Langtext

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Now a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg.

Enchanting . . . Willy Wonka meets The Matrix. USA Today   As one adventure leads expertly to the next, time simply evaporates. Entertainment Weekly

A world at stake. A quest for the ultimate prize. Are you ready?

In the year 2045, reality is an ugly place. The only time Wade Watts really feels alive is when he s jacked into the OASIS, a vast virtual world where most of humanity spends their days.

When the eccentric creator of the OASIS dies, he leaves behind a series of fiendish puzzles, based on his obsession with the pop culture of decades past. Whoever is first to solve them will inherit his vast fortune and control of the OASIS itself. 

Then Wade cracks the first clue. Suddenly he s beset by rivals who ll kill to take this prize. The race is on and the only way to survive is to win.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Entertainment Weekly San Francisco Chronicle Village Voice Chicago Sun-Times iO9 The AV Club

Delightful . . . the grown-up s Harry Potter. HuffPost

An addictive read . . . part intergalactic scavenger hunt, part romance, and all heart. CNN

A most excellent ride . . . Cline stuffs his novel with a cornucopia of pop culture, as if to wink to the reader. Boston Globe

Ridiculously fun and large-hearted . . . Cline is that rare writer who can translate his own dorky enthusiasms into prose that s both hilarious and compassionate. NPR

[A] fantastic page-turner . . . starts out like a simple bit of fun and winds up feeling like a rich and plausible picture of future friendships in a world not too distant from our own. iO9

Beschreibung für Leser

Ausgezeichnet: Laura Hillenbrand Outstanding Literary Award, 2017.

The science-fiction writer John Scalzi has aptly referred to Ready Player One as a nerdgasm [and] there can be no better one-word description of this ardent fantasy artifact about fantasy culture. . . . But Mr. Cline is able to incorporate his favorite toys and games into a perfectly accessible narrative. Janet Maslin, The New York Times 

A fun, funny and fabulously entertaining first novel . . . This novel's large dose of 1980s trivia is a delight . . . [but] even readers who need Google to identify Commodore 64 or Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, will enjoy this memorabilian feast. Cleveland Plain Dealer

Incredibly entertaining . . . Drawing on everything from Back to the Future to Roald Dahl to Neal Stephenson's groundbreaking Snow Crash, Cline has made Ready Player One a geek fantasia, '80s culture memoir and commentary on the future of online behavior all at once. Austin American-Statesman 

Ready Player One is the ultimate lottery ticket. New York Daily News

This non-gamer loved every page of Ready Player One. Charlaine Harris, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series

A treasure for anyone already nostalgic for the late twentieth century. . . But it s also a great read for anyone who likes a good book. Wired

Gorgeously geeky, superbly entertaining, this really is a spectacularly successful debut. Daily Mail (UK)

A gunshot of fun with a wicked sense of timing and a cast of characters that you're pumping your fist in the air with whenever they succeed. I haven't been this much on the edge of my seat for an ending in years. Chicago Reader

"A 'frakking' good read [featuring] incredible creative detail . . . I grinned at the sheer audacity of Cline's imagination. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Fascinating and imaginative . . . It s non-stop action when gamers must navigate clever puzzles and outwit determined enemies in a virtual world in order to save a real one. Readers are in for a wild ride. Terry Brooks, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Shannara series

I was blown away by this book. . . . A book of ideas, a potboiler, a game-within-a-novel, a serious science-fiction epic, a comic pop culture mash-up call this novel what you will, but Ready Player One will defy every label you try to put on it. Here, finally, is this generation s Neuromancer. Will Lavender, New York Times bestselling author of Dominance

I really, really loved Ready Player One. . . . Cline expertly mines a copious vein of 1980s pop culture, catapulting the reader on a light-speed adventure in an advanced but backward-looking future. Daniel H. Wilson, New York Times bestselling author of Robopocalypse 

A nerdgasm . . . imagine Dungeons and Dragons and an 80s video arcade made hot, sweet love, and their child was raised in Azeroth. John Scalzi, New York Times bestselling author of Old Man s War

Completely fricking awesome . . . This book pleased every geeky bone in my geeky body.  I felt like it was written just for me. Patrick Rothfuss, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Wise Man s Fear 

0001

I was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire in one of the neighboring stacks. The shots were followed by a few minutes of muffled shouting and screaming, then silence.

Gunfire wasn t uncommon in the stacks, but it still shook me up. I knew I probably wouldn t be able to fall back asleep, so I decided to kill the remaining hours until dawn by brushing up on a few coin-op classics. Galaga, Defender, Asteroids. These games were outdated digital dinosaurs that had become museum pieces long before I was born. But I was a gunter, so I didn t think of them as quaint low-res antiques. To me, they were hallowed artifacts. Pillars of the pantheon. When I played the classics, I did so with a determined sort of reverence.

I was curled up in an old sleeping bag in the corner of the trailer s tiny laundry room, wedged into the gap between the wall and the dryer. I wasn t welcome in my aunt s room across the hall, which was fine by me. I preferred to crash in the laundry room anyway. It was warm, it afforded me a limited amount of privacy, and the wireless reception wasn t too bad. And, as an added bonus, the room smelled like liquid detergent and fabric softener. The rest of the trailer reeked of cat piss and abject poverty.

Most of the time I slept in my hideout. But the temperature had dropped below zero the past few nights, and as much as I hated staying at my aunt s place, it still beat freezing to death.

A total of fifteen people lived in my aunt s trailer. She slept in the smallest of its three bedrooms. The Depperts lived in the bedroom adjacent to her, and the Millers occupied the large master bedroom at the end of the hall. There were six of them, and they paid the largest share of the rent. Our trailer wasn t as crowded as some of the other units in the stacks. It was a double-wide. Plenty of room for everybody.

I pulled out my laptop and powered it on. It was a bulky, heavy beast, almost ten years old. I d found it in a Dumpster behind the abandoned strip mall across the highway. I d been able to coax it back to life by replacing its system memory and reloading the stone-age operating system. The processor was slower than a sloth by current standards, but it was fine for my needs. The laptop served as my portable research library, video arcade, and home theater system. Its hard drive was filled with old books, movies, TV show episodes, song files, and nearly every videogame made in the twentieth century.

I booted up my emulator and selected Robotron: 2084, one of my all-time favorite games. I d always loved its frenetic pace and brutal simplicity. Robotron was all about instinct and reflexes. Playing old videogames never failed to clear my mind and set me at ease. If I was feeling depressed or frustrated about my lot in life, all I had to do was tap the Player One button, and my worries would instantly slip away as my mind focused itself on the relentless pixelated onslaught on the screen in front of me. There, inside the game s two-dimensional universe, life was simple: It s just you against the machine. Move with your left hand, shoot with your right, and try to stay alive as long as possible.

I spent a few hours blasting through wave after wave of Brains, Spheroids, Quarks, and Hulks in my unending battle to Save the Last Human Family! But eventually my fingers started to cramp up and I began to lose my rhythm. When that happened at this level, things deteriorated quickly. I burned through all of my extra lives in a matter of minutes, and my two least-favorite words appeared on the screen: game over.

I shut down the emulator and began to browse through my video files. Over the past five years, I d downloaded every single movie, TV show, and cartoon mentioned in Anorak s Almanac. I still hadn t watched all of them yet, of course. That would probably take d

Ernest Cline is a #1 New York Times bestselling novelist, screenwriter, father, and full-time geek. He is the author of the novels Ready Player One and Armada and co-screenwriter of the film adaptation of Ready Player One, directed by Steven Spielberg. His books have been published in over fifty countries and have spent more than 100 weeks on The New York Times bestsellers list. He lives in Austin, Texas, with his family, a time-traveling DeLorean, and a large collection of classic video games.