Ready Player One
Posted by Big Gav in book reviews, peak oil
1980's nostalgia seems to be getting popular lately, with TV series like Stranger Things strip mining 80's pop culture references.
I recently read a book that manages to combine vast amounts of 1980's movie, book and video game references with some good old fashioned circa 2005 peak oil doomerism - Ernest Cline's book Ready Player One. The book is set in 2044, and envisions a world that would make James Howard Kunstler shed (some) tears of Joy. Resource limits have hit hard and the US population has converged from the suburbs and rural areas into multi-storey trailer parks on the edges of the big cities where they eke out a meagre existance. The population has largely decided to follow the Japanese example and have retreated into a global virtual reality game known as OASIS. I enjoyed it - but I'd concede that I'm in the sweet spot as far as potential audience goes, having been a teenager in the 80s.