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Ready Player One

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About This Episode

We’re stepping into the OASIS to talk about Ready Player One—a novel that turned video games, ’80s pop culture, and virtual reality into a full-blown modern myth. Whether you see it as a love letter to geek culture, a warning about digital escapism, or a nostalgia-fueled scavenger hunt, Ready Player One left a lasting mark on how we think about gaming, identity, and the future of virtual worlds. Let’s power up, log in, and see why this story still sparks conversation years after its release.

(May contain some explicit language.)

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Show Notes

TRANSCRIPT

Speaker Transcript
Jon Welcome back, Gen X Grown Up Podcast listeners, to this backtrack edition of the Gen X Grown Up Podcast. I am John. Joining me, as always, of course, my friends and co-hosts, George and Mo.
Jon Hey, George. Why do I do it different and then do something weird?
Mo What the hell? What do we say there?
George You just do the same goddamn thing every time.
Jon You know, I’m going to do the same thing.
Mo ah
Jon Yep, here it comes right into it.
George going to slap you with a Marcus fish in a little bit.
Jon Oh, Mark’s…
George yeah Remember when he got mad when you changed the ending back then?
Mo completely throw me off right at the beginning.
Jon Yes. Uh… Joining me as always, am John. I am John.
Mo Hasn’t been that long.
Jon I am.
Mo It’s only been a week.
Jon Stop it, Moe. Quit. I tried to go again. I know. ah We just did this seven days ago. I am John. Joining me as always is George. Hey, man.
George Hey, how’s it going, everybody?
Jon You know it’s not a show without Moe. Especially it’s not this show without Moe. Hey, Moe.
Mo Hey, how’s everyone doing?
Jon In this episode, we are stepping into the Oasis to talk about Ready Player One, a novel that turned video games, 80s pop culture and virtual reality into a full blown modern myth.
Jon Whether you see it as a love letter to geek culture, a warning about digital escapism or a nostalgia fueled scavenger hunt, Ready Player One left a lasting mark on how we think about gaming, identity and the future of virtual worlds. So let’s power up, log in and see why this story still sparks conversation years. after its release. And I say it wouldn’t be this show without Mo because Mo is the most voracious reader of the group and the only one who actually reread the novel for this episode.
Jon Bravo, Mo. Kudos you. Dedication. Well done.
Mo Yeah, it’s an easy read. I mean, it’s a great book.
Jon It is an easy read. It is an easy read. I’m just, I’m lazy. So there we go Before we jump into the show, it’s time for the fourth listener email. The three of us are here. We might listen, but if anyone else does and writes in to prove it, you are the fourth listener. Fourth listener for this episode is Paul P. Subject line was serial toy backtrack. Okay.
George Yeah.
Jon Paul says, Hi, guys.
Mo ah That was a while back.
Jon Just listened to the replay episode of Cereal Toys. It immediately reminded me of the Weedabix giveaway from 1984 here in the UK.
Mo Hmm.
Mo The hell’s a readabix?
Jon yeah
Mo You know what a readabix is?
Jon You could collect Weedabix.
Mo I have no idea.
Jon It’s like, it’s you know, imagine crummy wheat cereal. You know, the yeah it’s weed cereal UK.
Mo and Okay.
Jon um you could collect box tops and send off for a full computer game for all the major 8-bits in the yeah UK at the time called Weedabix vs. The Titches.
George Wow. Right?
Mo Boy, that tiger could go wrong in so many ways.
Jon That’s real yeah careful when you say it.
George right
Jon This turned out to be a pretty poor Space Invaders ripoff, but hey, it was an exclusive game. Okay.
Mo True.
Jon Yeah. On top of this, they also ran a quiz with 100 Dragon 64 computers with TV, cassette deck, and disk drive.
Mo Okay, that’s pretty cool.
Jon Yeah. The Dragon 64 was very similar to the Tandy color computer. And whilst it sold well initially in 82 in its Dragon 32 incarnation, by 1984, Dragon data were really struggling. And this seemed like a very desperate attempt at keeping the computer relevant.
Jon get Give it away in cereal. It must be valuable, right?
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon yeah Needless to say, it failed miserably, but it would still have been an amazing prize to get. Yeah. a computer out of cereal. i don’t I don’t care what it is. It’s free. set your Computer out of cereal. I’d have loved it. He wraps it up by saying thanks, as always, for all the work you guys do to keep us all entertained. Cheers, Paul.
Jon Awesome.
Mo Very cool.
Jon Thank you, Paul. Yeah. We love that you wrote in. Love it. Look, though we’re not familiar with Weedabix here in the U.S., we’re certainly familiar with those giveaways. And like you said, that sparked you sparked your sparked your curiosity and your memory. We’re talking about the cereal toys. We love that you wrote in. We love it any time the fourth listener takes time to drop us a line and tell us what they thought about the show or memories that we dredge up for them. If you would like your email featured here on the show, it’s drop dead easy. Just hit us up at podcast at genxgrownup.com. We’ll read every single one. And most of them, just like Paul’s, will eventually make the show.
Jon Mo, as you noted in our last episode when we were teasing that we were doing Ready Player One as the next backtrack, you had said it’s kind of an odd one for us in a couple of ways.
Mo time.
Jon First, we don’t cover a lot of books. That’s one, for sure. And two, it’s relatively recent, having come out in in the 2000s. Let me talk about stuff from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.
Mo yeah
Jon But this is a book, and what we chose to talk about it because… it’s so relevant to our experience growing up as Gen Xers.
Mo oh big time
Jon and we’re like, yeah, it might be more modern, but the contents of it speak directly to each of us. Before we get into talking about the book, I wanted to do one of those little round tables where we each talk about how we were first introduced to the book, what our familiarity with it is.
Jon And I want to start with you, George. what do how How do you remember getting exposed to Ready Player One?
George I don’t honestly.
Jon You don’t remember?
George No, I don’t remember who told me about it or where I might’ve found out about it. I just remember, um, getting the book. I remember, remember if I even got the book or the audiobook version first.
Jon he
George Honestly, I don’t remember if I watched the movie first at this point. I really, it’s all just jumbled together in my mishmash of a brain.
Jon ah A blur?
George There’s, I just remember enjoying it and really liking it.
Jon Yeah.
George I know I really liked the audiobook version with Will Wheaton reading it. um
Mo didn’t know that. oh that’s awesome.
George Yeah, yeah.
Jon That’s great.
George um I really liked his his performance on it, and it was… as reading the book and listening to the audio book and then watching the movie in all facets, even though there’s a lot of differences that we’ll get into later, it was, it was very smooth.
George It it felt very familiar probably because like you said, it’s, you know, it’s related so much to our childhoods.
Mo Yeah.
Jon The content. Yeah.
Mo yeah
Jon Yeah. So I’ll go next. And I will say that but i I don’t read regularly for leisure. Right. So I read plenty as a kid in school and books you had to read. And every once in a while, something will spark my interest, especially if it’s like ah a coffee table book that has a lot of interesting imagery and diagrams and stuff. And I’ll read.
Jon And one of my best friends growing up is from Central Florida. He lives across the country at time in California. And he just said, what’s your address? I’m sending you a book. And I’m like, oh, but he and I grew up playing computers together.
Mo Oh, great.
Jon And he knew he knows what my this was pre-Gen X grown up, right? This was before I was doing it as a living. It was just he knew me And I’m like, he’s sending to me a book. I guess I’m going to have to read it. But he said, trust me, trust me, you’re going to enjoy it.
Jon And this was a time when I was traveling a lot. And so usually i would watch movies on planes. And this was the only time in the history of me traveling that I was reading a book on a plane.
Jon i Once I got about it two chapters in, I kept getting surprised by, oh my God, somebody else knows about this. Someone else remembers this enough to write about it and use it as a mechanic.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And we’re going to get to what those things are. And i was I was trapped in that. but I just couldn’t believe. And every chapter introduced a new thing that I’m like, you remember this too?
Jon You remember these robots? You remember this game and stuff like that? it was And so ah my love and passion for it is a really neat segue to say, hey, Mo, how do you remember finding out about Ready Player One?
Mo hmm, see, some random person told me about it.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo No, they, I remember because you, you had, I guess you had gotten back from that trip or wherever you were that you read it.
George Oh, yeah.
Jon e
Mo And you’re like, you got to get this book. And I’m like, okay, first off, I know you’re not a big reader. So for you to tell me to get a book, I’m like, I got to get this book.
Jon Yeah.
Mo And I actually, I think I read that entire book like in a day. Like I started it and just didn’t put it down.
Jon Wow.
George oh yeah
Mo um It was like maybe two days tops, but it was like, one of these books I hated putting down because it was, just it just, one is one of those books where it was like, I wanted to be there. Like I, I want to live in that world.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo you know, that just seemed like pretty awesome, you know?
Jon Yeah.
Mo And like you said, every chapter, some little nugget of growing up Gen X, I kept popping up another new thing and the new thing.
Jon e
Mo So it was very well done.
Jon ah Specifically growing up a Gen X nerd, right?
Mo Yes.
Jon so So, like, I wonder if maybe, George, you have a little less connection to it because you weren’t quite as, you’re more of a jock. Your nerd tendencies didn’t pick up until a little later. Yeah, i don’t know.
George The book didn’t come out till 2011. I wasn’t enough of a nerd for you then to appreciate the book.
Jon so So you’re saying you were a full-born nerd by then? Okay. Well, I didn’t. That’s why I’m asking. That’s why I’m asking. I wasn’t sure.
George No, that didn’t have anything to do with it. Why? I don’t remember.
Jon Okay.
George I still love the book when I read it. And I love just got through talking about all that.
Jon Good.
Jon I’m just making sure. I didn’t know if you there was a jock distance that you had from it. Just checking to see.
George what what Jocks can’t be nerds too. What the hell exclusionary stuff is that?
Jon They didn’t want to be, that’s for sure.
George Hmm.
Jon So but but tell us a little bit about the origin of this book and how it came to be.
Mo Yeah. Well, obviously the author is Ernest Cline. He actually wrote this while he was writing this book.
Jon Yeah.
Mo He was a ah tech support person.
George e
Jon Hmm.
Mo So he was actually help people fix their internet. the you know Have you turned it on and put it back off again? That was his job for the 10 years, I think almost it took him to write this book.
Jon Wow.
Mo see So, you know, obviously he’s Gen X, he’s our age.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo um And he, when he was writing it, he just like, he loves Star Wars. He was a big Star Wars person. So he just liked that idea of the, Nobody who becomes the hero, you know, goes from nothing to suddenly becoming the big hero of the thing.
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mo And that’s kind of like where he kind of germinated the idea of all this. It turns out that actually his family was one of these, like, was very super religious. Like, they were into the whole satanic panic thing.
Mo So he talks about how he did have a 2600.
Jon Oh boy.
Mo His parents, like, were very careful about what games he played. You know, like like, adventure was not one that he was allowed, but he did play it.
Jon Sure.
Jon Hmm.
Mo You know, he just did it on the side. know, of course, a
Jon Because it was like swords and fantasy.
Mo It was fantasy, yeah that whole bit. you know Probably shooting airplanes and stuff is probably fine. but you But God forbid you have a fake dragon.
Jon War is okay, just not fantasy, right?
Mo Yeah, war is fine, just not a fake dragon.
Jon Yeah.
Mo So he said that’s where his influence was. And he also said that you know he wanted to write, you know they say, write what you know. And this is what he knew. right This is what he knew better than anything else in his life.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon You know, i remember as I went through this book, and I kind of mentioned this a little bit a second ago, is I just couldn’t believe that any of the… I thought these were all secret code things that only certain people who grew up and played these games knew.
Mo Right. Mm-hmm.
Jon And every time I saw a reference to a certain video game or a certain you know a Godzilla or a… a certain monster or or certain car, certain music, all those things.
George or music.
Jon And was just like, oh my God, it’s in the book. Those seemed like things that weren’t in books. Those were things people wrote about scholarly things or dramatic things that were important to the whole world. I didn’t realize those little personal things to me would end up in a novel like this.
Jon And it just kept fascinating me.
George I think for me it was because most fiction books, especially if they’re trying to tell some fantastical story, they try to create their own world.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
George Whereas with this book, he rooted it in the real world and used all the pop culture references that we know to create the world of the future.
George And I think that to me was why it pulled me in so much and why it made it such a fast and easy read like Mo was talking about earlier.
Jon Right?
George It’s one thing to, i read a ton of Star Trek novels when you and I were in the Star Trek club. I probably read 40 or 50 of those damn things at one point, just kept falling in love with them.
Jon Right? Yep.
Mo she
Jon Yeah.
George But they’re all completely foreign to you other than an occasional reference to some city on earth, maybe that somebody was born in, you get nothing. It’s all outside of where we are.
George you know if If you’re a Star Wars fan like Moe is, that’s a galaxy long, long time ago, far, far away.
Mo Far, far away.
George it’s
Mo Yep.
George You might recognize character types, but not people and places and things you loved before you even thought about loving fantasy.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon Touchstones. Right. Mm-hmm.
George That’s not what this is. This is, let’s take all the stuff you actually experienced and put it in a fictional story.
Mo c Yeah.
George It was brilliant.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Jon Yep.
Mo And the way he crafted it, we’ll go into this in the next section, but how he he made it so plausible, like why 80s was in this, you know, and it’s just some you know random statistics here.
George Right.
Jon Right.
Mo It’s like the book actually came out in 2011. So it’s the 15th year, that 15 year anniversary, actually, of the publishing of this book, which really came out 15 years ago.
Jon Oh, okay. Yeah.
Mo That blows me away, actually. um it’s one of these, he had the M. Night Shyamalan thing where his first book was this book. yeah
George right
Jon This was his sixth sense. Yeah.
Mo This is is his sixth sense, you know, because we’ll talk about later about the second book he wrote.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo But it it it’s sold like, what was it? 1.7 million copies by 2020. mean, that’s crazy. Mm-hmm. that’s crazy
Jon I wonder what volume of that was like what happened to me.
George Yep. yep
Jon Someone bought it for a friend. You need to read this. and And there’s nothing wrong with that. I mean, that’s viable, but that’s that’s a testament to how much someone loves something. I want you to experience this thing and I’m going to ship it straight to your door through Amazon and you’re going to get it and just be surprised.
Mo One of things I liked about it was that, um well, at the time, the person i was dating, she she had read it also. Oh, she was reading it, like, right after did, because was like, you got to read this.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo And just the conversation, because she did not, like, the book did a good job of explaining it, but she was like, was that really a big deal?
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo I’m like, oh, my God. You know?
Jon Really? so she had nothing like the experience we had because she didn’t know those.
Mo No, I mean, she enjoyed the book and the way he brought, you know, the way he wrote it made it very approachable, like nothing was like a mystery.
Jon Oh, weird.
Mo he didn’t need that pre-knowledge. But she was like, like this Easter egg for adventure. Like, OK, so I’m like, oh, my God, like you have no idea how big it did. I was able to explain to it like, OK, here’s why it was a big deal.
Mo you know, sorry, people didn’t get credit for the writing, blah, blah, blah, you know.
Jon Right. You know what that sparked in in my mind just now is something George said, how so many other books are this nothing you’re familiar with in a different galaxy or a different universe or a different fantasy thing.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon For your girlfriend at the time, though, that was it for her.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Because she didn’t it was all a fanciful thing. She didn’t know they were real. She had to ask you. So I could see why you could still enjoy it because they frame it well. They explain it well. It just so happens if you already were familiar with it, it sparks that nostalgia in you.
Mo It’s little bit. Yeah.
Jon Like, oh, oh, I know this thing. Yeah.
Mo So we bring up the Easter egg thing.
Jon Yeah, I think we go to that. Yeah.
Mo So we want to get just.
Jon I can get you into that.
Mo Yeah.
Jon How about now? up to toter
Jon And too, there’s something else that we were talking about before we started recording, Mo, is that there was a meta component to this book when it came out too.
Mo Oh, yeah.
Jon That’s
Mo Oh, yeah, for sure. Like, he put an Easter egg in the book. Now, it only was in the print book.
Jon so appropriate.
Mo He had to buy the hard physical copy of the book. And I don’t know all the details.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo I know that it had something to do, like, certain page numbers were written in a different font. And then that page had another thing in it that somehow you’re able to put together clues. And it was very… It was actually obviously wasn’t meant to be simple.
Mo um it was I think it was almost a year after… The booklet came out before somebody even figured it all out. And he didn’t tell anybody about it, too. He just put it in the book and let somebody discover it.
Jon That’s fantastic.
Mo And the cool thing was the prize. I wish I knew about this thing because the first prize was ah ah an actual DeLorean from Back to the Future. like It was a replica made from Back to the Future.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo puto act You could drive this sucker around.
Jon Yep.
Mo um He actually had two of them made.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo One was for the giveaway, one he kept for himself. So I say that again, that was just like brilliant.
Jon Yep.
George he had to tell somebody about it though he had to tell somebody about it because it would have gotten printed the way yeah right
Mo Hmm.
Mo Well, I’m sure I mean, the publisher had to wonder why he went in separate fonts, right?
Jon Right. Yeah, probably the publisher knew one of those things. Yeah.
Mo But it was definitely was not made public.
Jon It’s so appropriate. Yeah. Because that’s almost a mirror of what the book is about. You know, the the difference is they knew they were looking for something in the book, which we’ll talk about.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon In case you haven’t read it, we’ll talk about it in a second. In the book, they know they’re looking for something. But if you’re reading the book and didn’t know about that, you would literally have to figure out there was a puzzle and then figure out the puzzle to win.
Jon And I just got, I would have loved to have even just participated, let alone win.
Mo Right.
Jon That’d have been so neat to be on the bleeding edge.
Mo good.
Jon Now, though not all of us can remember exactly how we first found out about this novel, Ready Player One, we’re all in alignment and agreement that it was really meaningful to us and and has has become a touchstone that references earlier touchstones in our lives. Just in case either you…
Jon Never read it, or maybe you’re like me and haven’t read it since you first read it before. Quick synopsis, just to bring you up to speed. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, 2011 dystopian sci-fi novel set in 2045, the distant future of 2045.
Mo I know. know
Jon Oh, that sounds close. ah Where teenager Wade Watts hunts for hidden Easter eggs in the Oasis virtual reality universe. By solving puzzles based on 1980s pop culture, Wade competes against a ruthless corporation, IOI, to inherit the creator’s fortune and control all of Oasis.
Mo Yeah, I mean, I think that the part we have to kind of make people understand is that Oasis was basically the virtual reality world that everybody in the world pretty much lived in for all intents and purposes, for the most part.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo you know
Jon Because the world sucked in in great part.
Mo Yeah, the world sucked in his way of doing that, but everything was online.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Schools were online. I mean, everything was online. And so basically the person who had to who ran this company was the wealthiest person in the world, you know and also the most powerful because he controlled
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo every single thing.
Jon Right, everything.
Mo you And I mentioned earlier about how you know the idea of having this scavenger hunt, I guess the best word for it, you know to whoever discovers all this stuff becomes you know gets the owner of it, is that it was such a good way of pulling in the AD stuff and making it so relevant in the book without seeming forced.
Mo you know because Hal, obviously he grew up in the 80s, so he that’s to why he made all the puzzles based on the 80s.
Jon Mm, natural.
Mo But then there’s a whole group of people, you know the Gunters, right who were trying to solve this puzzle. So in order to solve the puzzle, they had to immerse themselves into 80s culture.
Jon That’s right.
Mo because they had no idea what could be a clue, what couldn’t be a clue.
Jon That’s right.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo you know So even when the amongst themselves talking for no reason, they’re constantly throwing 80s references at each other, you know almost like trying to one-up each other by like, oh, that’s family ties.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Like, oh, you got it, good one. you know like They were constantly trying to do this one-up to show how much they knew about the 80s. Oh, that’s from Blah Blah Blah Show and this 84, which you know yeah is just the way they did it, though, I thought was such a an amazing way of like kind of pulling that into the story without making it seem,
Mo Right. Yeah.
Jon Yeah, but because the characters, they had no idea what part of eighty s pop culture they were going to need to know. And to talk about the characters in a second, but I remember some of the scenes in the book, there were characters who spent their time when they weren’t inside of Oasis boning up on old cartoons and old sitcoms and TV shows because they never knew what they were going need to know once they got into Oasis and working on finding the next thing.
Mo yeah
Mo Yeah, playing different all the video games the hell is they like, know, and becoming masters at the mall too.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo they They didn’t just want to play them. They had to master these games. So like said, doing the references was pretty awesome.
George So,
Jon Good, sorry we jumped in.
George no, I was just keep going. It’s fine.
Jon Okay.
Mo Oh, I was actually running on steam on that one. So good.
Jon Okay.
Mo Yeah.
Jon All right. So I can jump and grab Halliday start talking about the characters because I can certainly talk about him. Okay. Okay. So why don’t we run down the various characters that you need to know from the book and and and why they’re important. And one of you already ah referenced, Mo, of course, is Halliday. He’s the guy who was basically the, ah without any of the baggage, he was the Bill Gates slash Elon Musk slash whatever. He was the billionaire who ran the big digital corporate everything. He ran Oasis, this virtual reality.
Jon And and And my understanding of him in the book is he was really a a gentle soul who was concerned that his empire would fall into, I guess the way he thought of it, unworthy hands, people who didn’t deserve it
Mo Yeah.
Jon And so his thought was, I am going to build something so that someone like me who understands the things I understand and has the same kind of knowledge and the same kind of familiarity with the things that he loved would ultimately be the one who takes up the mantle to run his business. And that that kind of sets all the wheels in motion for this novel.
Jon Everybody nods. Okay.
Mo Yeah, I’ll jump in. Yeah, and i mean and his character was actually kind of a sad character, too, in the book.
Jon Okay.
Jon OK.
Mo um Because, like I said, he was not… He was very socially awkward. You know, he understood computers. That’s pretty much the only thing he understood. You know? And he basically wanted to create a place where he would be comfortable.
Mo You know? And so, virtually that just kind of sucked into everybody else. One of the other characters we probably talk about is, you know, Ogden Morrow, who was… the co-founder of Oasis, you know, and at the time of the book, you know, the book opens with how they dying, you know, and then this announcement of the big competition, but, you know, ahug for some reason was kind of ousted out of the company years before, and he’s still alive and hanging out there, but, you know, but he was like, kind of like the, uh,
Jon okay
Jon Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mo I can’t think of a good solution the good comparison to that, but he was the person that kind of like brought the human element to everything. like He understood people. He was the one who kind of helped do sales and all that stuff.
Mo you know And he was still very technical, but Halliday needed him basically in order to succeed.
George Well, I mean, to me, it was an obvious parallel with Jobs and Wozniak, only the personalities were reversed.
Mo It’s true. Good one.
Jon Sure, sure, right, yeah, yeah, sure.
Mo Yes.
George Right? Right.
Jon I could jump into Wade if you want. Or somebody else would grab Wade. No, someone.
Mo I’m fine with Weber.
Jon Nope, okay, all right. okay
Jon Now, none of this adventure would have happened without Holiday and Ogden, but without a doubt, the story and really your avatar throughout the book is Wade, sorry, Wade was, well, don’t know.
Jon I said Wade Owen. I’m wrong. Let me just do it again. Now, none of this would have happened without Halliday and Ogden, but but but the clearly the the star of this book, the the primary character, and kind of your avatar throughout the book is Wade Watts, who is…
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon and he’s he’s And I remember relating to him because he starts out the book living in the stacks, which are basically mobile homes, trailers. You know, it’s low-rent district, and he was…
Jon You know, I remember and I loved how they did it in the movie, which we’ll talk about later. But you get to see it’s really just it looks so cobbled together like a Dr. Seuss environment. But it was they ran out of land and property.
Jon So now they’re just stacks of these mobile homes. And he his his handle he went by was Parzival. And i I remember all the way through this, I always got the feeling that it’s weird when you keep referencing the film because it’s just it’s a parallel.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon What you envision is rarely who they cast in the film, but I always imagined him being just a mousy little guy who was very competent, but super underrepresented. not confident in himself.
Jon And he finds himself, he finds that confidence throughout the course of, wow, I’m doing this. I’m actually doing well. I’m on the, what did they have? Like ah like a leaderboard or something you would check, you would see.
Mo Mm-hmm. It was leaderboard, yeah.
Jon Like he would see himself right on the scoreboard.
George The scoreboard.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon The scoreboard, it was the high scoreboard, right? Because what we have in games.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon And he would see himself and every time he did, he was like, I’m actually doing it. I’m doing well. And I’m i’m not an also ran. I’m in this.
Mo Yeah, for sure. I mean, and the other thing about him is that he was like, he grew up like poor as the other issue. Like, so, you know, his stuff was always cobbled together and, you know, and his way, like said, he lived like his life was not amazing.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mo And so the only place he could be amazing was when he was out in, you know, Artemis. I mean, i’m sorry, in the Oasis, you know, because there his character actually had like
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo some notoriety. Like he was known, you know, he was known as, you know, one of the gunters, one of the people, like one of the top ones too, you know, a matter of fact, it brings up the second person who was a part of another gunter was Artemis, Samantha cook.
Jon Oh, yeah. Yep.
Mo So she was like, probably the, his, one of his biggest, like she was another gunter trying to solve the thing. They were very happy to be independent. That was another big thing about them that they were both like independent. They didn’t belong to groups of people trying to solve it. They all just were trying to solve it on their own.
Mo And it’s also a person that he kind of develops a crush on too.
Jon Oh, I forgot they did that.
Mo huh
Jon I forgot they had clans that were working together.
Mo Yeah, they were clans, but they were clanless.
Jon That’s right.
Mo They didn’t want to belong to the clan.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo It was almost like a badge of honor that you could do this on your own.
Jon Yep.
Mo like You didn’t need a whole group of people.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo you know And it turns out he winds up getting a crush on her, hoping that she’s actually a ah woman and about his age, because he had no idea, because avatars could be literally anything. but um But again, she was also one that you know was just super, super into all of this.
Jon All
Jon right, George, are there anything, any one of these you want to grab? I feel like we’re leaving you out.
George I don’t know. We didn’t make any plans, so we’re just going along.
Jon Yeah, know.
George I thought Moe was going to lead the whole thing, so…
Jon That’s fine with me if you’re cool, Mo.
George I just… I filled out the card, so…
Jon Okay.
Mo ah we We just keep going.
Jon Yeah. can Can you keep guiding us since you’re most familiar with recently?
Mo Yeah.
Jon rerit it Thank you.
Mo And so and then so that some of the other key gunters, whatever you call independence in this, whereas his one of his friends was H was what they called him.
Jon Awesome.
Mo um And you find out later in the book that’s actually ah a female, you know, it’s like her avatar is like this big hulking ogre like thing.
Jon Like a big monster, right?
Mo Yeah.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo you know up And then they wound up being a couple others like Dado and Shoto who are two people that actually work together as one of the few. that They weren’t part of clan because only two of them technically, but they were also like very high up.
Jon Mm-hmm. They were duo.
Mo So through all of this, of course, you you have to have an antagonist in the book, right?
Jon Yeah.
Mo And this one was the evil corporation, IOI, um who was led by a person named Nolan.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo And he’s the one that basically wanted to take it over and monetize everything. you know, which when Holiday designed it, one of his big things that he wanted everybody to have access to it.
Mo Now, not every part of it, but everyone had to have access. It should be available to everybody. And then, you know, Soranto is like, yes, we should have tiered levels depending on how much you pay and, you know, pay a monthly fee and et cetera, et cetera.
Jon Yeah, it makes me think of, what when I was reading it, it makes me think of that brute force attack on the lottery, right?
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon It’s like someone who says, I’m going to buy x number 100,000 tickets and ensure that I’m going to do something. And Nolan was… As I remember, he was like, he was paying people to work for him to go and do these things, thinking that, well, then I can’t lose because I’m i’m i’m stacking the deck and I’m being able to do it.
Mo Oh yeah, he had whole department. Mm-hmm.
Jon and And that made it all the more impressive when the kids, I call them kids, the the other individuals, the other gunters, were able to best him and he never took it well.
Mo No. Matter of fact, even had a way of cheating, which was that he had different experts and they were able to swap into characters, which you weren’t supposed to do. So if they came up to a puzzle that they needed a video game person, he was able to actually swap it to a different person that could actually do it.
Jon oh yep
Mo So, you know, he had a lot of advantages going to his side.
Jon okay are we stuck that that’s fine that’s fine uh all right shall we just pitch in to get ready for the champion of story beat okay that’s fine
Mo I mean, characters and story is most of it right there.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Now I’m super grateful, Mo, that you reread this book because it it all seems a little fuzzy to me and it’s a little blurry with the movie, like I’d said. However, we get back from this quick break, we’re going to each champion a section or story beat from the book that we remember well and that we it resonates with us, right? So stick around. We’ll be right back.
Jon Easy.
Mo Yeah. you want just jump into this one and start?
Jon Cool. If you want. Yep.
Mo Yeah, i can do it. Champion section 5, 4, 3,
George you
Mo So we each decided to take you know something out of the book that maybe not the best part. There’s so many good parts, you know but something that stuck out to us.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo And so what I chose was actually the very first one the first challenges he had to do. and We got through the gate, which was I thought was amazing, and I wish this was a real thing, was he walks through the gate, and all sudden he’s like in an arcade playing Galaga, I think it was, wasn’t it?
Mo And all sudden he realizes that he’s Matthew Broderick, in war games at the very beginning of the film.
Jon he
Mo And he was in a game where he had to do the the lines from the movie at the right times. And if he did them at the right tone, you got bonus points and he had to go through the entire movie.
Mo And of course, once he saw war games, he’s like, Oh, what a holiday’s favorite movies. I’ve seen it like 50 times and blah, blah, blah, blah.
Jon Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mo And, but I just, when I saw that, I was thinking, i said, Oh my God, that would be an amazing game. You know to actually like inhabit that character, a famous character from a movie and just see how close you can get to it.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo And, you know matter fact, he’s like, you know, in war games, like a kid comes up and he’s like, want to take over the game? And the kid’s like, sure. And also you got bonus points.
Jon Right.
Mo Remember that little line. said, I just thought that section and that that whole thing was just was pretty amazing. How about you, George? What did you pick?
Jon Yep.
George um Well, i I kind of like The Second Gate because, again, it’s another one of those 80s movies and it’s one that’s one of my favorites. um Basically, it was having to solve the puzzle that was put into the world a Blade Runner.
George So…
Mo Yeah. Mm-hmm.
George It’s in chapter 26 in the book, obviously about halfway through. And he gets to, he has to go to the Void Kampf machine and do some work. And the Void Kampf machine, after he completes it, opens up and becomes the second gate.
George And then he moves forward and he ends up in this different world, does an Excalibur thing.
Mo he
George It’s, but I just love the detail that Ernest Cline used to describe the room, how he got into the Terrell Corporation building from the rooftop and had to leave his ah had to leave his car um you know behind and made it invisible because people would steal each other’s cars and in the Oasis and whatnot.
Mo Oh, right, right.
Jon Yep. Yep.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George Yeah. It was just so beautifully thought out. ah All the Terrell security guards that would try and attack him as soon as he stepped off the elevator.
Mo he
George And even so much that he thought enough about it that while he was in the second gate completing the challenge, when he got done with it and he came back, all the alarms and the security guards were gone because they had been searching for him but couldn’t find him because he was inside the hidden gate that nobody else could see.
Mo right ah
Jon Mm-hmm. Oh, right. Yep. Yep.
George It was just really nice. I also liked it because at that point in the book, he’s not in the lead. And that’s something that’s a little bit different from the movie because in the movie, the the high five are pretty much always in the lead.
Mo That’s right. That’s right. Mm-hmm.
Mo Yeah. And they team up pretty quick.
George They’re always ahead of IOI.
Jon Sure.
Mo Yeah.
George But in the book, IOI is ahead of him at this point on the scoreboard and have already completed this gate.
Mo Mm-hmm. Yeah.
George And he was playing catch up. And I thought that was a nice… thing that it would have been fun for it to be in the movie but I think what they went with instead was you know the whole romantic relationship and her getting snatched by the cops that became the foil instead of him being behind and having to play catch-up but to me the book was slightly better because it it kept his like his solemnness he had to be alone
Mo Yeah.
George and he was still on his own.
Jon Oh.
George He wasn’t working with anybody through this point.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Right.
George Not really, at least.
Jon Yeah.
George So that’s why i really think that was a pivotal chapter for me.
Jon Yeah. that was Yeah.
Mo No, it was great.
Jon That’s a good one.
Mo Yeah, that was i was a tough ah that was a close second for me, so I was ready to pick that one too, but yeah.
Jon Cool. Yep.
Jon Was it? Okay.
George Yeah. What about you, John?
Jon Yeah. you know um and You know, and like you, this is used slightly differently in the book and the movie. I know we’re talking specifically about the book, but… It’s really how both in in a small way and in a large way, Atari’s 1980 game Adventure is featured both spiritually and literally in the book.
Jon Because you’re looking for three keys, like you are in Adventure, overall in the game, right?
Mo Yeah.
Jon Now, they’re not you know white, gold, and black. They’re one of the like the emerald key and the different… But forget what they call the Opal Key.
Mo Yeah. Brass, I think it was, something like that, yeah.
Jon Yeah, right. But you’re like adventure. You’re finding three keys to progress through this, to get through different gates, you know, like getting into different castles. And then on top of that, of course, ultimately, he has to actually play adventure to get and to find instead of Robinette’s Easter egg.
Jon It’s, you know, it’s to get to the final bit of the of the story to get the Easter egg, which is control of Oasis. But it was I talked earlier about how what I like so much about.
George Thank
Jon What I found so attractive in the book was things I thought nobody else really knew about or would ever bother to put in a book were in here. And ah not only did they reference specifically, as I said, playing adventure, but knowing the fun that you might’ve had as a kid playing that and seeing it play out over the course of the entire novel,
Jon It just, it made you feel like, oh, finally somebody wrote a book for me. You know, somebody wrote a book for me.
Mo Yeah.
Jon It’s just really, and there are lots of those little pieces, but overall it’s, but you guys know my love for adventure and how much I enjoy that game. So yeah, it was the use of adventure. That was more, even more prominently featured in the movie, I think, because people were crowding around.
Mo yeah
Jon It was, everybody’s trying to figure out how to get it. Anyway, that’s, that’s all fine. But even before that, it’s ah how it’s used and how much it’s impactful on the story here made it my favorite bit. so
Mo Yeah. Actually, he brought that up. I think the whole way they kind of got into the gate. i don’t if you remember this part where it’s like, basically there was a door and it said like, I think it was charity, faith, or hope or something like that. And they were like trying to figure out and reference back to schoolhouse rock.
Jon Oh, that’s right.
Mo You know, remember that? And so they realized that what’s the magic number? Threes. And they all started saying three is a magic number.
Jon Magic number.
George Right.
Jon ha Oh, that’s it’s yeah.
Mo And they all said like, that’s right. We need three keys yeah to do this. You know, it’s, it was like said, they just took a good job of us integrating these things.
Jon it’s yeah
Jon Oh, Ernest Cline. Yep. That’s another one. They would happen random times. i’m like, holy crap, he remembers that too. it’s So cool.
Mo they’re
Jon Yeah. Okay. We’re not quite done. We get back from one more break. We’re going to talk about the lasting legacy and impact that now 15 years this novel has had on a pop culture. Stick around.
George As we often like to do, it’s time to finish up with basically the legacy of Ready Player One. And it is already a very long legacy considering just how short of a time ago it was that the book first got published, 2011, like Mo said at the beginning.
George I wanted to talk just a little bit about something that occurred to me when we first were discussing… um talking about this book, because it does mean a lot to our generation, I kind of feel like this is Gen X’s magnum opus. And just to clarify that, I’ll give you the definition from Google AI, of course. ah A magnum opus is a large and important work of art, music, or literature, especially one regarded as the best work of an artist, composer, or writer.
Mo Very trustworthy stuff.
George Now,
Mo Okay.
George I think that plays on a couple of different levels in this case. I think it is definitely one of the most important books written about and for Generation X. That’s just my personal opinion.
George Everybody can have their own opinion.
Jon Oh yeah.
George I definitely still think it’s Ernest Cline’s best novel to date.
Mo Oh yeah.
George ah You know, I know he did Ready Player Two and it wasn’t as well received. But I think this definitely had the most legs. I mean, we got the movie with Spielberg, and we’ll talk a little bit about that in just a second.
George But then just the fact that all of those different forms, art, music, literature, the book itself, movies, everything that was important to us and to this writer were explored in this book, but not…
Mo e
George in and of themselves, they were just assumed as puzzle pieces to craft a broader picture, so to speak.
Mo Thank
George So, like, here’s the puzzle piece of, you know, the movie that John loves, or here’s the puzzle piece of a piece of music that Mo loves.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George And you weave all these things together to tell the story of how somebody who… grew up in that time period could push that love into someone who is now in the future time period.
George It’s just like what we do with our kids, right?
Jon Mm-hmm. No.
George We show our kids our movies, our music, our video games. And even though they find their own things that they love,
Jon Mm-hmm.
George They have a nostalgia and an affinity for the stuff that we grew up loving because of our influence. And I think that’s what this book highlights, even though it doesn’t have to say it outright. I think that’s what he was trying to get across.
Jon I don’t necessarily disagree with you. i mean i When you said, I think this is the most important about Gen X, and quickly I’m like, okay, let me see. it Do i think I think of anything, and any alternates necessarily, right?
Mo Night.
Jon Certainly not as it relates to Gen X nostalgia and pop culture, I can’t imagine. And and to your point, it’s kind of like, all those little all those little nuggets, each little fiber that’s in that is weaving this tapestry of the Gen X experience.
George Yep.
Jon But no individual one is necessarily calling attention to itself. It’s it’s a tool, a means to an end within the story. it’s It’s not like you shine a flashlight on it go, look, Tempest, look, Tempest. No, no, no. It’s like, well, we’re gonna deal with Tempest. We’re gonna talk about that. And there might be a a sentence that references what it is.
Jon But we don’t stop there. You got to jump in because it’s assumed that that is the important integral part of our culture and you got to know it and move forward. So, yeah, I can see.
Jon I can’t think of a better one, George. Yeah.
Mo Yeah, I mean, I can’t think of ah another book or or something like that that made me more nostalgic than Ready Player One, to be quite honest.
Mo Like I can’t you know i mean they said, started talking about war games.
Jon Yeah.
George Right.
Mo I mean, I immediately was like, oh my God, gotta go rewatch that movie. I mean, it was like, it was the everything. And he did a really good job of just picking out just like the right nuggets out of each of these little things.
Mo you know, like that makes you just really want to pull into it. So, yeah, I agree. I think as far as like just trying to, you know, define Gen X, you know, I think it did a pretty good job.
Mo And even in the ways that the, the modern, the kid, you Wade and those guys, you know they were basically Gen Xers essentially, you know, because they just spent all their time doing it.
Jon Right.
Mo So yeah, definitely, maybe that’s why maybe we relate to the character so well as well. So, you know,
Jon Yeah. Now, George, you mentioned a sequel, Ready Player Two.
George Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mo Mmm.
Jon I never got around to that one, but I know Mo is groaning.
Mo Mmm.
Jon I know Mo did.
Mo Mmm.
George from
Jon So, Mo, do you want to share with us a little bit about the sequel?
Mo was it was had to do it like holidays he really dead you know or is he like based like a ghostso machine kind of thing and the oasis and looking for him but it was like you know the first book is just flowed right everything just seemed like it fit it made sense ready playerer two it seem like everything was just forced in You know, like he didn’t cover a lot of music in Ready Player One.
Jon Yeah.
Mo That was something like he kind of like didn’t do a lot of really. He did some, but not a ton.
George yeah there’s just a little bit here and there like my chapter 26 that’s part of the second gate but yeah
Mo Yeah. Exactly. like he says hearing it Whereas Ray Planner 2, I guess he figured that, oh, I gotta make up for music. And like every other page was a Prince reference.
Mo I mean, it was it was it was ridiculous.
Jon ah
Mo It was just as crazy. you know It’s like one of those thingss that’s why I kind of said it’s like his M. Night Shyamalan thing. It’s like, you know I wish he took 10 years to write the second book also. yo Because cause he wrote the second book in like three years or something like that, if that.
Jon also Oh, right. Yeah. Okay.
Mo um
Jon Yeah.
Mo And granted, you know it
Jon I’m sure he was under pressure to write a sequel, right?
Mo Oh, I’m sure. I’m sure. And, you know, I’m sure they gave him a big, you know, bunch of money up front to write it.
Jon Right. as As well as it did.
George Right.
Mo And it and apparently it did OK because a whole bunch people bought it who read like love the first one.
Jon Yeah,
George I got a copy on my shelf.
Jon yeah I bought it. Yeah, I bought it.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah, but let me tell you, it’s I I had a hard time getting through it even because I was just like the story just didn’t make sense.
Jon ah that’s He got his money. Hmm.
Mo It’s just like the heart of the first one.
Jon Yeah.
Mo You know, like you had you’re rooting for somebody in the first one.
Jon Yeah, I remember I leapt into Ready Player Two, like ever since I read Ready Player One.
Mo know, the second one, you kind of like, yeah, all right, whatever.
Jon I’m like, are there any of other books like this out there? Is this like a genre of book I don’t know about? And apparently they’re like, no, there’s nothing quite like this out there. So when I heard the sequel was coming, I’m like, I can’t wait.
George He he.
Jon I pre-ordered it and I got it. And I remember reading about the first three chapters and i was just crestfallen because I didn’t feel the same feeling whatever intangible thing that RPO had, it just wasn’t in Ready Player Two for me.
Jon it’s And it’s, I mean, it’s hard to, you know, you can’t catch lightning lightning twice in a bottle. That’s rough.
Mo Yeah.
George yeah I think for me, the story didn’t need a sequel. I didn’t need anything else.
Jon Mm-mm.
Mo Yeah, that’s that’s the absolutely.
George It was self-contained and it was one of those stories that has a satisfying ending that leaves the world open, but I don’t need to revisit it.
Jon Yep.
George There are plenty of those movies and TV shows and books that we’ve read that you’re like, oh, this has got to have a sequel.
Jon Mm-mm.
George Now, some of them don’t. Some of them are perfect the way they are.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Sure.
George And I think… I think our greed for another crack at our nostalgia in that form, plus the publisher’s greed of another best-selling novel.
Mo Yeah.
Mo here
George And Ernest Cline probably really just wanted to give us another shot at that world.
Mo Oh, I’m sure.
George i don’t blame him for doing it.
Mo Oh, I don’t either.
Jon No, I’m not mad at him.
George I agree with you.
Jon Yeah.
George No, I i agree. moy Maybe if he could have taken a little bit more time to figure out how to go back to the story in a different way.
Mo Yeah. It
George You know, the ghost in the machine stuff, they did allude to that a little bit in the movie toward the end of that. And we’ll talk about that in just second. But yeah, i I still have it on my agenda to read that book, but I’m not as…
George motivated to read it because the first one satisfied all my cravings.
Jon Yep. Perfect.
Mo it really did
Jon Yeah. Yeah. There’s something else that I read as we were preparing for this show is that, you know, digging through, finding and what what, you know, what kind of lasting impact that it had. And this is interesting. And I think probably adds credence to your proposition that it’s the Gen X magnum opus, George, is that this novel, though we might have realized it at the time, looking back, it’s part of what pushed the 80s and 90s pop culture nostalgia into what it is now.
Jon Look, we all kind of think about our childhood fondly, but if you think back to, like we weren’t super nostalgic about Gen X in 1990, that was just 10 years ago.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon In 2000, eh, you know, it’s 20 years ago, we’re still, we’re it feels recent.
George No, yeah.
Jon But it had just gotten far enough away. We’re kind of 30, 35 years past our childhoods and the things are all gone. And think of all the things that we take for granted now. How big retro gaming is.
Jon How big throwbacks and the Lego sequels are to great movies.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Cobra Kai, right? All those things happen now. Those weren’t happening in 2010, 2011 when this book came out.
Mo Oh, no.
George Right.
Jon But with the popularity of…
George not Not well, at least.
Mo yeah Yeah, exactly.
Jon No, no, not…
Mo Some really bad movies came out, but…
Jon Well, I mean, Atari was a zombie walking around with some other owner doing crazy things with their IP.
George Right.
Jon Not like today where Atari is a company that’s self-sustaining and doing what we love, you know? And I mean, gaming was a thing, you know, you know, synth pop was a thing. It was still, it was simmering, but it’s almost like it was simmering in this, this, uh, this barrel of but gunpowder and ready player one lit this fuse that went, remember all this stuff?
Jon Kaboom, here it all is.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon And when I read it said the book acted as a cultural accelerant to push us into being nostalgic for the time.
George e
Jon And I think I would agree with that. And I think it lends credence to, like i said, you’re, uh,
Mo yeah
Jon your proposition about the magnum opus.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George Well, it wasn’t the only ah great thing that came out from this storyline that we did get. What, in my opinion, it was a pretty solid film.
George Now,
Jon Mm-hmm.
George as I like to do in these podcasts, I like to go over some of the stats from these things. So first of all, the budget was between 155 and 175 million.
Mo Yeah.
George There’s no perfect number that I could find, but the total gross ah for the film, which kind of makes you wonder why haven’t we seen anything else in the, in that storyline yet is 607 million.
Mo That’s respectable.
George so
Jon That’s a good return on investment.
George 3x, 3.5x on its investment.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George um Really, really solid.
Mo Yeah.
George You would have thought that they would have done something with it. Just a couple of notes. Also, the domestic here in the U.S., $137 million of that $607 million.
Mo Oh, really?
George But the biggest market that contributed the most money was China at over $200 million on that film.
Mo Really?
Jon Okay.
Mo Is the soldier are big there, I guess?
George I don’t know. Maybe it’s more of a love of American culture. And they were at a time period where the 80s pop culture stuff was something that people love in China at that point.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George I don’t know. I mean, I know in Japan, there’s a lot of American cultural references, so I don’t know much about China, but 200 million, somebody somewhere wanted to watch us play adventure on the big screen, I guess.
Mo Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jon I’d have done it for free.
Mo yeah
Jon Well, I’d charge a little bit, maybe, but yeah.
George Hmm.
Jon You know, something that the book had going for it, that Ernest Cline could do at his leisure, that the movie had to bend over backwards for, was what they were allowed to include.
Mo Yeah.
George Sure.
Jon Because Cline could just write about anything they want, right?
George IP.
Jon Any intellectual property out there.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon He’s like, I’m going reference it. I’m going talk about it. But if you want to show it on screen and make money on this movie,
Mo That’s a different story.
Jon I understand it was a licensing quagmire, what they could and couldn’t get, what they could what people would allow.
George Oh, sure.
Mo Oh my God. Yeah.
Jon And not only that, how the thing… i say you Say you own… this particular Shogun robot. How’s it going to be portrayed? Is it going be blown up?
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon I don’t want to see if it’s blown up. Well, that’s the story. Well, sorry, you can’t use it. So i they had to do contortions sometimes to even include something that they felt was important enough, like which car could be in the race, which motorcycle, you know, which and could Speed Racer be there?
George you
Jon Is it going to lose? We don’t know. It’s one of those things. And it it hamstrung the movie. And I’m sure that was probably one of the catalysts for the changes they had to make. because You just couldn’t use everything that Klein put in the book.
Mo Yeah, I agree. Because even like of the opening scenes where he’s just sort of walking through the oasis and you see all the 80s characters all around him, you know, different people doing 80s characters, some some moderns of the 80s. But for me, it was like looking at that on screen, you just see all the stuff that’s not there.
Jon Yeah.
Mo You know, like, oh, they didn’t have this character.
Jon Yeah.
Mo why i didn’t have this person?
Jon What about?
Mo right Where the book, your brain just fills it in. Like, I assume that they’re just around and about. But you’re right, though, because it’s that whole IP thing, which, you know and I like the movie. You know, it’s one of those movies that you definitely need to separate the movie from the book.
Mo Like, they’re different. You know, the movie is as good on its own as a movie. The book is good as own. You know, they they have some they have some threads the same, but they’re not really the same. You know, um yeah, the story beats are there.
Jon Yeah, yeah. The story beats are there, but executed differently. Yeah.
Mo You know, some of the things they did in the book, which they, some of the things they did in the movie, which I didn’t understand, like, you know, how Artemis, know, she had that huge birthmark in the book, you know, and in the book, it was huge and it was extremely prominent in a movie.
George Right.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Jon Yeah.
Mo You could barely see it. It was like. Very, so like, it very mild, actually, in the movie.
Jon Mm-hmm.
Mo Yeah. So it’s like.
Jon Like, why would you be self-conscious about that?
George Well,
Jon There’s no reason to. It’s like as it’s like a freckle.
Mo Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Come on.
Mo Yeah.
George I mean, it was a bit bigger than a freckle. It covered the whole right side of her face.
Mo Well, yeah, but it wasn’t like, you know, the book describes this as deep purple. Like you’ve seen people with these things, like these big, deep purple birthmarks that cover big.
Jon Right. Right.
Mo And so you can see why she where the book, I’m like, you know, in the movie, I’m like, I, you know, I can see past that pretty easily.
Jon That’s no big deal. Yeah. So…
Mo you know but um But, you know, but again, like I know that, you know, more more appeal, bigger, you know, that kind of stuff.
Jon ah
George Sure.
Mo I totally get it. You know, the and some of things they changed, which, again, i had I just understood it because one, they had to do it in a two hour plus movie, you know, which is one of those. I wish they go back and redo this as a TV series and do the book, you know.
Jon Right.
George sure
Jon Right. Because some TV series are like, oh, this is just fluff. No, no, there’d be no fluff. You could just flesh this out for 10 episodes with no trouble.
Mo Oh, easy. Yeah, you have 10 solid episodes of this thing, you know if you really wanted to.
Jon Yeah, yeah. yeah Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mo But again, I’m happy they made the movie, though, and I’m happy with the way it came out.
Jon Yeah, me too.
Mo Like they said, I mean, they got…
Jon We actually all three saw it together, didn’t we?
Mo Yes, we did.
Jon Weren’t we all in the same town?
George Yeah.
Jon I seem to recall we did, like, we did a follow-up video.
Mo Actually, we did a video after.
George I came to, I drove to Jacksonville.
Mo Yeah.
Jon That’s right.
George Yeah.
Jon Yeah, we all sell together.
Mo I’ll put a link to the video in this so everyone can see ah our immediate impressions after the after the movie.
Jon Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah.
George yeah I mean, it it’s not like, and I get your points, Mo, but it’s not like Spielberg, who was the director of this film, is not known for getting the original writers to do the screenplays and having to change stuff.
George And that’s the same thing that he did with Jurassic Park and Michael Crichton.
Mo Yeah. Sure.
George He did the same thing here with Ernest Cline. I still think that he took… what was like John said, you know, IP quagmire.
Mo Yeah.
George He took an almost impossible book to film in modern legal society. And he did a serviceable job.
Mo Oh, absolutely.
Jon No doubt.
Mo Absolutely.
George I may be better than serviceable and maybe only Spielberg could have made the film because who else would have had the clout in Hollywood to get the rights for half of the stuff that they, cause they got a crap ton of rights.
Jon No doubt. Yeah.
Jon To get all those things.
George If you look at that battle scene on the planet,
Jon All right.
Mo Oh my God. At the end? Oh my God.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George There was everything you could think of just all these different characters. How do you get Chucky?
Mo Yeah.
George How do you get Chucky in a Spielberg movie? But they got him in there and I, I thought they did a really good job, but it’s not the only kind of thing that was done after this book in ready player two.
George There was another one, ah Andy Weir, you guys know from the Martian and whole bunch of stuff, right?
Mo Oh yeah. An upcoming, yeah.
Jon Oh, OK.
Mo Hail Mary.
Jon Ooh.
George Uh, so he did a fan fiction short story called Lissero,
Mo Hail Mary.
George that was published online in 2014. So three years after the book, he was just a fan and did this short story. But then they later included it in a 2016 limited edition printing of the original book by some company called Subterranean Press.
George I don’t know if they’re the original publishers or not, but it kind of makes me want to go and see if the copy I’ve got on my book is that or if I want to go out and buy it because I love Andy Weir’s storytelling style.
Mo Oh. Huh.
Mo Yeah.
Mo Oh, my God, yeah.
George He’s very articulate. He’s very factual. And I think it it’s great that two modern authors that I enjoy have this connection together.
Jon Do you, I’ve never heard of this Lucero. I’m learning about it here for the first time. do you know, it’s so I’m guessing it’s like set in the world. Do you know anything about what it is?
George I don’t know anything about it.
Jon No.
George I know the factoid that I found on it.
Mo Oh, I just looked it up real quick.
Jon Ooh.
Mo So while while you’re talking, I looked it up.
Jon Wow.
Mo um it’s the It’s the origin of Sorrento and how why he decided to join IOI.
Jon Now we got to dig that up. Okay, Mo’s going to dig it up.
George ah
Jon Ooh, interesting.
Mo And you can read it online. There’s a link. I’ll put the link in the show notes.
Jon I’m still going to check my book.
Mo Yeah, but you can read it online.
Jon I’m still going to check and see if I have it. Yeah. All right. Link in the show notes. There you go. That’s cool, George. I had no idea.
Mo Yeah, I didn’t know about that either.
Jon Dug that up.
Jon All right. Did we do it? Have we accomplished? We’re ready to log out of Oasis? I’m not. i always thought it to be cool to like, when is Oasis a thing? I want to log into it. I think it would be neat.
Mo I know.
George It could be a thing now.
Jon Right?
George That’s my point.
Jon You’d think?
George We have good enough virtual reality and we have enough systems in place because a lot of people built stuff because they love this story.
Jon Yeah.
George We could, can you imagine a ready player one VR game?
Jon there’s There’s the IP quagmire again, but I’d love to see him try.
Mo Yeah, but still.
George They don’t have to sell it. They could just give it to us for free.
Mo Exactly.
Jon i think of what’s the what’s the free game the kids play, a Fortnite or whatever.
Mo but
Mo Yeah, one of those.
Jon Every other week they have another IP.
George Right.
Jon Oh, we’re going to have Stranger Things in it. We’re going to have Terminator in it, right? They could just keep dumping stuff into a ready.
George Right.
Jon Oh, give me an OAS. I would buy a VR headset if OASIS was a thing.
George ah
Jon Are you kidding me?
Mo yeah Oh, in a so heartbeat.
Jon Oh, man. All right. All right, I come down off of this Ready Player One high. Before I leave you, i do want to thank a brand new Patreon supporter, Paul S.
Jon Headed over to patreon.com slash genxgrownup. He’s heard us beg here on the podcast. We need your support.
Mo ah
Jon We love our supporters. And Paul said, I want to become one of those folks. I want to support what you guys do. Paul, thank you for doing that. And as you know, you’re joining a roster. of amazing and generous folks.
Jon And and listener, if you want to do the same, we would love to have your help to keep us solvent, keep us doing what we’re doing. Just open up your heart, open up your wallet, pop over there to genxgrownup.com slash Patreon. Both of those URLs work. I know I said two different ones. That’s on purpose. You can go over there for as little as a dollar a month.
Jon You can support what we do and make sure we keep doing it just like Paul S did. So thankful to you. You know, I’m also thankful to is you guys are helping me out, get through this because I kept conflating the book in the movie and you guys get, wait a minute. Don’t forget that was in here. This wasn’t the other one that kept me straight.
Jon That is going to wrap it up for this backtrack edition of the Gen X grownup podcast. Don’t worry. if You were worried. You should not worry. We’ll be back in two weeks with another one. Next week is the standard edition of our show. Until then I’m John George. Thank you so much for being here, man.
George yes sir
Jon Mo, you know, I appreciate you.
Mo Sorry. Always fun, care, everybody.
Jon And fourth listener, it’s you. We all three appreciate Most of all, we cannot wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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