Amph Ready Player One- book and film discussion thread

Yep, any interest in this (low to begin with) is now at zero

 

That's in the book, but i'd say it isn't representative of the book.

You have a lot of just info dumps of nerd culture that read like that. But the actual meat of the book is this kid discovering himself amidst an 80's revival built on the internet, woven into a hero's journey of saving the Oasis. Yeah, that part is cringe as hell, but that's not a large enough part of the book to keep me from loving it.

 

The book is fun, it's not going to solve world peace. It's got some underlying good ideas (most interestingly in a world where the US government is going to eliminate net neutrality, of all things) that are explored somewhat superficially. Ender would hate the quasi-populist message underlying the whole thing.

But it's the Stranger Things of future-dystopia... nothing really wrong with that.

The casting of one of the leads is pretty crap though...

 

Well Stranger Things isn't also slapping its own back of assumed cleverness, and the nostalgia infuses the story. It isn't the basis for it.

I'm now getting the feeling you have not read Snow Crash dp4m.

 

The book is aggressively bad, like it was written on a dare. It’s Twilight for greasy fedora-wearing failsons that own “gaming chairs”. It’s one of the (I think) four novels I’ve been unable to finish in my life.

The movie necessarily will be better than the source material, so that’s a bright point.

 

Honestly, a lot of Stephenson blends together so I can't remember whether I've read Cryptonomicon, Anathem, Snow Crash, etc...

 

The server issues have become aggressively bad, like it was tinkered with on a dare.

 

The server issues have become aggressively bad, like it was tinkered with on a dare.

 

Meta

 

Man the entire plot of Snow Crash is about a dystopian, unequal future where people go online to escape. Except instead of parodying itself with memes that don't quite cover up the shortcomings of the author (and Stevenson's shortcoming is his packed density; Ernest Cline's is that he has absolutely no talent to speak of) it posited a future that predicted in essence MMOs, social media, and the current decentralisation of power in the United States. It's nothing like books about cryptography.

You are required to swap your nerd cred badge for a sweaty fedora ASAP.

 

lol pretending Neal Stephenson is in some way important or good.

 

I am assuming people have read him, yes, which might be where your confusion arises.

 

Ender Sai:

"If you like something I don't like, you're dead to me."

And, judging from your first post on the subject, all this negativity is aimed at a book you haven't actually read.

 

I tried. I really tried. But it just pales in comparison to so many better cyberpunk novels before it. And frankly the sea of contempt for it out there tells me that my gut reaction of "**** this" wasn't a unique one sorry.

It's a bit like people discovering the Hollywood remake of Oldboy and going crazy for it.

 

I never got the sense he was going for a cyberpunk novel in the sense of a Gibson, or Scott / Dick... I mean, he just happened to write a nostalgia novel in a cyberpunk setting, intentionally covering ideas and dangers very lightly (all things considered)...

I considered it more on par with, say, Shadowrun rather than Cyberpunk 2020 for instance.

 

At least they removed that god awful "holy grail of pop culture" bit.

 

That'll teach you, it does look changed and it looks even worse than the book.

 

Ready Player One gets book sequel

I liked the first book so I'll be picking this up when it comes out.

 

In Spielbergian terms, Ready Player One looks like a belated attempt to prove that he is still relevant to the box office. It's an open question. The BFG was one of the biggest large-scale bombs of 2016, earning about 1x its production budget.

There's the feeling that Spielberg can make a Lincoln any time he wants, but that he no longer can get his fingers on the pulse of pop cinema entertainment. His last biggest hit outside Indiana Jones was War of the Worlds at a decent but not spectacular $591 million.

Peak Spielberg box office remains Jurassic Park. 1993. Nearly a quarter century since Spielberg ended his string of top grossing films of all time.

 

I remember back in early 1993, when we were Pen Pals, you predicted Jurassic Park would flop. Those were the days.

 

no, just the opposite. I predicted War of the Worlds would be the first $500 million domestic film. Instead, that's what it made globally.

The trailer for Ready Player One looks...boring. It's indeed a poor man's Snow Crash. The story was a tired trope before it was even written.

 

I'm excited for the movie. That's the first I heard about a sequel to the novel. When Cline's "Armada" was first released, I attended a signing of his at a Manhattan Barnes and Nobel. Of course he signed it with his "MTFBWYA" (May the Force Be With You Always) acronym.

 

Oh, that's what that stands for.

 

I wondered it myself when I got home, but then looked it up and had a "duh" moment.

 

Christ but I do love synergy.

 

I do appreciate his career path. Debut novel has some success, leading to a Spielberg helmed film, any eighties nerd dream come true. Release a second novel that's greeted tepidly, and accused of being more of the same. The solution; a sequel to a novel that doesn't need one, but look, it's the characters people love! No doubt references to sequels that are about as subtle and nuanced as getting a rectal exam from Andre the Giant's big brother.

 

Joke: Ready Player One
Broke: Snow Crash
Woke: Neuromancer
Bespoke: The Iron Dream

 

We'll see how the box office fares for RPO when it comes out. Like it or not the novel was an NYT best-seller for several weeks on first release.

 

Wouldn't Snow Crash be woke and Neuro be broke, simply because Gibson failed to account for portable tech?

I mean, the sky above the port was the colour of television tuned to a dead channel, and the pistol was a South American copy of a Vietnamese imitation of a Walther PPK, double action on the first shot and with some sort of raised, etched dragon pattern on the plastic grips, but still.