Ready Player One & Armada

Riverstorm

@mediamogul @caver01 I finished reading Ready Player One. I really enjoyed it quite a lot. They have endless movies references from Star Wars to Indiana Jones and everything in between. Several nods to some classic MMO's like EverQuest to World of Warcraft. The careful detail of slapping quarters on the marquee for the next play to the D&D Lich King play-off. The puzzles and pacing. Even the main characters real name initials are cool 'WOW' but I never saw the twist with Aech coming. Art3mis is that high school crush to Sorrento who was just born bad literally. It's a great homage to all things '80s.

I liked his take on the Oasis, Sixers and Gunters. I don't know if he made that name up but he definitely breathed life and meaning into it.

The look into the future of life and living in a virtual world is pretty interesting reminds me of the MMO "Second Life". I have mixed feelings on that one. It's cool but kind of creepy. It's a player driven virtual economy with it's own currency called Linden you spend real money to obtain. The you use the Linden to trade and buy virtual goods in a virtual world. The more money you spend the more realistic are skins avatar looks, etc. So I guess in one form it's here in the real world already. The people that play that are a different breed in my opinion. It's like an alternate lifestyle.

The pods are definitely reminiscent of the movie Surrogates. Really looking forward to see if Spielberg can pull out some of the spectacular settings and scenes. The final showdown needs to be epic!

I also read his 2nd book Armada but it's not quite as spectacular for some reason. It has just as many if not more old school references but something's missing. It's good in a way kind of like The Last Starfighter, meets Ender's Game, meets something else. It's would be a great father and son movie. I was little put off the first 50 pages or so deciding if this guys dad is a nutter. I was like move it along already. It's a bit predictable once you get into it but it's a decent read.

I would read more of his books but Ready Player One is definitely the star of the show so far.

lilbud

@Riverstorm I have read RPO about 10 or so times since 2015. I love all the references in the book. I just hope the movie will be good, especially since some of the Spielberg references are taken out and Sorrentos character is changed.

Riverstorm

@lilbud said in Ready Player One & Armada:

Spielberg references are taken out and Sorrentos character is changed.

Really, they are already are making cuts and changes to the movie adaption? I haven't seen anything on movie yet except who's directing it. I had never heard of the book even until Caver & Media mentioned it last fall. I really enjoyed it. Yeah the movie references are rampant and fun to pick out! :) I bet successive read-throughs would reveal missed ones.

celly

@Riverstorm I too, like @lilbud said, have read RPO several times. Which means a lot because outside of work, I'm not a leasure reader. All the references are spot one. Just a fun read.

Armada on the other hand, felt too much like a revamped telling of Enders Game. I liked it, just didn't enjoy it as much.

I'm really looking forward to the RPO movie when it comes out (next year?).

Riverstorm

@celly said in Ready Player One & Armada:

Armada on the other hand, felt too much like a revamped telling of Enders Game. I liked it, just didn't enjoy it as much.

Good to hear it wasn't just me. I couldn't tell if reading them back to back was why I didn't enjoy it as much or it just didn't have that same magic as RPO.

I've been on this reading kick lately and I'll go back and read it at some point too. Right now I jumped out of my vein of normal reads and I am reading a book simply title 11/22/63. It's a Stephen King novel about trying to stop the Kennedy assassination by going back in time. The portal takes them back to the same exact time (several years prior to '63 which they use to plan--a little like Groundhog's Day) every time they pass through it. Interesting is whether they spend 10 minutes or 10 years in the past when they return to the present only 2 minutes have passed even though they have aged according to time in the past. It's not my type of normal book but I am half way through it and curious how it ends. Does changing the past effect a little or a lot of change in the future. It would be interesting to know if Oswald being an ex-marine was really that good of a shot. Landing 2 out 3 shots from a 6th floor building in a 6 second window at a moving away target with an old crappy rifle. I think that's why I started reading it in the first place.

celly

@Riverstorm isn't there a tv show now based on this? A coworker was telling me about this and how it was good, just thought he said tv not book. I could be wrong. Might have to give this a spin, sounds interesting.

pjft

I read RPO last year as well. It was good fun.

I haven't looked into Armada yet, as the reviews were somewhat average and pointed out the same flaws you mentioned, so I wanted to leave on a high note.

I may read it at a later stage when I'm in the mood for it though.

Riverstorm

@celly said in Ready Player One & Armada:

@Riverstorm isn't there a tv show now based on this? A coworker was telling me about this and how it was good, just thought he said tv not book.

Shoot I'm not sure I just read the books. Lilbud might know?

lilbud

@Riverstorm No, he was talking about 11/22/63, a Stephen King novel about a man who could travel back in time and tries to stop JFK's assassination. Made into a Netflix show.

As a general note, if anyone needs books to read, please check out the Amulet series of graphic novels. They are amazing.

Riverstorm

@lilbud said in Ready Player One & Armada:

No, he was talking about 11/22/63, a Stephen King novel about a man who could travel back in time and tries to stop JFK's assassination. Made into a Netflix show.

Ah, oh, swish right over my head! I have Netflix and their CD subscription but I haven't been watching to much on TV lately but I always have it on more for background noise than watching. I'll have to check it out and also the Amulet Series. That new movie Valerian coming out was based on a graphic novel looks pretty good.

caver01

@Riverstorm Glad you finally finished RPO. It is a fun read especially for those of us into the retro gaming stuff. I liked that it crossed into other pop culture references like movies, TV, personal computers, role-playing games and so on. It is a nice mix, but especially hits home for those of use who grew up in the 1980s.

I never bothered with Armada. A friend of mine described it the way you did and said it had a different feel, so I am content with RPO as-is.

I agree with the Surrogates reference. That was on my mind while reading it too. And the Oasis is definitely similar to Second Life. I appreciated that inside the Oasis, there is a vast universe of worlds to explore, and transportation can be fast, or can be tedious, depending on your virtual resources. I also liked the attention that the author paid to the UI, describing situations where you might be reading a virtual display invisible to others while your avatar is just standing there. This reminded me of someone typing a chat message in Unreal Tournament or something, vulnerable while they stood still, chat bubble over their head.

I am looking forward to the movie. Are we ever disappointed with Spielberg’s work? With Cline involved writing the screenplay, I think it stands a good chance of staying at least somewhat true to the book. Some things work great as a novel that can fail miserably in a film, so we will need to allow for some liberties. But what I like about this as a movie as that it is like a future-based, historical fiction, and all of the references are not yet “antiques” so we should see some great props and gameplay alongside some not-so-hard-to-imagine ideas about the future of VR.

By the way, anyone who does not want to take the time to read Ready Player One might be interested in the audiobook which is read by Wil Wheaton (aka STTNG Wesley Crusher). He was a good choice, as the book is told from the perspective of the main character who reminded me of the nerdy/ambitious Ensign Crusher.

mediamogul

@Riverstorm

I'm glad you liked RPO. For better or worse, I can't wait to see the film. I've also read '11/22/63' and seen the mini series. Both were really good in their own way. The repercussions are not as you might expect and are unique to the story. I very much enjoyed the references to King's other stories set in the same time period for the book and yet I think the decision to omit them from the series entirely was wise. Stephen King is so laboriously descriptive on the page, that I personally believe the success of a good King adaptation depends just as much on what is excluded as what's included. All-in-all, I enjoyed both. I also can't wait to learn more about 'Castlerock'.

Riverstorm

@caver01 said in Ready Player One & Armada:

We will need to allow for some liberties.

I will definitely be going in with an open mind. I am the worst critic as I am very forgiving with movies. I more often than not will go see something regardless of critic reviews. I almost prefer a regular Joe review. If it seems like it will be really bad then it might be the difference between going to the theater vs renting.

Riverstorm

@mediamogul said in Ready Player One & Armada:

I've also read '11/22/63' and seen the mini series.

Well shoot I totally missed the mini-series train. Is it good? When I said I was out of my vein I meant completely off the rails as this is the first King novel I have ever read. I have watched all of his movies but never read one of his books.

Yes he's descriptions are quite graphic. When Dunning took the sledge hammer to his family it was a bit more than I care to read in gritty detail but he adds them. I am at the part where he's in Jodie and he's chaperoning the dance with Sadie just past the part of checking out Oswald's old apartment to bug it with that antiquated equipment when he returns to America. I think I'm almost exactly in the middle and still quite curious what the yellow, orange, black card man means! ;)

I usually read on a Paperwhite that has that nice ability to touch a word and get the definition as King shows as a seasoned writer and you can't help to learn all kinds of new words from his writing. I get the context but a lot of times I try and take a moment to learn the actual definition even if I forget it an hour later. ;)

herb_fargus

I very much enjoyed the book and I'm definitely going to see the movie when it comes out

fabio78

I'm probably going to sound a little snobby here, but although I enjoyed the premise and overall arch of RPO, I found it to be so badly written... Ernest Cline means well and clearly put a lot of passion into it, but he's no writer. His prose is so poor it's painful. Still wanna see the film.

Howitzer99

I've read RPO around 2 times in the past couple years, and really enjoy the nostalgia-romp each time!

Just finished "Ctrl+Alt Revolt!", and shares a few similarities with RPO. Recommended.

lilbud

fanboy screaming

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celly

This post is deleted!

caver01

@lilbud Hah! Fun zooming in to read the news clippings. I see a spelling error in the newspaper headline (well a word usage error). They used “then” when they should have used “than”.