ezekielsdaughter | Entries tagged with book; science fiction

“Ready Player One” by Ernest Cline

I was up until 4 am this morning and finished this book. It’s a first novel by the author, moves quickly, and is often quite enjoyable.

The author was on panels at Armadillocon and everyone was raving about the book. Even while in Austin, I came quickly to the conclusion that I was not the target audience, but I picked it up at the library anyway. It was described as rich in details about gaming and the 1980 era. It’s set in 2044 and the protagonist is a 18 year old man/boy who is living in a dystopian America and world. The economy has crashed; global warming is in full blossom, but the world spends as much time as it can in a virtual game environment. The one hope in this world is the will and behest of the James Halliday, the game’s designer who has left his entire fortune to the person able to solve his last puzzle/game. A culture of game hunters has grown up to solve this final puzzle. The game designer/business owner was crazy about the 1980’s so that’s where the 80’s trivia comes up. Everyone is certain that the clues--which have to be discovered first--are hidden in the details about Halliday’s life. Imagine if Steve Jobs had left his fortune to gamers. It’s especially a good comparison because Jobs had a business partner, Woz, that left Apple. Same thing in this novel. Halliday has a friend who left the gaming company and the friend becomes a critical part of the story near the end.

So--what did I think? I was up until 4 a.m., so yes I enjoyed it. However, I will admit that I had to push through some chapters and some paragraphs. I skipped some of the 80’s stuff. And the gaming stuff. Like I said that I am not the target audience. However, it was instructive for me that this two-part story--the love story and the gaming story--ends at the same time.

There is one major female character and in most cases, she is well served by the writer. She is intelligent; she resists being only a love interest. If anything, I would say that her healthy self-interest is a little overwritten.

There were none of the twists that I kept expecting. The villain as described in the beginning is still the villain at the end of the novel. (There are some minor twists that I won’t give away.)

The author leaves himself a chance at a sequel very, very obviously. I am hoping that he doesn’t actually take the bait. I find it interesting that most of the recent books with this background--an American dystopia--manage to end “happily” end with the society unchanged but the protagonist obtains the money that he needs to survive. That’s the happy ending. He becomes part of the monied society that was previously oppressing him. The ending is happy because he able to become monied on his own terms. I am of two minds about this....I regret seeing writers give up the possibility of changing society; I see this ending as more realistic.

It was pure luck to read this book soon after “What is Language” by McWhorter. John McWhorter discussed the differences among Western languages, Asian languages, and many African languages. He described the phenomena of travelers returning from one African country thinking that they’ve made a good start on learning the indigenous language—only to find that they can not speak it intelligently at all.

Embassytown also centers around language. In this SF novel, humans have encountered an alien race who have, let’s say, two voice boxes. Human linguists take the time to learn the individual sounds that make up the language but find that the natives can not understand them at all as we have one voice box only. Two voices from a single mind must speak in order to be understood. And the sound must come from a single mind, the linguists can not use machinery to double their voices. At the time of the novel, the human colony depends on clone Ambassadors to speak for them. The change that initiates the novel is the arrival of a new Ambassador from Breman—which is Great Britian to Embassytown’s America. All earlier Ambassadors were created on Embassytown. Breman, wanting to exert more control, has discovered a process to create and train their own Ambassador to the natives. Concurrent with this arrival, our narrator arrives to Embassytown. She is returning home, after having “escaped” this planet at the end of the known space and it is through her eyes that we will see the tumult that will occur because of the new Ambassador, the eventual collapse of the native society, and the war that results.

There are so many currents in this novel that wash against other books that I’ve read. The narrator’s husband admires the native’s language (he is a linguist) because it cannot be used to lie. He is aghast to find that some parts of the Host society is trying to learn how to lie. Although not religious—religion is almost non-existent in the novel—it is obvious that he feels like the Host are in a type of Eden that is being undermined. This reminds me some Jewish commentaries that say that God created several worlds until he got one where humans did eat from the tree of knowledge. Who wants their children to remain forever? In this case, the prophets of the novel (and Mieville uses that term) are trying to bring the lie to this race. In this case, the “lie” is metaphor. The Hosts’ language is extremely literal; they can manage simile if the simile has an equivalent in the real world. Thus, our narrator is “the girl who, in pain, ate what was given her.” She enacted that as a child so that the Hosts would have a simile meaning “making due.” There is also a pivotal scene in the novel that is so perfectly reminiscent of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller that I can’t believe that it is accidental. This is yet another beach that the novel’s water washes up on. Do you want another one? There was a recent episode of Radiolab in which a woman discusses teaching a 27-year-old man sign language. He had never learned to read or sign. He was also very literal. He could not understand that language is representative and symbolic. The description of his change and how his world before and after having language was a real-world reflection of what happens in this book as human language comes the world of the Hosts. Check out http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/