Ernest Cline: Ready Player One

Ernest Cline is best known for writing the original draft of Miramax’s 2009 PR disaster Fanboys, a film about a group of Star Wars super-fans. But with a film deal already in place for his debut novel, Ready Player One, that’s about to change. In a 2044 where resources are incredibly scarce and major cities have spread out into fields of mobile homes and trailers piled atop each other to form skyscrapers known as “the stacks,” Wade Watts escapes his Oklahoma City life and heads into the virtual Internet paradise known as OASIS.
A kind of Second Life mixed with World Of Warcraft and other MMORPGs, OASIS was the crowning achievement of game designer James Halliday, a combination of Will Wright’s innovation and Cliff Bleszinski’s bravado. When Halliday died, he left a video message to the world that somewhere within his vast online universe, he’d hidden three keys that open three hidden gates. The first player to conquer the greatest Easter egg of all time wins control of OASIS, and infinite wealth. But as years go by and nobody can find a shred of viable information on the keys’ locations, publicity dies down.