History Literature / ReadyPlayerOne

* CoolSchool: While the story is more focused on [[TheMetaverse the OASIS]] in general, the protagonist, Wade Watts, starts out living in [[UrbanSegregation the stacks]], a combination urban ghetto, third-world slum and trailer park, but attending school on the virtual planet [[MeaningfulName Ludus]]. The planet has many carbon-copy school buildings and is as mundane as a school in virtual reality can get, though Ludus' schools do have a class dedicated to completing what is essentially [[{{Metagame}} the entire plot of the book]]. The schools on Ludus also have a reputation for being the best there are, mostly because the software automatically prevents students from being disruptive in class so the teachers can fully focus on teaching instead of having to maintain order.

* AuthorTract: Frequent in the book. The subjects range from deriding traditional beauty (to glorify [=Art3mis=] and her “Rubenesque” figure) to the benefits of [[{{Squick}} mastur]][[ADateWithRosiePalms bation]] to aid in thinking.

* MoonLogicPuzzle: Solving the puzzles requires not only knowing every detail about 1980s pop culture, but also being able to follow Halliday's train of thought. This is why it took five years for the first key to be found.

%%* DiscoDan: Many worlds in OASIS are created by people like this.

** The book pushes an AntiEscapismAesop at several points, frequently taking a moment every to discuss whether or not the OASIS has caused human beings to scorn reality for a LotusEaterMachine. But the OASIS is also the major thing which makes Wade's and countless other lower class people's miserable lives bearable, as well as a major source of quality public education. It also says this while in the end rewarding Wade for spending all his time in the game, obsessively consuming all of Halliday's favorite media, by making Wade one of the richest and most powerful people in the world.

** The book pushes an AntiEscapismAesop at several points, frequently taking a moment every to discuss whether or not the OASIS has caused human beings to scorn reality for a LotusEaterMachine. But the OASIS is also the major thing which makes Wade's and countless other lower class people's miserable lives bearable, as well as a major source of quality public education.

* WillTheyOrWontThey: Parzival and [=Art3mis=] are flirtatious throughout the novel, to the point that it becomes a distraction to both of them. [=Art3mis=] explicitly refers to them as not being together at one point and completely breaks off contact with him. [[spoiler: TheyDo]].

* CloudCuckooland: A literal place in OASIS though it's only mentioned in the side story ''Lacero'', it's apparently a place where all conspiracy theories are true.

* LuckyTranslation: "Daito" is the proper pronunciation of the characters emblazoned on the box for ''VideoGame/{{Daikatana}}'', known for largely killing John Romero's career. [[spoiler:Daito is killed during the story.]]

** Wade says several times that not everyone in the OASIS resembles their real-world counterparts. [[spoiler:This is how Wade's best friend, Aech, keeps her identity a secret.]]

* WakeupCallBoss: The Copper Gate. You'd better have the entirety of the movie War Games memorized, or you will die.

* WritersCannotDoMath: Aech was [[spoiler:disowned and kicked out by her mom]] upon turning 18, then spent some time homeless before living in an [=RV=] for "many years", but is also stated to by 19.

* WritersCannotDoMath: Aech was kicked out by her mom on her 18th birthday, spent some time homeless, then spent "many years" living in an [=RV=]. How old is she if it's been many years since her 18th birthday? ''19''.

** Wade realizes that pining for [=Art3mis=] completely threw him off his groove for the Hunt in a big way, allowing others to take first place from him on the Scoreboard.

* HundredPercentCompletion: Wade stumbled upon a Pac-Man arcade, and one of the challenges was to perform a perfect play of the game, even though it actually had nothing to do with the egg hunt. [[spoiler: Although it turned out to be very useful anyway by giving him the only extra life in the history of the OASIS.]]

* BarbarianHero;

* BenevolentAI: Wade has one based on ''Series/MaxHeadroom'' that controls his apartment.

* CurbStompBattle: the Sixers amass around the third gate their entire army, which is considered the highest military power in the OASIS and basically unstoppable. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for them, it turns out that compared to '''all of the gunters combined''' plus a sizable amount of the OASIS' normal citizenship who've decided the situation important enough to grab a gun and take potshots, even IOI's military might is only in an extremely distant second place. When the shield finally drops, the Sixers - including all their massive mecha except for one - are annihilated in minutes]].

* DigitalAvatar: They do about 99% of the interaction.
* DiscoDan: Many worlds in OASIS are created by people like this.

* EarnYourHappyEnding

* FantasyKitchenSink: The nature of the OASIS encourages this.

* FirstPersonPerspective: How Wade narrates the story. Also how the avatars work.

** At one point, Wade mentions that if IOI tries to barricade a gate, it'll cause an all-out war the likes of which has never been seen before on the OASIS. [[spoiler:[[TheWarSequence This is exactly what happens when they try it with the third gate.]]]]
** Wade says several times that not everyone in the OASIS resembles their real world counterparts. [[spoiler:This is how Wade's best friend, Aech, keeps her identity a secret.]]

* TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou: In-universe example, [[spoiler:Daito]] is immersed in a massive PVP melee in the OASIS when IOI agents break into his apartment and murder him in the real world. Wade only avoids dying this way by chance, since he had no idea IOI could figure out where he lives, but his normal behavior happened to trick IOI into believing he was logged into OASIS from home.

** The OASIS didn't start out as one, but the in-game [[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture credits]] eventually became [[GlobalCurrency more valuable]] than any currency backed by a government even ''before'' the quarter-trillion-dollar prize was announced. And if IOI won the egg hunt, they'd commercialize the OASIS, which is a horror few pre-Net individuals can comprehend.

* TakeOurWordForIt: The book at times foregoes any specific description of scenery and action and instead just engages in this. One particularly egregious example is from the description of Anorak's Invitation, where the reader is informed that Halliday is at a high-school dance "surrounded by teenagers whose clothing, hairstyles, and dance moves all indicate that the time period is the late 1980s." We are then informed that Halliday "flawlessly cycl[es] through several signature 80s dance moves." And that's about all the details that are told.
* TakeThat: [[http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/lacero.html Lacero]] could be considered one on Creator/AndyWeir's part; the title character (who turns out to be [[spoiler:BigBad Nolan Sorrento]]) declared that [[AntiEscapismAesop everyone spending all their time in the OASIS]] is why the {{Mega Corp}}s have taken over and alternative energy sources haven't been developed.

* TeleportersAndTransporters: Teleportation is both the fastest and most expensive method of interworld transportation. The price is based on distance traveled. When the story begins, Wade can't even afford to teleport to the other side of his own planet.

* TotalPartyKill: The Cataclyst wipes out every player in the ''entire sector of space'' when active. [[spoiler:This includes the entire party of heroes (including ''every'' gunter) and the entire army of Sixers. The only ones not knocked back to square one are the Sixers who hid a backup contingent just outside the sector, and Wade who had the extra life he unknowingly obtained for his perfect game of Pac-Man.]]

* ViolationOfCommonSense: Lampshaded in the game "Black Tiger".
-->'''Wade's Narration:''' These "wise men" apparently thought setting up a small shop in a monster-infested dungeon was a fine idea.

** Don't judge people by their online avatar is brought up a number of times but [=Art3mis=] looks almost identical to her real-life self. [[spoiler: Zigzagged as Wade's best friend is actually an African American girl.]]

* AluminumChristmasTrees: Cline did not come up with the culture and other elements out of nothing, he did research in the closest thing available pre-2011: ''VideoGame/SecondLife''. The pop culture avatars and items, the dance parties, and the shops where you also can buy magic items and moves will all be familiar to anyone who has played that massively-multiplayer online sandbox game.

* SpiritualSuccessor: Could be considered one to Conor Kostick's 2004 novel ''[[Literature/TheAvatarChronicles Epic]]'', as both follow a very similar plot and themes: in a post-apocalyptic CrapsackWorld where the entire world plays a virtual reality MMO and your station in life is most likely dependent upon your in-game prowess, a poor boy and his friends pursue the game's ultimate quest, become rich and famous along the way by noticing things others don't, and end up as enemies of a powerful CorruptCorporateExecutive who will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

* AmbiguousDisorder: Halliday's AS is diagnosed after his death and only in speculation, but it's pretty clear that it's probably a correct diagnosis. Wade is probably in the same boat, which helps him because the contest is steeped in thinking like Halliday did. He's a clearer example because he was never given a diagnosis nor does the story itself say he's on the spectrum at all.

* GenreSavvy: Virtually every character. Particularly Wade, [[spoiler:who, upon finding a 1974 Gibson Les Paul [[ExcaliburInTheStone in a stone]] -- the exact guitar used by [[Music/{{Rush}} Alex Lifeson]] during the 2112 tour -- plays the first measure of "Discovery", which triggers a message on how to open the Third Gate. To the Sixers, it was just a PlotCoupon; to Wade -- and Halliday -- it's an awesome guitar that must be ''played'']].

* AntiEscapismAesop: This is visited over and over again. The OASIS is an amazing, powerful tool, but humanity isn't using it to its full potential, instead using it to hide from its problems. The ultimate message is that media shouldn't ''consume'' your life, but they still do add meaning to it and that shouldn't be ignored either. Ultimately though, it ends up as a BrokenAesop

* UpToEleven: At one point, Wade [[spoiler:plays a perfect game of Pac-Man]], a feat only ever done by six people in the reality at the time of book's publication in 2011. The book realistically projects that the number of perfect games has increased by the year 2044, but still claims fewer than twenty people have achieved them. It takes Wade about six hours, and he notes that Halliday holds the world record fastest time at just under 4 hours.
** This is now DatedHistory--as of 2018, more than 20 people have already achieved this particular feat in reality (passing the book's estimate two and a half decades early), and the world record is about 3.5 hours.

* YouAreNumberSix: The Sixers willingly submit to this trope. In exchange for access to IOI's suite of top-of-the-line equipment and experts, they forfeit their stake in the Egg and have to leave their avatar's appearance on the default settings. They are also obligated to use their six digit IOI employee number as their username. It's also implied but not strictly stated that Sorrento can take control of any given Sixer avatar.

''Ready Player One'' is a 2011 novel by Ernest Cline about a teen named Wade Watts, who spends all his time on OASIS, a virtual reality MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame that [[TheMetaverse has replaced the Internet itself as humanity's primary means of recreation and communication]]. He plays to escape his boring, harrowing life in the trailer park he calls home. Wade's life is consumed by the quest to find the hidden fortune of the man who created OASIS, James Halliday. The only clues to how to get at it were hidden away in Halliday's personal writings, and the only way to decode them is... [[TheEighties 1980s]] pop culture.

* MoralDissonance: Wade is downright incensed at the idea that the Sixers can easily make their way through the first challenge -- [[spoiler:re-enacting the entirety of ''Film/WarGames'' from the perspective of the main character]] -- by [[spoiler:feeding each other the necessary lines]], holding it up as a prime example of how they are blatantly violating the spirit of the Egg Hunt. But in the final challenge -- [[spoiler:which turns out to be a similar re-enactment program, this time of ''Film/MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail'']] -- Wade doesn't see anything wrong at all with allowing his friends to help him out in the exact same way, even though he earlier made a very big deal about how it was one of the lowest kinds of cheating when the Sixers did it.
** However, it could be an inversion for the fact that he believed that the Sixers were all being feed the entire script via an earpiece and done none of the dialogue from memory, while Wade in the later instance, did most of the reciting of dialogue himself and only signaled his friends to feed him a line with a visual movement if he needed it. So, in short, he was upset that the Sixers that were going through the challenge didn't even bother to watch the film to the point where they could recite it by heart, while he did recite ''Holy Grail'' by heart and only got an occasional clue when needed (which reflects the Sixers non-experience due to cheating and everything being handed to them and the Gunters experience from putting in the leg work aspect of the Gunters vs. Sixer conflict, with it coming to a head with the final battle at Castle Anorak).