Ready Player One - by Ernest Cline

What a nerdfest! I absolutely adored this book’s throwback to better times. The 1980’s. Ah, what a time for music, movies, cars, tv programs, and of course, video games. The book is actually set in a dystopian 2040-something era where humans have exploited the Earth to its limits. One of the only things I did not like about this story, as I really liked it overall, was the author’s selling point that “we have used all the oil and mined all the coal and now there’s no energy and the sky is a hazy brown.” No. No no no, you won’t mine all the coal in the next 40 years. There are hundreds of years of reserves in this country alone. And it burns pretty damn clean. My old home of Tucson, Arizona is powered by a giant coal plant that has air around it as clear as anywhere else in that valley. It’s even cleaner than Phoenix, which gets some of its power from a nukular (TM George W. Bush) plant. Coal plants are not quite the smoggy, smokey cloud-factories that are portrayed in commercials anytime a liberal media blasts a right-wing politician for his reluctance to crack down on the Earth-raping coal industry. Politics aside, the setup is a bit rough. We are not working our way out of decent civilisation. We are sort of growing up and growing out as a race, riding the waves of science and technology and human understanding. But this takes a hardline approach for outlining the future as a very dystopian, poverty ridden, overpopulated and almost silly universe; like the setting of the movie Idiocracy. No wars, just dumb people getting dumber. Once that is all over, however, the book is extremely enjoyable.

It starts out with 80's references that we are all pretty familiar with, and I was almost a bit disappointed that its references would all be of the popular variety: Highlander, Back to the Future, Sixteen Candles, Def Lepard, Space Invaders, things that pretty much everyone knows. But that is only the beginning, as the book moves along I found myself catching less and less of the references. 80's cartoons, for example; I am only familiar with the majour ones, like Voltron and Transformers. These are sort of treated as the "pop-culture" of cartoons and Cline glides past them and focuses on some pretty obscure shit. Mainly Japanese shows I have never heard of. It was very enjoyable, however, to test the trivial understanding of the 80's and try to see how familiar all the names, shows, characters, and video games (the glorious, 8bit, 2D videgomes) are to me.

Do not misunderstand me, the nostalgia of this book is the primary source of entertainment that I drew from it. But it has general nerd themes I can enjoy. Like the main character enjoying Youtube style videos of cute geeky girls playing their ukuleles. Who has not geeked out to that? And the material related to a futuristic gaming console and its virtual reality setup that is a unique take on tired theory. There is also a shout-out in there to current real life nerds like Wil Wheaton and Cory Doctorow. 

These are enough for me to say it was a book worth my time, but the story itself – again, once you get passed the "we've mined and sucked all the resources out and burned them all, oh no!" bit – is truly fantastic. The antagonistic Sixers and their mega-corporate organisation conducting attacks and putting the users in very real danger was exciting. The glimpse of their world and their processing of employees and indentured servants reeked of the movie THX-1138, a very enjoyable dystopian sci-fi film that also happens to be George Lucas's first film. 

Above all, a love of classic arcade and 8-bit video games, the ones that pre-date my childhood but I still happen to be familiar with, is the very best part of it all. The videogame industry has been in a bit of a tailspin since a time not long after the Wii came out, giving the impression that better graphics are not necessarily what everyone wants…people just want a fun game. And the games of that era were just that. Further clues about the videogame industry’s struggles comes from how the rise of the mobile device has been a huge blow to their profits. People do not need to spend USD 300 to 500 for an entertainment system and another USD 40 to 60 for a game when they can get a little bit of fun here and there on their phone. And what do I play on my phone? Nintendo, SNES, and arcade games; exactly what Ernest Cline is celebrating in this one.

Arkham Asylum

Batman! Oh yes, my favourite superhero (we’re not going to get into a human/superhuman hero/superhero discussion here) in the form of Grant Morrison’s graphic novel. Because the events of the environmentally, congressionally, and constitutionally confused state of Colorado and city of Aurora have me in a state of fear and keep me from viewing Christopher Nolan’s latest masterpiece (at least until I am assured Batman will save us in the event of a theatre shooting) The Dark Knight Rises, I chose to settle down and read this gem.

Now the Arkham Asylum line of recent Batman video games were fantastic, the control and movements were unlike any suphero video game based on a legendary comic book character. Furthermore, the fact that they didn't release it along with movie and with a movie titled with (- The Game) stamped on at the end is a definite plus. Let's us know they have a quality product and they are not just trying to ride the coat tails of a popular film.

The demand for Batman saving the day is always high, especially from me, but the demand for a creepy thriller of a story that has a halloween-like atmosphere and features many villains within Arkham and Batman needing to enter the darkness to fight them all, is not very high. I think that puts this book at a bit of a disadvantage, it sort of fits into its own category of Batman action and it is not what I crave.

Do not get me wrong though, that takes away nothing from the enjoyment. It is a very unique idea with a very creepy story and even creepier artwork. Dr. Arkham and his mother's lunacy driving him to use the old house as a treatment facility for the criminally insane sets everything up beautifully. Tragedy, and tragedy from a character I knew nothing about going into the story, really creates a tension that keeps me engaged.

As much as I love to see the Dark Knight bashing baddies, I really enjoyed reading about Arkham's history and his mind. You feel more like the story is about him with each scene, and Batman is just a reflection of the insanity that ripples through the surface within the halls of the Asylum, becoming mad himself almost by osmosis. Of course, this gives us something to cheer about, but rather than it being a physical villain (which, there are those too), it is his mind.

Of course, the graphic novel is short, almost too short. But short and sweet make it a worthy read in an evening for any hardcore Batman fans. Probably wouldn't recommend it to the casual Batman fans out there though.