Ernest Cline Makes Me Feel Ashamed to Be a Nerd · 8:12pm Jul 16th, 2020
Honestly, I feel like I don't even need to say more than that. But I'll say just a bit more. Apparently the sequel to Ready Player One (one of the worst novels I've read in the past five years, and I read a lot of novels) is happening, presumably because Ernest Cline is a washed-up hack writer who needs to capitalize on the property that brought him any serious recognition. The fact that Ready Player One was nominated for a Hugo and tied for the Prometheus Award gets my blood boiling for a few seconds, but at least for a while it seemed like we would be rid of him. I guess not. Yet there's only so much one can do about an author who is currently polluting the genre with macho pseudo-feminist crap.
So instead of bitching more about Ernest Cline, here's a list of great science fiction authors who are currently working and who deserve way more attention:
Cory Doctorow
Connie Willis
Vernor Vinge
Dan Simmons
Greg Bear
Elizabeth Bear
Greg Egan
Ted Chiang
Nancy Kress
James Patrick Kelly
Cixin Liu
Ken Liu
John Kessel
...and so on.
I genuinely don't understand why people liked RP1. At all.
The stigma surrounding Ready Player One always baffled me, to be honest. One moment everyone was singing its praises, and then the next thing I knew, it was apparently the scum of the Earth. Some people pin the blame on the shifting political climate—several thinkpieces specifically cite Gamergate as the turning point—but that never felt like the whole story.
What did I miss?
5310443
It was a doofy, self-indulgent nerd fantasy published at a time when that didn't immediately raise a bunch of red flags. The nerds it was made for ate it up, and everyone who didn't get the in-jokes acquiesced that the book just wasn't made for them.
That's my basic understanding of the situation, at least.
If there's one thing that fanfiction has taught me, it's that quality is a complete non-factor in success. Something can be drivel, but that doesn't matter if it's catering to the right demographics.
The only difference between fanfiction and mainstream print is who the pandering is directed at.
5310460
So, I'm a thirtysomething nerd, born in the 80's. I'm pretty much Cline's intended audience. And I HATE RP1.
The awkward clueless-geek misogyny/racism (and Cline's "rubenesque brunette" fetish) is enough to damn the book on its own, but honestly that's the thing that comes from ignorance, not malice. At least that's the read I got on it. But that's not why I really loathe the book.
See, there's a lot of fun in heroes that are nerds-- just look at Spider Man. Despite being the flagship hero of the Marvel universe, the guy is a huuuuge dork. Or heck, even Superman has that 'goofy Clark Kent secret identity' thing going on. So it's fun when the hero throws out a Star Wars reference.
But in RP1, it's not a hero who just happens to be a nerd, it's about a hero who's a hero BECAUSE he's a nerd. He's not particularly brave or strong or clever-- all he does is regurgitate bits of pop culture ephemera, and that somehow makes him the most important man in the world. It's never even interpretation-- it's regurgitation. I mean, there's a whole bit where he's got to rattle off the script to Wargames for points-- and somehow this rote memorization is presented as THE MOST FUN THING EVER.
There's no room for transfomative fandom in RP1. No interpretation. No cosplay. No fanfiction. The book is chapter after chapter of "Hey, remember THIS!?" and that's it. It's a shallow, shitty book, and one that represents the absolute worst gatekeeping tendencies of nerd fandom.
5310460
Make no mistake, the people who shit on RPO make up a very small but very vocal minority. You'll find think pieces trashing RPO until you're up to your eyeballs in the stuff, but actual readers by and large love it.
5310764
There've been sci-fi novels about video games over the years. Big reason why Ender's Game has been successful for the past 30+ years is that it captures (albeit in a way that now seems outdated) the mentality of like a session of team deathmatch. The difference between those novels and RPO is that RPO panders to gamers™ as well as people's conception of a decade that is often the subject of nostalgic yearning.
5319489
What makes RPO insufferable is that yeah, the protag is a nerd who wins at the end because of his obsessive nerd bullshit, and he doesn't learn anything life-changing or even experience a noticeable change in his character. As speculative fiction it sucks eggs, becuase the point of speculation is to ask questions. There's an inherent skepticism in speculative fiction (which is often science fiction), and RPO does basically nothing with that.
It's frustrating.
5320177 Yeah, Ender's Game had the whole Battle School thing. In many ways, it was a precursor to stuff like Video Game High School and Harry Potter. The "non-standard school" trope evokes lots of things for many people.
And Ender's Game did have its problems. But it was still a coming of age story. It still asked questions of its audience—particularly about the morality of war and child soldiers.
There was also a newspaper review (I think in the LA Times?), that posited that Inception was the first true video game movie. Of course, the same article also said that the movie wasn't good because it was all tutorials.
So yes, you can definitely make a work that panders and still has some depth. But people often don't. And the market still rewards those people.
5320177
Oh! And there's also the whole thing where, far in the future, the most poular entertainment is ... a bunch of shit that came out in the 80's. 'cause truly, nobody has made music or movies or TV worth bothering with since then.
Though now that I think of it, there's potential for satire in a setting where copyright law has gone screwball, and original works are outlawed, so that the only entertainment is reboots/remixes of old franchises, controlled by various megacorporations. But that'd require Cline to have, y'know. Ideas.
I am well aware of the irony of posting these words on a MLP fanfic website.
5320177
Outdated how? Because it doesn't have the teammates exploding at each other mid-match and screaming out racial slurs?
5330739
Let's not forget the teammate who goes AFK, or the teammate who kills the hostage in Rainbow Six Siege.