Rearranging my reading list to mix up the content and genre was definitely a good idea. Ready Player One got bumped up in my queue because I really needed a fun book to break up some more or less serious books that I want to read. I love sci-fi books even though they are always dystopian. Ready Player One did not disappoint, it was a page turner that kept me on the edge throughout.

I just realized it when I wrote it above, but all books about the future seem to graviate towards the theme of something being build to make life better which ultimately makes life worse. Usually it is some sort of technology that leads the characters to the conclusion that the good ol' days or the old fashioned way of doing this is actually the best. I would really like to read a book about where we either don't progress that much and thus the future is not too different than today, or where we build something that just makes things better. Why not have conflict center around some other aspect of life, but just happen to take place in a future where cool shit makes life better and different? I have yet to come across such a book, but hopefully one day. This book is dystopian in that people escape reality into a virtual world to the point where the world is falling apart around them and this just drives them further into their obsession with the simulation.

I think the type of world that is described in this book is not too far from the reality of the possible in the next few years. We are already getting much better at VR, and based on the trends of computing innovations, I would not be surprised to see something like what is described in this book existing, at least from a technical point of view. Now whether it is adopted at the scale as presented in this book, or if it has the secondary consequences on reality that are preesnt here is a different question. One could argue that we are already evolving into a world that is more disconnected from reality. I think my perspective on that is skewed based on where I live and work, because that does not seem to be the case in many other parts of the US. But, nonetheless, this book make me think a little bit about the ramifications of disconnecting from reality, both positively and negatively.

I definitely recommend this book to anyone of roughly my generation who likes video games and eighties movies. I think it would be good for anyone, but if you hate video games you might find it boring or hard to relate to the abundance of references.