Elliot Kessler

Reality is a scary place.

I recently finished listening to “Ready Player One,” a dystopian YA novel about a virtual reality game. The book was overflowing with references to other properties such as “Star Wars,” “The Matrix,” classic anime, arcade games, and so much more. The connections the plot had to old Atari games initially drew me into the book. I thought the book would be a fun, action story and not much else. But, surprisingly, it got me thinking deeply.

I’m probably reading into the story way too much. It seems that it’s mostly supposed to be mindless, geeky fun. It is, without a doubt, the nerdiest book I’ve ever listened to. But the author, Ernest Cline, seems to have much to say about reality.

The Oasis

The Earth is in shambles. There are wars and conflicts everywhere. Natural resources are running low, and overpopulation has caused people to create cities out of RVs stacked on each other. To escape their troubles, most of humanity spends a lot of their time in a virtual reality MMORPG called the “OASIS.”

In the OASIS, players can adventure through millions of worlds. They can collect items, go on quests, and even attend school in the online world. It is heaven.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Intuitive Online Industries (IOI) has become a massive corporation with its police force and laws. It can do whatever it wants, and when James Halliday, creator of the OASIS, hosts a competition for control of his creation after his death, IOI becomes obsessed with taking control of the OASIS and ruling it with authoritative force.

The OASIS fans don’t like that idea very much and do their best to defeat IOI before it’s too late.

The OASIS is an escape from the real world. But when people begin to spend most of their lives in the virtual world, it becomes more than just a game. It becomes their reality. The lines begin to blur between their physical lives and their digital ones.

Is This the Real Life?

I never understood how a story set in the world of a video game could be interesting. I had heard of LitRPGs before, but they had never grasped my attention. The stories were set in video games. Why should I care what happens? I care more about the characters in the games I play than I do about the characters in a fictional video game that a fictional character is playing. It never made much sense to me.

But “Ready Player One” took a different approach to this genre. It took a sci-fi approach, making the audience care about the digital world as much as the characters because of how much it means to them. It is their world. It is their reality.

Ernest Cline uses this to explain that living in fiction is not a good idea. If the Earth had become so bleak that humanity spent more of its time playing a video game than really living, then playing that game would be counterproductive. The world would fall apart because of the negligence of humanity. Not only that, but our lives would fall apart. We would have no purpose. We wouldn’t be serving anyone except ourselves. If we use fiction as an escape, we can’t help those who need us.

I believe this is Ernest Cline’s message to the world through this book. If we want to be productive and help others, we have to get off our consoles, turn off our TVs, put down our books and do something. That doesn’t mean games, movies, and novels are bad. Entertainment is good, and occasionally using it as a distraction from the problems we have in our lives can be a relief. But constantly using fiction to escape our reality is harmful not only to us but to those around us.

Communicating Ideas

While using stories for fun escapism is good occasionally, another role that fiction has, which might be even more important, is the communication of ideas. Everyone has ideas. Not only ideas for cool stories but for what morality is and how we should live. We have ideas and concepts in our heads that most people don’t, and fiction can be a great way to communicate them.

I find that stories are one of the best ways I communicate. I have a hard time explaining my views and ideas without the use of metaphors and narratives. Using stories as a way to communicate morality is crucial to humanity. We’ve been doing it since “The Epic of Gilgamesh.” It is the best use of fiction.

Game Over

I know this was more of a ramble than an actual, structured blog post. I had some thoughts on a book I read and decided to share them. I’m sure there are already hundreds, if not thousands, of people who already have these ideas and thoughts, but I figured I might as well share my view of the story.

“Willow” comes out tomorrow, and you can bet I’ll be doing episode reviews for that. I loved the original film and am very excited to see what this show has in store.

Thanks for reading! Have a fantastic day.