely typical of RPO. If you know of any other stories like this, (other than Kilobyte, that I mentioned), Please, please, tell me, I’d love to get them on my reading list!!!
polekatt almost everything the main character does or feels is because it was in something he saw/read/played. He basically is just a shell haha. There are pages and pages of just him talking about media he has consumed, basically just to fulfill some fantasy the reader has that all of the useless knowledge we have about pop culture could be useful.
If the VR world stuff is what you’re considering original, Sword Art Online (the manga) came out two years before this book. And really, the VR is just the only way to make this nostalgia trip possible. It also provides a sweet way to write out of corners because anything can happen in a video game.
If you think “down on his luck kid goes on adventure with side kicks to stop bad guys from doing stuff” is original, this is the first piece of entertainment you’ve ever consumed.
Now, I’m not saying I wasn’t entertained or that I won’t go see the movie. I’m just saying it isn’t a good book in terms of like…writing. I can enjoy things that are bad though 
I expect your counter argument!
polekatt never answered your question! I was born in 86, so not a teenager in the 80s, but I’m the youngest in the whole family so I grew up watching and playing all of the 80s stuff and understood 90% of the references (and at least heard of the other 10%). I’m just not a super nostalgic fellow…or not enough to thoroughly enjoy reading a reference book of 80s pop culture trivia.
Polekatt ShiftySatchmo I enjoyed the book, but felt that it was The DaVinci Code for geeks. Where DVC was just Renaissance painting after artist after European location, RP1 spent so much time trying to prove how awesome it was by dropping names & games that it didn’t actually bother with writing an amazing story or characters.
Armada is even worse.
I’ll still watch the movie, but my hype is held in check… Ready Player One needed Spielberg onboard to give the movie as much chance as possible to get as many licenses into it as possible & I feel there will still be substitutions required (there seems to be an awful lot of Iron Giant in the promo shots), the only previous movie to attempt this (and succeed) was the Lego movie.
ShiftySatchmo good points, all! and your answer to my question just may be the answer to any counter argument.
I wonder if the fact that I grew up and experienced a lot of these references first hand, first run, AS they happened, is the reason I loved this book so much. It may just be that its pulling at all the right nostalgia strings for me.
Also, I’m fascinated by the VR world thing, thats what I was mainly talking about. I haven’t read sword art online, if it is manga, thats why… I just can’t get into manga.
polekatt i don’t have anything AGAINST the references, I just think it is lazy writing to rely on them so heavily that you can’t write a sentence without one. It’s like over-seasoning in cooking.
shiftysatchmo oh I understand where you are coming from now, no worries!
and also confirmed that I may be swayed by the nostalgia thing. I’m the one that just happens to like lots of the seasoning that he used to overseason, hahahah
It would be like Bojangles seasoned fries, some dont’ care for that, but I always tell them to put extra seasoning on mine, and in the end, its just fries with too much seasoning. hahah.