Cline, Ernest. Ready player one, New York: Crown Publishers, 2011.It's 2044, and impoverished, marginalised youth Wade Watts escapes his day-to-day slum-existence in the world of OASIS, a cyberspace gaming platform created by a 1980's-obsessed geak-cum-millionaire software programmer, James Halliday. However, this is no ordinary game - the player who can find their way through the maze of armed avatars, corporate mercenaries and platform-obstacles will inherit Halliday's considerable fortune. This coming-of-age story pitches Wade and his avatar pals as the good guys, as they take on loners, chancers and heavily-armed agents of IOI, a corporation that is seeking to privatise OASIS and monopolise its booty for itself. Cline slices his themes of trust, identity and avarice together with a healthy respect for the primitive digital aesthetic of 1980's video-games and pop-culture, so this is one for both young-adult readers, and gen-Xers looking to indulge in a little nostalgic navel-gazing.
