Cline Ernest: Ready Player One

More Advance Praise

for Ready Player One

“[An] adrenaline shot of uncut geekdom … sweet, self-deprecating Wade, whose universe is an odd mix of the real past and the virtual present, is the perfect lovable/unlikely hero.”

—Publishers Weekly

“The pure, unfettered brainscream of a child of the ’80s, like a dream my thirteen-year-old self would have had after bingeing on Pop Rocks and Coke.… I couldn’t put it down.”

—Charles Ardai, Edgar Award–winning author

and producer ofHaven

“Pure geek heaven. Ernest Cline’s hero competes in a virtual world with life-and-death stakes—which is only fitting, because he’s fighting to make his dreams into reality. Cline blends a dystopic future with meticulously detailed nostalgia to create a story that will resonate in the heart of every true nerd.”

—Christopher Farnsworth, author ofBlood Oath

“A fantastic adventure set in a futuristic world with a retro heart. Once I started reading, I didn’t want to put it down and I couldn’t wait to pick it back up.”

—S. G. Browne, author ofBreathers

“Cline has somehow managed to jack into the nervous system of some great warm collective geek-dream nostalgia of the ’70s and ’80s and used the precious touchstones he’s rediscovered there to create an adventurethat’s almost more experienced than read.…Ready Player Onelet meromp through some of the best memories of my youth.”

—Paul Malmont, author ofThe Chinatown Death Cloud Peril

“Imagine that Dungeons and Dragons and an ’80s video arcade made hot, sweet love, and their child was raised in Azeroth. If you’re not already experiencing a nerdgasm at the thought, I don’t want to know you.”

—John Scalzi, New York Timesbestselling author ofOld Man’s War

“ Ready Player One expertly mines a copious vein of 1980s pop culture, catapulting the reader on a light-speed adventure in an advanced but backward-looking future. If this book were a living room, it would be wood-paneled. If it were shoes, it would be high-tops. And if it were a song, well, it would have to be ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ I really, really loved it.”

—Daniel H. Wilson, author ofRobopocalypse

“I was blown away by this book.… Ernie Cline has pulled the raddest of all magic tricks: He’s managed to write a novel that’s at once serious and playful, that is as fun to read as it is harrowing. 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’sNeuromancer. ”

—Will Lavender, New York Timesbestselling author ofObedience

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Dark All Day, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown

Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cline, Ernest.

Ready player one : a novel / Ernest Cline.—1st ed.

p. cm.

1. Regression (Civilization)—Fiction. 2. Virtual reality—Fiction. 3. Utopias—

Fiction. 4. Puzzles—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3603.L548R43 2011

813′.6—dc22 2011015247

eISBN: 978-0-307-88745-0

Jacket design by Christopher Brand

v3.1

For Susan and Libby

Because there is no map for where we are going

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Level One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Level Two

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Level Three

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Everyone my age remembers where they were and what theywere doing when they first heard about the contest. I was sitting in my hideout watching cartoons when the news bulletin broke in on my video feed, announcing that James Halliday had died during the night.

I’d heard of Halliday, of course. Everyone had. He was the videogame designer responsible for creating the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis. The unprecedented success of the OASIS had made Halliday one of the wealthiest people in the world.

At first, I couldn’t understand why the media was making such a big deal of the billionaire’s death. After all, the people of Planet Earth had other concerns. The ongoing energy crisis. Catastrophic climate change. Widespread famine, poverty, and disease. Half a dozen wars. You know: “dogs and cats living together … mass hysteria!” Normally, the newsfeeds didn’t interrupt everyone’s interactive sitcoms and soap operas unless something really major had happened. Like the outbreak of some new killer virus, or another major city vanishing in a mushroom cloud. Big stuff like that. As famous as he was, Halliday’s death should have warranted only a brief segment on the evening news, so the unwashed masses could shake their heads in envy when the newscasters announced the obscenely large amount of money that would be doled out to the rich man’s heirs.

But that was the rub. James Halliday had no heirs.

He had died a sixty-seven-year-old bachelor, with no living relatives and, by most accounts, without a single friend. He’d spent the last fifteen years of his life in self-imposed isolation, during which time—if the rumors were to be believed—he’d gone completely insane.

So the real jaw-dropping news that January morning, the news that had everyone from Toronto to Tokyo crapping in their cornflakes, concerned the contents of Halliday’s last will and testament, and the fate of his vast fortune.