Richard Aspden

A paradox in slow motion

Ready Player One – Chapter 0

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This is the first proper post in the Lets Read of Ready Player One, and covers Chapter 0. It’s mainly bullet point notes I took as I read the chapter.

Noted during reading

  • Pre-Level 1 chapter
  • Chapter number is 0, hurray for 0 indexing!
  • Oasis went from a small thing, to global thing most people use, kinda reminds me of Facebook.
  • Right, in-universe reason for 80s stuff, contest organiser (the dead Halliday [sp?]) was super into it
    • contest is his will.
  • Zapruder film is the famous film of JFK’s assassination. I thought it was actually a House of Leaves reference, but the closes there are The Navidson Record, and Zampano.
  • Page 3 – footnotes make their first appearance. Will these be a common thing? I hope not, since they’re hard to make out in the text. The first few do seem a bit oddly specific (maybe bordering on fan-fiction-y, but that could be intentional).
  • I felt like the story of the first easter egg was wrong, but similar, but it turns out what’s in the book is accurate!
  • Coming up with unofficial terms for the game and various aspectss reminds me of The Beast, the ARG that was part of the advertising AI: Artificial Intelligence.
  • Hunt as a while and it’s history reminds me of Fenn’s Treasure.
  • Chapter seems to do a good job of setting up and explaining the central aspect of the book (the Hunt) and ends with explaining why the book “exists” (explaining what actually happened after the first bit of progress was made in the Hunt, finding the Copper Key)

Overall

It wasn’t until a while after I’d finished this chapter that it doesn’t mention the main character’s name (I think).

The chapter as a whole is mainly world building, and setting the stage for what’s going to happen. That being said, there’s still some world building needing to be done, namely setting up the characters and the like. Still, looking forward to reading through the rest of the book!