What I loved about Ready Player One was that it was an unapologetic celebration of obsession and nostalgia. It was a plot contrived to create a setting where th

What I loved about Ready Player One was that it was an unapologetic celebration of obsession and nostalgia. It was a plot contrived to create a setting where those qualities were what was needed to save the world. It's not particularly deep outside of that, and I don't really mind. Geekdom is becoming more popular in popular culture, but RP1 does it in a special way that I can appreciate. The Big Bang Theory does standard sitcom stuff and plays a laugh-track when recognizable "geeky" thing happens like a character having a Nintendo 64 on-screen for a moment. RP1 has an infodump about an easter egg and a glitch in a specific arcade game (... not entirely different than some of the type of nonfiction I like) and then works it into a contrived but fun plot point. It paints a world where many characters are driven by obsession, and that this isn't a spectacularly weird thing they do. (Yes, the book does take it to some amusing extremes.) Maybe it's the likely asperger's syndrome in me talking, but I feel like obsession is a big thing in my life, and it's fun to find a story that actually embraces that. Yes, I know that the way the character often interacts by trivia-dropping is grating outside of scenarios where trivia saves the world, and possibly still a bit grating within those scenarios. I never thought those parts were being portrayed otherwise. Yes, there's common problems with fandoms about gatekeeping and lack of inclusion, and no, I don't think it's unforgivable that RP1 doesn't address these. RP1's popularity is not a dismissal by society of these issues. No, I never thought it would be a good idea for human culture to stop creating new media and cling to 80's stuff, or felt like the book pushed for that at all. Maybe others read it differently, but I figured that the setting was like that just so the book could focus on 80s nostalgia specifically with no other media to get in the way while also having futuristic VR.