Ready Player One: A Novel

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg.

“Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix.”—USA Today • “As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates.”—Entertainment Weekly

A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he’s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.

When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune—and control of the OASIS itself.

Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he’s beset by rivals who’ll kill to take this prize. The race is on—and the only way to survive is to win.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly • San Francisco Chronicle • Village Voice • Chicago Sun-Times • iO9 • The AV Club

“Delightful . . . the grown-up’s Harry Potter.”—HuffPost

“An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart.”—CNN

“A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader.”—Boston Globe

“Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that’s both hilarious and compassionate.”—NPR

“[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own.”—iO9

ERNEST CLINE is an internationally best-selling novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. He is the author of the novels Ready Player One and Armada and co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times Best Sellers list. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games.

“The science-fiction writer John Scalzi has aptly referred to Ready Player One as a ‘nerdgasm’ [and] there can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture. . . . But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative.”—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“A fun, funny and fabulously entertaining first novel . . . This novel's large dose of 1980s trivia is a delight . . . [but] even readers who need Google to identify Commodore 64 or Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, will enjoy this memorabilian feast.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Incredibly entertaining . . . Drawing on everything from Back to the Future to Roald Dahl to Neal Stephenson's groundbreaking Snow Crash, Cline has made Ready Player One a geek fantasia, '80s culture memoir and commentary on the future of online behavior all at once.”—Austin American-Statesman

“Ready Player One is the ultimate lottery ticket.”—New York Daily News

“This non-gamer loved every page of Ready Player One.”—Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series

“A treasure for anyone already nostalgic for the late twentieth century. . . But it’s also a great read for anyone who likes a good book.”—Wired

“Gorgeously geeky, superbly entertaining, this really is a spectacularly successful debut.”—Daily Mail (UK)

“A gunshot of fun with a wicked sense of timing and a cast of characters that you're pumping your fist in the air with whenever they succeed. I haven't been this much on the edge of my seat for an ending in years.”—Chicago Reader

"A 'frakking' good read [featuring] incredible creative detail . . . I grinned at the sheer audacity of Cline's imagination.”—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Fascinating and imaginative . . . It’s non-stop action when gamers must navigate clever puzzles and outwit determined enemies in a virtual world in order to save a real one. Readers are in for a wild ride.”—Terry Brooks, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Shannara series

“I was blown away by this book. . . . A book of ideas, a potboiler, a game-within-a-novel, a serious science-fiction epic, a comic pop culture mash-up–call this novel what you will, but Ready Player One will defy every label you try to put on it. Here, finally, is this generation’s Neuromancer.”—Will Lavender, New York Times bestselling author of Dominance

“I really, really loved Ready Player One. . . . Cline expertly mines a copious vein of 1980s pop culture, catapulting the reader on a light-speed adventure in an advanced but backward-looking future.”—Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse

“A nerdgasm . . . imagine Dungeons and Dragons and an 80s video arcade made hot, sweet love, and their child was raised in Azeroth.”—John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of Old Man’s War

Ernest Cline’s science fiction novel Ready Player One paints a grim picture of the year 2045, where humanity is grappling with severe energy crises, economic collapse, and catastrophic climate change. To escape the bleakness of their daily existence, the majority of the world's population spends their waking hours inside the OASIS, a sprawling, utopian virtual reality simulation created by eccentric billionaire James Halliday. When Halliday passes away, he leaves behind a recorded will that sparks a global frenzy. He has hidden an Easter egg deep within the OASIS, and whoever can find three hidden keys—Copper, Jade, and Crystal—and unlock their corresponding gates will inherit his massive fortune and absolute control over the OASIS itself. Because Halliday was utterly obsessed with the pop culture of his youth, the entire hunt is based on a profound knowledge of 1980s video games, movies, music, and literature, turning the world into a planet of obsessed retro-culture scholars known as "gunters" (egg hunters).

The story follows Wade Watts, a poor, orphaned teenager living in a precarious, poverty-stricken trailer park known as "the stacks" in Oklahoma City. Under his avatar name, Parzival, Wade is a fiercely dedicated gunter who uses his time in the OASIS to escape his miserable reality. For five years, the hunt remains at a standstill, with no one able to decipher Halliday’s first clue. However, Wade uses his deep knowledge of Halliday’s life to figure out that the Copper Key is hidden on the virtual school planet of Ludus. He successfully navigates a classic Dungeons & Dragons module and defeats an undead king in a game of Joust to claim the key. His victory places his name at the top of the global scoreboard, making him an instant celebrity. He is quickly followed by his best virtual friend, Aech, his fierce cyber-crush, Art3mis, and a pair of Japanese brothers, Daito and Shoto. Together, they become known as the High Five.

The sudden progress in the hunt attracts the aggressive attention of Innovative Online Industries (IOI), a ruthless multinational corporation desperate to seize control of the OASIS and monetize it. Led by the cold and calculating Nolan Sorrento, IOI employs an army of corporate gunters called "Sixers" to cheat, buy, and force their way to the prize. When Sorrento realizes Wade has found the first key, he attempts to recruit him. When Wade vehemently refuses, Sorrento proves that IOI is willing to kill for the prize by blowing up Wade’s physical home in the stacks, murdering his aunt and dozens of innocent neighbors. Realizing that the game is now a matter of literal life and death, Wade changes his identity, flees to Columbus, Ohio, and goes into hiding, dedicating himself entirely to the hunt while outrunning IOI’s real-world assassins.

As the hunt progresses, the stakes continue to escalate. The gunters manage to find the Jade Key, but IOI’s vast resources allow the Sixers to catch up quickly. The corporate entity proves its ruthlessness once again when they track down Daito’s real-world location and murder him in his apartment, making it look like a suicide. Eventually, Sorrento and the Sixers locate the final challenge, the Crystal Gate. Using a powerful magical artifact, they erect an impenetrable forcefield over the entire sector, effectively locking out all other players while they work on clearing the gate. Facing impossible odds, Wade concocts a wildly dangerous, desperate plan. He intentionally gets himself arrested by IOI forces for unpaid debt, allowing himself to be placed into indentured servitude within their heavily guarded corporate headquarters. From the inside, Wade successfully hacks into IOI’s secure intranet, downloads massive amounts of incriminating data regarding their illegal activities, and steals the password to drop the virtual forcefield before making a daring physical escape.

With the forcefield down, Wade issues a rallying cry to every single user in the OASIS, inviting them to join the High Five in a massive, epic virtual war against the Sixers. The resulting battle is a chaotic, spectacular clash of 1980s pop culture icons, mechs, and magic. During the fight, IOI triggers a catastrophic bomb that destroys the entire sector, killing every avatar present, including Parzival. However, because Wade had previously earned a rare, secret extra-life artifact by playing a perfect game of Pac-Man, his avatar is immediately resurrected. He rushes through the final gate alone, successfully navigating a series of challenges that test his mastery of classic arcade games, Monty Python dialogue, and early computer history. He wins the Easter egg, inheriting Halliday’s fortune and control of the OASIS. The novel concludes on a poignant note; Wade uses his new wealth to bring down IOI, ensures his friends are safe, and finally meets Art3mis in the real world. Embracing her, Wade realizes for the first time in his life that reality, with all its flaws, is the only place where true happiness and connection can be found.