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1-Page Summary of Ready Player One
Overview
Ernest Cline’s science fiction novel focuses on a virtual reality game called OASIS, which is better than real life. The main character is Wade Watts, who has no parents or prospects for the future. He becomes involved in a hunt for an Easter egg hidden within the game by solving clues left behind by its deceased creator. After finding the first key, he must face off against evil corporate soldiers and make allies with other gunters (Egg Hunters).
Wade Watts meets a girl, Art3mis, in the OASIS (Ontologically Anthropocentric Sensory Immersive Simulation). He falls in love with her even though he’s never met her. In order to protect the freedom of people who use the OASIS for their livelihoods, Wade goes on a quest to find three keys. Along his journey, he learns that life is meaningless without companionship and love.
Prologue – Chapter 3
In the prologue of Ready Player One, Wade was in his room when he heard about a contest to find Easter eggs hidden in the OASIS. The OASIS is a virtual reality game that most people use for entertainment. It was created by James Halliday and on his deathday, he sent out an invitation video for all users of the OASIS. In it, Halliday said that whoever found three keys would win 240 billion dollars and be able to control everything in the OASIS world. Those who wanted to participate had to find clues leading them to where they could find these keys.
The author of the book created a scoreboard to track the scores of top ten players in the competition. This became known as “the Scoreboard.” The contest itself came to be known as “the Hunt.” Underneath it, he posted Anorak’s Almanac, which is a collection of journal entries that provide insights into different aspects of life. Since posting them, people have come to know him as an oracle who provides guidance on how they should live their lives.
Years passed and the obsession with finding Halliday’s Easter egg died down. It became an urban legend, until our protagonist, Wade Watts, found it.
In the first chapter, Wade, a teenager who lives in his aunt’s laundry room with 18 other people due to poverty and lack of living space, wakes up because there was a gunshot in his neighborhood. When it’s cold outside he sleeps on the floor at his aunt’s house. He can’t go back to sleep so he pulls out his computer to watch an old episode of Family Ties on Netflix. Just like Halliday did when making movies, Wade watches every single movie mentioned by Halliday (the creator of OASIS) and has all that media stored on his computer as well. Watching Family Ties is one way that Wade escapes from reality because he grew up poor until the age of 11 when both parents died suddenly and left him homeless. His only escape was into OASIS where he learned everything about surviving in life thanks to this game which taught him how to do things such as cook food or fight off enemies using weapons like swords or guns.
Wade’s aunt lived in a trailer stacked on top of hundreds of other trailers. This was part of the Portland Avenue Stacks, a community created after the Global Energy Crisis when people moved into urban centers looking for jobs and housing options were scarce. Wade left his aunt’s house to go to his hideout: an abandoned van that was part of a pile of abandoned automobiles at the edge of his community. He would access OASIS through this van, where he did all kinds things like school work, homework, play games and watch movies.
Wade had a locker at school where he kept his inventory of games. They were not magical and they weren’t very good, but they were the best that Wade could afford since OASIS credit was as valuable as any other currency. Wade regretted that he would soon be graduating high school because college was too expensive for him to attend after graduation.
