Ready Player One

Speculative Fiction comes in many flavors. I prefer the kind where the author develops an idea, thinking it through, taking it (and you) to new and surprising places: [b:A Deepness in the Sky 226004 A Deepness in the Sky (Zones of Thought, #2) Vernor Vinge http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1316729499s/226004.jpg 1270006], [b:The Sparrow 334176 The Sparrow (The Sparrow, #1) Mary Doria Russell http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1333578682s/334176.jpg 3349153], anything by [a:Iain M. Banks 5807106 Iain M. Banks http://www.goodreads.com/assets/nophoto/nophoto-U-50x66.jpg]. Then there's the bubblegum kind where you just take a story that could be today, add a hefty dose of magic wish fulfillment, and call it SF. Ready Player One is not the first kind.I feel a little weirded out. The pervasive 1980s nostalgia is bizarre, and the book at times feels like a collection of 80's trivia in search of a story. At page 54* I paused but deliberately chose to keep reading, mostly because of this rave review on boingboing but also because, hey, Underdog Makes Good Against Big Mean Bullies And Gets The Girl. It had its fun moments, but on the whole: don't bother. This isn't SF, it's pure Fantasy thinly disguised with technospeak. The economics of that world (real or virtual) make no sense, there's so much Deus ex Machina that my eyes are tired from all the rolling they've done. And did I mention how jarring all the 80's trivia was? Who is Cline's target audience? YAs won't know or understand or care about the Eighties; those of us who lived through them are old enough to appreciate a more solid story. (And OBTW we don't care to relive Eighties videogames or music either).Oh well. I won't get those hours back, but I've reinforced my Be More Skeptical Of Rave Reviews brain module. And that's good.*page 54: common rule of thumb. Give a book (100 minus your age) pages before giving up on it.UPDATE, same day, a few hours later: after reading a number of glowing reviews here on Goodreads, and feeling baffled for a while, I believe I understand my disconnect. I think we may be seeing the beginnings of Those Were The Days in my generation. There are people who like to live in the past and who light up at the mention of those memories. (I don't understand that quirk, but I accept that it is eerily common. And I hope it's not contagious). If that hypothesis is true I predict we will be seeing a lot of this type of book in the future: our generation is an easy target, because the Eighties is really when mass media came of age... and made us all so homogeneous. There may be a big market for this sort of shared-experience-nostalgia thing, even if there are millions who “shared” the same thing.