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Many Happy Returns, Wade!

The popularity of Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One (2011) cannot be overstated. A 2020 report in Publishers Weekly indicates that over 1.7 million copies were sold (link). The book has now been translated into more than 30 languages. Steven Spielberg’s adaptation (2018) is a success in its own right. The film was nominated for an Oscar, and it grossed in excess of $583 million USD (link). “Clans” on Facebook and other social media have united fans internationally.

Ready Player One’s popularity rests, at least partially, on its generally likeable hero Wade Watts. He is, after all, our storyteller and our point of entry into Cline’s dystopian future of 2045. He ruminates on how the world got to its sorry state to himself (and to us) early in the novel:

Our global civilization came at a huge cost. We needed a whole bunch of energy to build it, and we got that energy by burning fossil fuels . . . . We used up most of this fuel before you got here, and now it’s pretty much all gone. This means that we no longer have enough energy to keep our civilization running like it was before. So we’ve had to cut back. Big-time. We call this the Global Energy Crisis, and it’s been going on for a while now.

There’s little hope to be found anywhere:

[I]t turns out that burning all of those fossil fuels had some nasty side effects, like raising the temperature of our planet and screwing up the environment. So now the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and the weather is all messed up. Plants and animals are dying off in record numbers, and lots of people are starving and homeless. And we’re still fighting wars with each other, mostly over the few resources we have left.

Humans continue to damage their world. As Cline suggests, and as I have explored elsewhere (link), the characters’ escape into the flashy virtual reality of the OASIS has meant neglecting the real thing, which, in turn, “has contributed to a dramatic rise in social and economic inequalities.” My students have heard my significant reservations about Wade and the novel (link). But I have continued to teach Ready Player One because of its prescient warnings (link).

In Spielberg’s film, which Cline co-wrote, Wade (Tye Sheridan) and Co. inch towards the right direction. They gain control of the OASIS, and they close it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. “Reality,” Wade explains, “is the only thing that’s real.” Real or not, we might think, he and his chums keep the OASIS open for business for the remaining five days of the week. Still, any action is better than none. In Cline’s rather uneven sequel Ready Player Two (2020), Wade and Co. make earnest efforts to improve the world. They may even have made significant strides without realizing it.

In the digital edition of Ready Player One, Wade was born in 2024; in the print edition, 2026; and in the film, 2027. In all three versions, his birthday falls on August 12. Whether Wade is born in 2024, 2026, or 2027, the proximity of his future should spur us to ruminate on ours. As we celebrate his birth today, in two years, or three, the time’s ripe for us to consider how we might become better global citizens and leave our world in better shape than we found it.

Tom Ue is Assistant Professor in English of the Long Nineteenth Century at Cape Breton University and incoming Co-Editor of Book 2.0 (link). He’s currently writing a monograph on Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (Routledge). Professor Ue is an Honorary Research Associate at University College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Follow him on Twitter at @GissingGeorge and Book 2.0 on the same at @Book2pt0.