I enjoyed the movie Ready Player One directed by Steven Spielberg in 2018. This is one of those sci-fi movies I want to rewatch whenever I think about it. Like The Matrix. Have watched only twice so far. Would like to watch more.

I didn't really know that this was based on the 2011 novel of the same name Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. The book cover on Amazon Kindle has the vibe that book could be exact same script of the movie. Whenever I encountered this book on the Kindle recommendation, I hesitated to buy for this reason. Eventually I purchased. Expecting to enjoy nonetheless.

Recently, Apple released a new line of device. Apple Vision Pro. Although this is not for the metaverse that Meta is pursuing, it looks really cool and could change the ground how we use technology in the future. This made me to choose Ready Player One to read among my pre-purchased list of books.

The overall concept and plot were kind of similar to the movie, but the novel takes a totally different storylines and entails varying details. I immensely liked the book and found myself intrigued what's going to happen next. It's been a long while since i last immersed in a book like this. Such a page-turner.

This book brought back some deeply hidden fond memories:

That I used to wake up like 6-7 a.m. to intrude friend's house just to play his console on Sunday mornings over Sunday morning Disney cartoons.
Faint images of me playing old-fashioned computer games with pixelated green dots.
Playing some of the games mentioned like Galaga and Dig Dug. Dig Dug is a game I enjoyed but didn't remember the name and totally forgot about it's existence.
Reserving an arcade game by placing coins watching from behind.
Feeling guilty going to the arcade to play Street Fighter II. The place was apprehensive back then and wasn't encouraged to visit.
Game gurus who could sit for hours playing with single coin, ₩100, South Korean Won, in my case.
Playing StarCraft on modem rendering landline connection useless.

I think I like this book because there are game and technological elements that are my utmost interests. Reading through, I felt like i was in a game.

I somewhat dig VR/AR even though I don’t own any of those devices. I look forward to days when technologies, both hardware and software, can live up to my expectation in VR/AR space. Very curious if Apple or Meta or anyone can pull this off in the future.

Before finishing this book, I purchased the sequel, Ready Player Two, by the same author, 2020. Quite curious what challenges Parzival is going to face in the sequel already.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline