Excellent Quotes: Ready Player One

After hearing for quite some time from people whose taste I trusted that Ernest Cline's debut novel, Ready Player One, was a must-read I recently decided to snag an eCopy for my iPad and snuggle up with the bits and bytes.

Turns out it is a dork-fest that obsesses about what essentially amounts to my childhood. And it is a page-turner, too. Score!

Set in a dystopic future (as which current science fiction novel is not), the book follows the adventures of the alliterative Wade Watts--who goes by the handle Parzival (yay, English Literature!)--as he solves three challenges put forward by the world's greatest game designer in an attempt to win a fortune, get the girl, and change the universe.

By gad, it really is a dork-fest. A wonderful, unabashed, comprehensive, lovingly articulated dork-fest. Cline name-checks everything from "It's a Dead Man's Party" to the Dungeons and Dragons rule book, John Hughes movies to Blade Runner, the TRS-80 personal computer to Second Life, nerd bonding over video games to first crushes. RP1 functions as a storyline, as a kind of social history, and as a non-alphabetized concordance to the '80s. Fun.

Do I have any niggling complaints? Sure. It is game-obsessed. It is an obvious novice effort stylistically. But, come on, man, that stuff is nitpicking. The ride is worth it; even for those of us who never legitimately finished Zork on our own.

Speaking of Zork--the first famous text-based role-player game--here is Wade starting down the path to solve one of the clues:

"I took a look around. My surroundings were eerily familiar.

"The opening text description in the game Zork read as follows:

WEST OF HOUSE

You are standing in an open field west of a

white house, with a boarded front door. There

is a small mailbox here.

>

"My avatar now stood in that open field, just west of the white house. The front door of the old Victorian mansion was boarded up, and there was a mailbox just a few yards away from me, at the end of the walkway leading to the house. The house was surrounded by a dense forest, and beyond it I saw a range of jagged mountain peaks. Glancing off to my left, I spotted a path leading to the north, right where I knew it should be."

-- Ready Player One. Cline, Ernest. New York (NY): Random House, 2011. Pp. 394-95 (eBook version).

If, like me, you once reserved the introductory sections of your cassette mix tapes for computer programs that you loaded into the microcomputer by pressing "Play," this book is a glorious romp through your youth. It has practically everything but my track and field kit and the Barrel of Hee. Even if you aren't pushing 50, it is still great fun.

So, if you haven't yet, drop the quarter and get started. Cline is ready, Player One.

PS -  The book prominently features easter eggs, and even functioned as one, with the author offering a DeLorean to the winner of his contest-within-a-contest. Oh, and if you didn't dance to it then, you can dance to "It's a Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo today; now playing on iTunes.

Jet Lag

I recently went on a marathon of business and personal travel. I visited in succession the following cities: New York, Chicago, Wilmington, Bern, Zurich, Prague, Louisville, and Miami. I was on the road for 20 straight days. It seemed like a good idea when I booked the trip.

Now, I saw a bunch of great places and people while I was gone. I ran with the supermodels along Swiss rivers; I drank White Russians overlooking the charming Charles Bridge, on which construction began in 1357; I lounged on the beach in 80 degree weather in late October; I saw my brothers; I attended the wedding of one of my oldest, closest friends; I practiced flirting again, an important step but not necessarily to any satisfying end; I grew a full beard.

All in all exciting and interesting. But I had not planned for the brutalizing, merciless, hideous effects of jet lag.

Let's look at my trip again in terms of time difference from the place where my furniture currently resides: "I visited in succession the following time zones: 3 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours, 9 hours, 9 hours, 9 hours, 2 hours, 3 hours. I changed time zones 7 times in 20 days." Honestly, at some point I was not sure which end was up.

When I got back to home base, my body decided to punish me for two weeks running by operating on an average 3 hour time difference. This means I woke up at 4:30 AM willy-nilly. I was pooped at 5 PM at work. I began to fall asleep on the couch in the middle of "Arrow," I started to cry at Maxwell House commercials, I grew desperate for it to end.

The best description I've read of the torture of jet lag comes from a book by the brilliant William Gibson, which I already featured in this older post. Cayce, the protagonist of Gibson's book, arrives in the U.K. from New York:

"She knows, now, absolutely, hearing the white noise that is London, that Damien's theory of jet lag is correct: that her mortal soul is leagues behind her, being reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane that brought her here, hundreds of thousands of feet above the Atlantic. Souls can't move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage."

PS - It has been a month now and my soul and I are again reunited. Thank goodness. Oh, and you'll want to get united with "Mistress" by Valkyries; now playing on iTunes.

All Aboot My Trip to Canada

I recently visited our kinder, gentler selves in Canada for work and pleasure and noted a few things: (a) they talk funny, (b) Americans--and we also feel totally comfortable hogging the continental appellation--feel totally comfortable pointing that out to them, (c) they never get mad at it, which must be a particular flavor of unamusing, constant, and blatant violation of the guest/host relationship, (d) like Californians, Canadians tend to end a preponderance of their sentences in the interrogative tone, which is a tough speech tic not to imitate when it permeates your world, and (d) sometimes you can misinterpret them unexpectedly.

To wit: I was in Edmonton and trying to get from my hotel to a nearby museum. I asked the Concierge for directions. Here, roughly, was our exchange:

  Me: Hey. (Flagrantly giving myself away as a Yank.)
  Concierge: Good evening? May I help you?
  Me: Yes. I am trying to get to the Art Gallery of Alberta.
  C: Oh, sure. That's close, eh?
  Me: Great.
  C: Gettin' there's a very simple prough-cess?
  Me: Nice; what do I do.
  C: Go straight oout the door and take 100 Street?
  Me: Okay.
  C: Take 100th Street up a few blocks to 102, eh?
  Me: Okay? (Giving into the cadence)
  C: Turn right, go down two blocks? You'll see it just there?
  Me: Thanks?
  C: Glad to help? Have a great time. (Meaning it.)

So, I went out the door (on principle, I refused to cave in and go oout the door). I walked up 100th Street and took a right on 102nd Avenue. I walked down two blocks and did not see anything resembling a museum. Confused, I retraced my steps to 100 Street. I finally decided to go one block further on 100 and I came to 102-A Avenue, which, as promised, led two blocks down to the museum and its yummy restaurant, Zinc, which was my destination.

Can you believe it? He said, "102-A" and not "102, eh?" And, thinking it over, I am convinced that there was no way to have anticipated it.

PS - Crazy story, eh? Oh, and of all the great Canadian musical contributions, nothing tops Celine Dion. Just kidding! Of course I would never cruelly hurt you by steering you toward Celine like that. One legitimate contender, however, is Cowboy Junkies, who put out a gorgeous cover of the Velvet Underground classic, "Sweet Jane" penned by the recently deceased Lou Reed; now playing on iTunes.