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[Wensih]

We're also told the government has been tracking the habits of its elite players, and when they arrive at their virtual battle stations, they find their favorite snacks waiting for them, their favorite songs queued up to accompany their virtual space fights, not to mention a “special strain of weed that helps people focus and enhances their ability to play videogames” that's been cultivated just for them.

Keep on reinforcing those stereotypes Cline.

I wouldn't be surprised if the weed was called melange and infused with chili peppers to give it a little bit of spice!

 

[Cyan]

I wouldn't be surprised if the weed was called melange and infused with chili peppers to give it a little bit of spice!

This sentence makes me feel like the kwisatz haderach looking out over a hangar full of USS Enterprises.

 

[zou]

P.S. If I'm looking to start a new book which one would you guys recommmend: Steelheart or Red Rising?

Red Rising.

 

[ryseing]

Red Rising.

Finished Red Rising in one sitting yesterday. Very entertaining.

 

[SoldierIce64]

I read Ready Player One about a month ago and it's easily one of my favorite novels. The audiobook was also fantastic. I look forward to reading this book once I finish The Martian.

 

[PSqueak]

So out of curiosity, i began reading Ready Player One, curiously even tho my friend had recommended it to me, this thread is what made me check it out and then, like 30 pages in, i found this little piece of gold....

"IOI required its egg hunters, which it referred to as “oologists,” to use
their employee numbers as their OASIS avatar names. These numbers
were all six digits in length, and they also began with the numeral “6,” so
everyone began calling them the Sixers. These days, most gunters referred
to them as “the Sux0rz.” (Because they sucked.)"

So, we have a 40 something author, writing a teenager from the year 2044 using slang that was outdated by the year 2004, in a book aimed at young adults who would be familiar with internet culture....and yet he felt the need to explain that "Sux0rz" means they suck.

I..i can't do this. I'll try to see how much deeper the hole goes, but this made me groan.

And not much later the author feels the need to explain that "Art3mis" is pronounced "Artemis", because, holy fuck, surely his audience of gamers and geeks can't figure out that puzzle! Oh yeah, and then we get the main character describing Art3mis' avatar in a way that absolutely fucking no one would describe a playable character. Ever. And of course he takes the time to explain that Art3mis is a girl, because for some reason in a world where this OASIS game has a player base of like 70% of the world, apparently girl gamers are as rare as unicorns. Because the main character assures us there is no way Art3mis is a guy playing a girl. No sir.

 

[Dr. Black Jack]

Zack Lightman has spent his life dreaming. Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he’s spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure.

But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe.

And then he sees the flying saucer.

Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders.

No, Zack hasn’t lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it.

It’s Zack’s chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can’t help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little…familiar?

At once gleefully embracing and brilliantly subverting science-fiction conventions as only Ernest Cline could, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a classic coming of age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you’ve ever read before—one whose every page is infused with the pop-culture savvy that has helped make Ready Player One a phenomenon.

 

[jon bones]

it's so bad it's impressive

 

[Laieon]

Barring Cline discovering a writing strength that he didn't know he had, I wouldn't anticipate any major changes in his writing.

Good. RPO was incredibly fun, quick read. If that's what I get from Armada, I'll be happy.

 

[Incendiary]

I'm wondering if the protagonist will be as an insufferable prick as the protagonist of Ready Player One. The first part of the book was so obnoxious - once the actual game started it got tolerable but...ugh. It definitely read like a self-insert fantasy as others have already mentioned.

 

[jon bones]

I'm wondering if the protagonist will be as an insufferable prick as the protagonist of Ready Player One. The first part of the book was so obnoxious - once the actual game started it got tolerable but...ugh. It definitely read like a self-insert fantasy as others have already mentioned.

that's the most suspect part of the book and it's fans

how anyone could find the main character remotely likeable or readable is beyond me

who wants to read about an out of shape mmo addict who acts like a dick to everyone except a girl he talked to on the internet?

 

[Epcott]

Holy shit, Steelheart. Sanderson is bar none, one of my favorite writers today.

I think I'll start that series based on this comment.

I preordered Armada through Audible last week. Maybe I should have waited?

 

[Weiss]

Never realized there was so much hate for RPO on GAF. It pretty much got me back into reading when I stopped after high school.

I really liked the whole concept of the world in the book. Everything's such a shithole that an MMO becomes the single most important, life defining thing on Earth; not even some kind of super realistic VR, just a game that everybody plays to the point where it's become ingrained in everyday life, where corporate assassins will break into your room and kill you because you're playing too well, where an encyclopedic knowledge of 80s pop culture trivia is the key to not really saving the world but instead the game everyone plays to get away from how shit everything else is.

Hell, I just loved it. Not as some kind of pithy, "oh just turn your brain off" pile of schlock, but a genuinely fun and inventive read with a really interesting and well defined setting.

EDIT: And as for the main character, well, yeah, he's a prick. I generally gravitate to prick protagonists (my favourite book is John Dies at the End and more often than not Dave Wong is a total jackass) and I felt his whole "romance" was intentionally overblown to underline how important OASIS was to the book's world. The kid lives in the game. He bases his entire life around it. Is it such a shock than an anti-social shut-in would get overly attached when every single other facet of his life sucks? Way too many nerds do that today.

 

[Ape Gone Insane]

Finished Red Rising in one sitting yesterday. Very entertaining.

The sequel, Golden Son, is even better. I just finished it (that ending...) and am now desperate for the last book.

 

[Pilgrimzero]

I can't wait for the RPO film. I hope Wheaton gets a spot in it. Loved his reading in the Audiobook.

 

[jon bones]

Never realized there was so much hate for RPO on GAF. It pretty much got me back into reading when I stopped after high school.

I really liked the whole concept of the world in the book. Everything's such a shithole that an MMO becomes the single most important, life defining thing on Earth; not even some kind of super realistic VR, just a game that everybody plays to the point where it's become ingrained in everyday life, where corporate assassins will break into your room and kill you because you're playing too well, where an encyclopedic knowledge of 80s pop culture trivia is the key to not really saving the world but instead the game everyone plays to get away from how shit everything else is.

Hell, I just loved it. Not as some kind of pithy, "oh just turn your brain off" pile of schlock, but a genuinely fun and inventive read with a really interesting and well defined setting.

EDIT: And as for the main character, well, yeah, he's a prick. I generally gravitate to prick protagonists (my favourite book is John Dies at the End and more often than not Dave Wong is a total jackass) and I felt his whole "romance" was intentionally overblown to underline how important OASIS was to the book's world. The kid lives in the game. He bases his entire life around it. Is it such a shock than an anti-social shut-in would get overly attached when every single other facet of his life sucks? Way too many nerds do that today.

It may have been fun and interesting, but it wasn't particularly inventive. As many others have stated, Snow Crash did this whole thing much better in 1992. It was around even before then, but I fully believe Snow Crash is the "good" version of RPO.

 

[Das Ace]

I think I'll start that series based on this comment.

I preordered Armada through Audible last week. Maybe I should have waited?

Yeah, Steelheart is rad. The sequel is also good.

 

[Weiss]

It may have been fun and interesting, but it wasn't particularly inventive. As many others have stated, Snow Crash did this whole thing much better in 1992. It was around even before then, but I fully believe Snow Crash is the "good" version of RPO.

I don't even know if I'd say that. RPO's Oasis isn't even really VR the same the Grid or the Metaverse are, it's just a straight up video game that's been gradually expanded into a separate reality. That, and I think RPO and Snow Crash deal with their respective VR settings differently. Pretty much every important scene in RPO happens in Oasis, all the major conflicts and fights are in the game, people form relationships inside without ever meeting each other, go to school, have jobs, basically live their entire lives in the game. It's the single most important aspect of human existence in RPO, in a way that the Grid and the Metaverse aren't, because Case and Hiro can do stuff separately away from VR and have badass action moments, but if Wade Owen Watts gets off his computer, then he's just a depressed fat kid.

I guess how I see it is that the Metaverse was hugely important, but also just another aspect of Snow Crash's story that real people used, while Oasis is basically the only thing worth living for in RPO. It's also been a long time since I read Snow Crash, so I might be wrong on that, though.

 

[Slayven]

I think I'll start that series based on this comment.

I preordered Armada through Audible last week. Maybe I should have waited?

Treat yourself, the second book is mindblowing.

 

[Cyan]

Good. RPO was incredibly fun, quick read. If that's what I get from Armada, I'll be happy.

¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[Narag]

Treat yourself, the second book is mindblowing.

I'm not a fan of Sanderson and I'm no stranger to comics but man, that second half got me good.

 

[Fmal]

that's the most suspect part of the book and it's fans

how anyone could find the main character remotely likeable or readable is beyond me

who wants to read about an out of shape mmo addict who acts like a dick to everyone except a girl he talked to on the internet?

I don't think Protagonists don't have to be likable, they just have to be (for me anyway) interesting. Tony Soprano isn't very likable, but there hasn't been a TV protagonist as captivating as him in a while.

Ernest Cline's self-insert guy whose smarter than everyone and uses his snark and immense knowledge of Tron and John Hughes movies to not only own bullies but also totally score with a hot babe is about as far away from interesting as it gets.

 

[jon bones]

I don't think Protagonists don't have to be likable, they just have to be (for me anyway) interesting. Tony Soprano isn't very likable, but there hasn't been a TV protagonist as captivating as him in a while.

Ernest Cline's self-insert guy whose smarter than everyone and uses his snark and immense knowledge of Tron and John Hughes movies to not only own bullies but also totally score with a hot babe is about as far away from interesting as it gets.

too true, unlikable protags are a central part of fiction

i should have said uninteresting and insufferable

 

[Freeza Under The Shower]

Don't you see? Cline is now post-prose. He is moving beyond description by constructing his own language out of 80s references. Instead of "I felt overwhelmed", it's "I felt like Luke Skywalker...". A hundred years from now, Armada will be like an ancient Egyptian dig site, full of strange hieroglyphs that are obviously pictures anyone can recognize, but nonetheless contain hidden meanings that must be slowly decrypted by experts.

This is a bold new approach to the act of writing itself.

So basically back to Homeros, when the walls fell?

I WONDER IF YOU CAN CATCH THE REFERENCE IN THERE. oh hey, caps. Sounds obnoxious now. Like Jurassic World, or a novel consisting only of nostalgic repetitions that nobody cares about. And Family Guy, a show so 'meta', it.. fuck it.

disclaimer: haven't read RPO, but that quote in the article made me cringe hard, so I'm not going to, probably.

 

[Slayven]

I'm not a fan of Sanderson and I'm no stranger to comics but man, that second half got me good.

I seen a lot of amazing shit in comics, but the way the Reckoners world is built is brand new.

 

[Fmal]

Is Sanderson a good writer or is he like the Malazan guy where everything is "I charge my +1 long sword with lightning power to deal bonus damage points to the enemy ghost." I see everyone dickriding Mistborn, but the only Fantasy series I've ever been able to get into without reservation is Discworld stuff.

 

[Haly]

I mean, I'm going to read this day one, because I'm a masochist. The only book I'd be more hyped for is Book 3 of the Kingkiller Qrvnicles, pronounced Kingkiller Chronicles.

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

I don't even know if I'd say that. RPO's Oasis isn't even really VR the same the Grid or the Metaverse are, it's just a straight up video game that's been gradually expanded into a separate reality. That, and I think RPO and Snow Crash deal with their respective VR settings differently. Pretty much every important scene in RPO happens in Oasis, all the major conflicts and fights are in the game, people form relationships inside without ever meeting each other, go to school, have jobs, basically live their entire lives in the game. It's the single most important aspect of human existence in RPO, in a way that the Grid and the Metaverse aren't, because Case and Hiro can do stuff separately away from VR and have badass action moments, but if Wade Owen Watts gets off his computer, then he's just a depressed fat kid.

I guess how I see it is that the Metaverse was hugely important, but also just another aspect of Snow Crash's story that real people used, while Oasis is basically the only thing worth living for in RPO. It's also been a long time since I read Snow Crash, so I might be wrong on that, though.

Most VR stories have an important relationship between the in-universe virtual and real because what are you even writing about otherwise? Oasis being "the only thing worth living for" is how Cline avoids world-building. I don't even think he thinks it's inventive--he doesn't seem at all interested in it. He writes the barest excuse needed to set up a perpetual '80s cultural detritus fantasy. "The real world is a wasted hellhole so everyone is online" is as much a part of the wish fulfillment as knowing everything about '80s nerd culture making you the most important person on the planet.

 

[Dresden]

Is Sanderson a good writer or is he like the Malazan guy where everything is "I charge my +1 long sword with lightning power to deal bonus damage points to the enemy ghost." I see everyone dickriding Mistborn, but the only Fantasy series I've ever been able to get into without reservation is Discworld stuff.

there's like, a visual texture to how certain authors process imagery - Sanderson is anime and video games. It might appeal to you, might not. He's not a writer who'll be remembered for the quality of his prose, more the volume of it. I thought his Wheel of Time conclusion was fine and enjoyed it.

 

[Verdre]

Is Sanderson a good writer or is he like the Malazan guy where everything is "I charge my +1 long sword with lightning power to deal bonus damage points to the enemy ghost." I see everyone dickriding Mistborn, but the only Fantasy series I've ever been able to get into without reservation is Discworld stuff.

Sanderson is paint by numbers fantasy. (Edit: Not in the elves and wise old wizards etc kind of way. Dresden's description of him is very accurate. At times it feels like Sanderson is outright explaining that the main character's mana is getting low.) Malazan was literally based on the dude's D&D campaign which explains so much about that series.

 

[Fmal]

Sanderson is paint by numbers fantasy. (Edit: Not in the elves and wise old wizards etc kind of way. Dresden's description of him is very accurate. At times it feels like Sanderson is outright explaining that the main character's mana is getting low.) Malazan was literally based on the dude's D&D campaign which explains so much about that series.

I KNEW it!

 

[PhoncipleBone]

So I read a paragraph from a review, and it's worse than I thought. If you're going to reference pop-culture at least do it in a clever way, not "I felt like Luke Skywalker surveying a hangar full of A-, Y- and X-Wing Fighters just before the Battle of Yavin. Or Captain Apollo, climbing into the cockpit of his Viper on the Galactica’s flight deck. Ender Wiggin arriving at Battle School. Or Alex Rogan, clutching his Star League uniform, staring wide-eyed at a hangar full of Gunstars."

Is the rest of the book formatted in "I felt like X to describe Y situation?"



You can at least try to play with language, like, "He's driven out, away, east over Vauxhall Bridge in a dented green Lagonda by his batman, a Corporal Wayne"

Pffft. Jokes on him. A-Wings weren't at the Battle of Yavin.

 

[Slayven]

Sanderson is paint by numbers fantasy. (Edit: Not in the elves and wise old wizards etc kind of way. Dresden's description of him is very accurate. At times it feels like Sanderson is outright explaining that the main character's mana is getting low.) Malazan was literally based on the dude's D&D campaign which explains so much about that series.

that is how RR Martian and crew fucked up Wild Cards

 

[Conkersbadfurday]

Oh I hope I can get a review copy of this, or some copy that I don't have to pay for because Cline deserves no money.

 

[Wensih]

This sentence makes me feel like the kwisatz haderach looking out over a hangar full of USS Enterprises.

It makes me feel like Shai-Hulud after a bath.

 

[Brakke]

Slate book review went *in* on this.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...w_up_to_ready_player_one_reviewed.single.html

And familiar: Ready Player One, the novel that launched Cline's career, was a sci-fi adventure about teenagers cavorting through a futuristic virtual reality world where the limitless creative possibilities of the digital universe were oddly laser-focused on 1980s pop culture references. The sins of Cline's era-specific obsessions and wafer-thin characters were forgivable, given the effervescent pleasures of his geek-culture mashup. With Armada, Cline finally has the opportunity to address the question of whether his work has legs beyond the crutch of his referential obsessions. The answer is no.

 

[unpopularblargh]

Red Rising.

Thanks. Buying it later today.

 

[Peltz]

So I read a paragraph from a review, and it's worse than I thought. If you're going to reference pop-culture at least do it in a clever way, not "I felt like Luke Skywalker surveying a hangar full of A-, Y- and X-Wing Fighters just before the Battle of Yavin. Or Captain Apollo, climbing into the cockpit of his Viper on the Galactica’s flight deck. Ender Wiggin arriving at Battle School. Or Alex Rogan, clutching his Star League uniform, staring wide-eyed at a hangar full of Gunstars."

Is the rest of the book formatted in "I felt like X to describe Y situation?"



You can at least try to play with language, like, "He's driven out, away, east over Vauxhall Bridge in a dented green Lagonda by his batman, a Corporal Wayne"

People who want to see nerd references done properly in a book should check out something a bit more.... substantial like this:

"[Oscar] [c]ould write in Elvish, could speak Chakobsa, could differentiate between a Slan, a Dorsai, and a Lensman in acute detail, knew more about the Marvel Universe than Stan Lee, and was a role-playing game fanatic. (If only he'd been good at videogames it would have been a slam dunk but despite owning an Atari and an Intellivision he didn't have the reflexes for it.) Perhaps if like me he'd been able to hide his otakuness maybe shit would have been easier for him, but he couldn't. "

"Dude wore his nerdiness like a Jedi wore his light saber or a Lensman her lens. Couldn't have passed for Normal if he'd wanted to."

“In a better world I would have kissed her over the ice trays and that would have been the end of all our troubles. But you know exactly what kind of world we live in. It ain't no fucking Middle-earth. I just nodded my head, said, See you around, Lola, and drove home.”

"At the end of The Return of the King, Sauron’s evil was taken by “a great wind” and neatly “blown away,” with no lasting consequences to our heroes; but Trujillo was too powerful, too toxic a radiation to be dispelled so easily. Even after death his evil lingered. Within hours of El Jefe dancing bien pegao with those twenty-seven bullets, his minions ran amok−fulfilling, as it were, his last will and vengeance. A great darkness descended on the Island and for the third time since the rise of Fidel people were being rounded up by Trujillo’s son, Ramfis, and a good plenty were sacrificed in the most depraved fashion imaginable, the orgy of terror funeral goods for the father from the son. Even a woman as potent as La Inca, who with the elvish ring of her will had forged within Banί her own personal Lothlόrien, knew that she could not protect the girl against a direct assault from the Eye."

 

[dead souls]

Slate book review went *in* on this.

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/...w_up_to_ready_player_one_reviewed.single.html

Oh wow, that was absolutely brutal, and almost certainly correct as well. That's the kind of review I love to read.

 

[jstripes]

Laura Hudson wrote a piece about Armada over at Slate.

Serious Bill-Paying Skillage: Ernest Cline’s Armada is everything wrong with gaming culture wrapped up in one soon-to-be–best-selling novel.

That's just the opening. Needless to say, she thinks it's a pretty damned problematic novel, even more than his previous one.

Sounds dreadful to me, and the little bits of Ready Player One I've seen excerpted and read about sounded bad enough already.

I loved that article.

"Geek culture", and what it's become, is in dire need of honest and brutal criticism.

rpo was a booked aimed at 12 year olds with a shitload of references aimed towards 30+ years old.

i dont get how it sells.

You've got it mixed up. It was aimed at 30+ year olds who deep down inside can't accept that they're not 12 years old.

 

[Ranvier]

Don't you see? Cline is now post-prose. He is moving beyond description by constructing his own language out of 80s references. Instead of "I felt overwhelmed", it's "I felt like Luke Skywalker...". A hundred years from now, Armada will be like an ancient Egyptian dig site, full of strange hieroglyphs that are obviously pictures anyone can recognize, but nonetheless contain hidden meanings that must be slowly decrypted by experts.

This is a bold new approach to the act of writing itself.

Shaaka, when the walls fell.

 

[Amir0x]

That review is amazing:

Barely a page goes by without a reference to Star Wars, Dungeons & Dragons, Flight of the Navigator, Transformers, Starfox, Space Invaders, Zero Wing, Iron Eagle, Star Trek, and on and on and on. Geek culture has long been preoccupied with trivia; the ability to recognize and make references to games, movies, and TV shows beloved within various “geeky” subcultures is often considered an in-group badge of honor, a signifier of credibility and even power. Armada is a book designed entirely around getting the reference—high-fiving the readers who recognize its shoutouts while leaving everyone else trapped behind a nerd-culture velvet rope of catchphrases and codes.

Damn son

 

[Turin Turambar]

Is Sanderson a good writer or is he like the Malazan guy where everything is "I charge my +1 long sword with lightning power to deal bonus damage points to the enemy ghost." I see everyone dickriding Mistborn, but the only Fantasy series I've ever been able to get into without reservation is Discworld stuff.

Not exactly. Mistborn is kind of famous because it was the series that put Sanderson on the map and made him famous (well, kind of, in fantasy reading circles), not because it's his magnum opus. It's known that his prose and some character tropes weren't the best, but he has improved since.

 

[Ape Gone Insane]

Is Snow Crash a good read?

 

[Haly]

Shaaka, when the walls fell.

I didn't know what this was but after googling it it really is the perfect analogy.

 

[jon bones]

Is Snow Crash a good read?

it's a blast to read, with great concepts and pretty solid prose

it's basically a good version of RPO

 

[mattiewheels]

My entire exposure from the author is watching him in that ET documentary, but his shtick made me really self-conscious of what pop culture is about nowadays. Just wrap all the things you loved as a kid around you like a big warm blanket, and just stay put in there because now they're selling you all of it all over again on repeat. It just seems disfunctional when you step back and look at it.

 

[dead souls]

Yeah, I read RPO but had never actually seen/heard Cline until that Atari documentary and all I could think when watching it was "This is exactly what I thought this douchebag would be like."

Geek culture is a continual embarrassment.

 

[Mobius 1]

RPO is a book whose only appeal is nostalgia.

 

[The Technomancer]

My entire exposure from the author is watching him in that ET documentary, but his shtick made me really self-conscious of what pop culture is about nowadays. Just wrap all the things you loved as a kid around you like a big warm blanket, and just stay put in there because now they're selling you all of it all over again on repeat. It just seems disfunctional when you step back and look at it.

Its a great way to make money. It's like snack food engineering