Ready Player One: This is the bestseller behind the movie
From the 5th of April, director legend Steven Spielberg (71) invites you to an interesting genre mix of the future world and the retro festival. "Ready Player One", the movie adaptation of the eponymous bestseller by author Ernest Cline, addresses the youth of today and those of the 1980s, as does his template. What made the novel a worldwide success and why, in addition to all the adulation, there were also critical voices, that can be read here (without spoilers).
Forward to the past
For quite a while before series such as "Stranger Things" or films of the brand "Es" revived the 1980s, writer Cline has perfectly met today's nostalgic zeitgeist with his novel "Ready Player One". Although his book is set in a not-so-far-away and dystopian future, it unabashedly celebrates the pop culture of the 1980s.
Precisely for this reason, the novel, which picked up an equally young audience with its computer game theme and the youthful protagonists, was also well received by older students. Whether "Ghostbusters", "Blade Runner", "Back to the Future" or "Ferris makes blue" - quasi every strip from the shoulder pad and Vokuhila decade is quoted. Not to mention computer games.
But it was also declared by some critics as a nostalgia overkill, which spreads the retro charm on more than 500 pages with the always same sleight of hand tricks. Sci-fi writer John Scalzi rightly described "Ready Player One" as "Nerdgasm" - a word that can be read either positively or negatively, perfectly symbolizing Cline's novel.
The author in his own book
But you have to credit Cline with having skillfully interwoven his own love of the 1980s into the storyline of the book. She is represented in the person of the genius James Halliday, who invented in it the virtual world OASIS. Most people flee the barren reality of "Ready Player One" to adventure in Virtual Reality. When Halliday dies, the self-confessed Nerd invites by will to a recent major scavenger hunt by OASIS: Who solves all hidden puzzles and tasks, will become the new ruler of the virtual world.
And because Halliday was once himself a child of the 1980s, his puzzles without exception have to do with this epoch. The prospect of infinite wealth, therefore, has led reasonably to a cult around this decade; Every lucky knight in the OASIS has literally raced them.
So if you want to quickly read the novel before going to the cinema, you can look forward to fun-written entertainment, in which the pages turn almost by itself. Just as entertaining is Spielberg's interpretation of the book, David Cronenberg's "eXistenZ" in youth-friendly and with a sheer infinite number of 1980 references.
