Enjoy Your Flight

Okay, the summer holiday season is nearly over but some of you have long flights to look forward to on your way to VMworld; so perhaps some geeky novels could help pass the time. Well, it’ll make a change from trying to catch up on all those features that you will never use in the latest version of VMware.

Ready Player One is the first novel from Ernest Cline; who wrote the screenplay for  thecult film ‘Fanboys’; set in a grim near future where the energy crisis, global climate change has lead to widespread disease, poverty, war and famine. Indenture for debtors has become law and large corporates rule the roost.

A familiar setting but within this setting, a funny, exciting and well imagined novel is set. For despite the bleak reality, the population of this world can escape into a virtual reality known as OASIS.

The OASIS was developed and built by James Halliday; a reality built on top of geek culture from the 70s on. Halliday has died and left no heir but he has left a will leaving his fortune to the person who can find the three keys within OASIS to unlock the Easter Egg hidden within the game.

A whole culture has built up around this; loners, gaming clans and even a big bad corporate all seek the keys to the realm. A culture obsessed with the minutiae of geek culture, who know Monty Python backwards, Wargames, The Breakfast Club…Pacman….Zork…all these are believed to hold the answers to the quest.

A young man finds himself the first to crack the first clue and from this, the quest for control of OASIS turns into a race with twists and turns; well imagined realities with many of tips of the hat to especially 80s culture lead to a book within a book, how many can you spot and how many do you know.

If you grew up geek and love geek culture….this is the book for you. And if you didn’t, there’s a cracking adventure story in it and it might just make you curious enough about geek culture to google some of the references.