CP Book Club - October 15 Book: READY PLAYER ONE

[woob]

Wow, such a great book. I just finished it a few minutes ago, so I'll need to think awhile and read through all the comments above.

Spoiler!

What I really enjoyed about the ending, is it was such a 80s style ending. Everything worked out so well, there was some super cheese to it which made me grin just like I would while watching the end of Back to the Future, the love between the two primary characters gets fully realized, and the final two paragraphs were such a perfect cap to an epic and fun story. Yeah, I ate it up and soaked it in.

The immensity of the book's constant references to pop culture/video games/etc. makes think this movie has the potential to be so incredible, but also makes me worry that it will be nothing close to how great the book is.

[woob]

Where's all the discussion?

[GGG]

Originally Posted by troutman

What does it mean to be human then? Are we just consciousness, and our bodies only vessels?

I would say yes,

We have discrete sensory inputs that provide signals that are easily tricked.

Look at a dream state. When you have hyper realistic dreams that you don't immediately realize are dreams. So if are own minds can be tricked by themselves a machine that is sophisticated enough should be able to provide those inputs.

So with a haptic suit you should be able to simulate it well enough for the mind to be unable to distinguish between the two worlds.

An interesting argument against this would be that premature babies have a better survival rate when they are touched by people. The simple act of contact is a human need.

[Harry Lime]

I just finished the book, and skipped right to the last page of discussion to give my immediate impression.

I was basically a geek right out of the womb, so I was reading fantasy and sci-fi, playing dos and early windows games, and watching horrible movies practically before I could walk. Only slightly exaggerated. I really enjoyed that not only was the narrative obsessed with the time period, but if you watch or read many stories written in the eighties, they have the same sort of underdog/sappiness to them. It was nice to not have a needlessly gritty story, as has become the norm in sci-fi lately.

The one thing that did drive me crazy was the super human ability of the gunters to memorize everything they have ever come in contact with. Memorizing all of the dialogue and action from Beastmaster, while solving King's Quest in one life, while being able to play all of the instruments from the horrible 20-20 Texas Gladiator soundtrack, and then times that by several thousand..... this book made me hate people with photographic memories. I'm not sure if that was it's goal.

I was both proud and saddened by the fact that the only references I didn't get were the Gundum style anime ones. I always hated the giant robot sub-genre.

Entertaining book, and one that I would recommend. It might be better if you knew at least half of the references, because they are laid on a little thick. This story is right up Speilbergs alley.

[troutman]

Cline has a new novel out in hardcover (seems to be like The Last Starfighter):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armada_%28novel%29

[Fire]

Originally Posted by troutman

Cline has a new novel out in hardcover (seems to be like The Last Starfighter):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armada_%28novel%29

Not getting very good reviews from what I can see.

[photon]

Haha I already listened to Armada. It had its own charms and held my attention, but was probably about as good a book as Ready Player One but without the nerdiness (well it's still nerdy, video game nerdy, but nearly as much).

[Harry Lime]

I got the impression that Ready Player One was a labour of love, decades in the making. I'm willing to bet that Armada is more of a 'holy crap, RP1 made so much money! How can I double down as quickly as possible?'. My expectations are very low, and Armada at the bottom of my already teetering pile of 'to read' books. It would be hard to replicate the charm of RP1, which is really what ended up holding the book together.

[troutman]

On December 7, 2012, Cline announced the sale of the film rights to Armada to Universal Pictures for a reported seven-figure sum.