Ready Player One Read-Through: Chapter 10

Content warning: references to domestic abuse, alcoholism, mental illness.



100 pages! Surely now something exciting must happen.

Wade is off towards one of the copies of the simulations of Middletown, where Halliday grew up, to find the First Gate. He deletes hundreds of messages in his OASIS inbox following his victory at retrieving the Copper Key. He neglects and deletes calls and messages from Aech also, but at least he messages him back, saying he'll call later.

There are 256 identical copies of Middletown on a planet in the OASIS! Halliday's narcissism levels are astronomical! It also conveniently doesn't matter which copy Wade goes to - the First Gate will be there, where other gunters had tried searching for clues in that area before, unaware that the Copper Key, from another place, would be their salvation.

Halliday's hometown is described as always set in the daytime. All is sunshine, and it is permanently 1986. Creepy, and an unintentional microcosm of Halliday's world domination plan.

Art3mis shows up on the Scoreboard. Yippee.

Wade finds Halliday's childhood home:


Looking at the replica Halliday had created of his old house, I tried to imagine what it had been like for him to grow up there. I'd read that in the real Middletown, Ohio, every house on this street had been demolished in the late '90s to make room for a strip mall. But Halliday had preserved his childhood forever, here in the OASIS. (Page 103)


Does Cline have any idea how ominous and eerie this sounds? The last line sums up the whole book, in fact, and what it's really all about: toxic nostalgia. There is nothing to indicate that the author is aware of this.

Wade enters the house, which appeared in Anorak's Invitation, that video from chapter 0:


The house was empty. For whatever reason, Halliday had decided not to place NPC re-creations of himself or his deceased parents here. Perhaps that would have been too creepy, even for him. (Page 103)


Too late.

Wade spots a family portrait on the living room wall:


The Hallidays looked like an ordinary American family. There was no hint that the stoic man in the brown leisure suit was an abusive alcoholic, that the smiling woman in the floral pantsuit was bipolar, or that the young boy in the faded Asteroids T-shirt would one day create an entirely new universe. (Page 103)


Way to make light of domestic abuse and metal illness there (as if the two issues are connected, which they're not) (they are never brought up again, either, not even in relation to Halliday's character). Nice boost to James Halliday's already-godlike ego, as well.

Anyone else think that this would make a brilliant Silent Hill game? Like, not only this chapter, in this town and house, but the whole book leading up to it? Appropriately, I have 'Room of Angel' playing in my head right now.

Wade doesn't reflect on the gender roles and family dynamics of the '70s and '80s, when he is given the perfect opportunity to. He is a boy in the 2040s: surely he must have something to say about the social and political structures and upheavals of the past? No. No thought to it, nothing.

Or has nothing truly progressed at all in Ready Player One's view of the future? Because that is what is implied.

Wade walks around, and there is a list of many game cartridges played on the Atari 2600. This is just more self-indulgent eighties geek masturbation and nostalgia porn. Yet there is no love, no insight or affection coming across from it, once again.

The book continues like this, as Wade enters James Halliday's bedroom, where there are a lot of old movie and rock band posters, plus a sci-fi and fantasy paperback bookshelf (Wade smugly points out that he'd already read all of the titles - we know, you told us in chapter 6! Don't remind us!), and another bookshelf full of D&D stuff and comic books. Wade sits at Halliday's old computer desk to play Dungeons of Daggorath, now with the Copper Key in hand.

He is on the right track; he is about to open the First Gate; he is becoming addicted to the game all over again (he had played it two years previously):


I quickly lost track of time. I forgot that my avatar was sitting in Halliday's bedroom and that, in reality, I was sitting in my hideout, huddled near the electric heater, tapping at the empty air in front of me, entering commands on an imaginary keyboard. All of the intervening layers slipped away, and I lost myself in the game within the game. (Page 105)


Isn't this one of the most terrifying things you've ever read? Our hero has sunk deeper into the rabbit hole, and even when he is aware of it, he doesn't care, because he likes video games that much. He is wasting away and rejecting reality altogether - but video games! This is a good message!

You don't think much of your target audience, do you, Cline?

After explaining in unnecessary detail how Dungeons of Daggorath works:


While I was playing, the Conan the Barbarian score ended and the jam-box clicked over and began to play the opposite side of the tape, treating me to the synthesizer-laden score for Ladyhawke. I couldn't wait to rub Aech's nose in that. (Page 106)


Oh spare us more of Wade's and Aech's pointless, obnoxious fanboy squabbling.

He finishes the game in no time, because he is awesome, and the First Gate opens in the room. It is a portal into deep space, and there is a 2010 reference ("My God, it's full of stars."). So many of these film references are grating.

Wade enters the gate: What is on the other side? Will you care? Will there ever be any actual tension and stakes? Will the excitement stop coming in breaks and slow starts and just start already?

Find out in chapter 11.