It's not a novel observation that Ernest Cline is a poor writer. His unending Wikipedia lists of exposition are broken up only by completely embarrassing stereotyped-to-shit teenagers and the torturous "This thing really looks like the thing from Thing" gimmick. This book is awful, no doubt. But it's a very fascinating autopsy of Cline as a storyteller. This sci-fi setting is so overdesigned that, despite himself, Cline continues to stumble into elements of serious intrigue he is too deeply incurious to unpack.

In the opening 70-page exposition dump, we first hear of nerd-Godkin Halliday's obsession with 80's pop culture and deep distaste for organised religion. Yet, upon starting a contest after his death, in which the prize is total dominion over one of both realities of existence, he inadvertently leads to the creation of an organised religion (the gunters) with himself as prophet and his 80s obsessions as the sacred text. Surely, then, there is genuine meat on the bone for an analysis of the pop-culture snake eating its tail, or even a showcase of how technological innovation serves an identical function to religion for certain people. We're seeing it right now with AI, the theoretical promise of an infinite bounty leads to both a radical pursuement of and a deep intangible and unverifiable fear and/or love of it. But Cline doesn't believe there is any contradiction in Wade's reverence for the pop culture of the 80s, because that's the stuff he grew up with. It's intrinsically good! So he completely ignores this thread for the entire book.

Granting Cline the benefit of the doubt, I initially thought this dissonance was intentional. I mean, think about the contest itself. Surely, this is using video games and easter eggs as a parallel of technological innovation. Easter eggs are a pure humanistic expression within a piece of commercial art, the 'thank you for playing,' maybe even the reminder of why you choose to play at all. We innovate endlessly for the sake of innovation losing sight of the tangible human benefit it should bring. In the same way, gamers can optimise the fun out of their games in a single-minded pursuit of winning. The original easter egg the entire book builds up to, the one from Adventure, is just that. An 'isn't it so dope I made this thing and you got to play it! Thanks!'. The book could then end with a revelation that the contest prize was phony. Society is hit with the instantaneous bombshell that this tech stuff should be a means to facilitate human connection but gets in the way of it, and the OASIS is abandoned. It's a little hacky and shallow but an ultimately functional pop-sci-fi fable. But that's not what happens. The easter egg is the end of the game, the goal at the end of the tunnel. It's not a cry to slow down technological innovation or a reminder to simply spend your life with tangible things (no matter what the book limply insists in its final moments) because Cline ignores his own easter egg metaphor. Wade Watts is immensely rewarded for spending tens of thousands of hours of his life in a fake world, endlessly indulging in and bragging about how much he knows of someone else's interests. He wins the prize, gets the girl and becomes a god. He has lived a hollow life as a phantom of a past he can never know. But Cline thinks that's cool!