ARMADA - gamer geekery in the tradition of Ready Player One

Hi, everyone. Welcome to 2019. It doesn't look very different to 2018 from where I sit – but who knows? I may finish a new book this year.

Before we went off on our Christmas holiday to Norfolk Island I finished reading ARMADA, a novel by the author of READY PLAYER ONE, Ernest Cline. I loved Ready Player One – both the novel and the very, very different movie, (here's my review) so (wincing at the price - AU$12.99) I one-clicked to download.

Here's the blurb – and editorial reviews.

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF READY PLAYER ONE, NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE DIRECTED BY STEVEN SPIELBERG

'[A] masterful tale of Earth's desperate struggle against a powerful alien foe.' - Andy Weir, bestselling author of The Martian

**************************************************************

It’s just another day of high school for Zack Lightman. He's daydreaming through another boring math class, with just one more month to go until graduation and freedom—if he can make it that long without getting suspended again.

Then he glances out his classroom window and spots the flying saucer.

At first, Zack thinks he’s going crazy.

A minute later, he’s sure of it. Because the UFO he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders.

But what Zack’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it.

Yet even as he and his new comrades scramble to prepare for the alien onslaught, Zack can’t help thinking of all the science-fiction books, TV shows, and movies he grew up reading and watching, and wonder: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little too… familiar?

Armada is at once a rollicking, surprising thriller, a classic coming of age adventure, and an alien-invasion tale like nothing you’ve ever read before—one whose every page is infused with author Ernest Cline’s trademark pop-culture savvy.

Here's what everyone's saying about the epic follow-up to READY PLAYER ONE:

‘a modern classic’ – R.M. Rangeley on Amazon, 5 stars

‘A modern masterpiece full of a new style of literary magic’ – Spiros Kagadis on Amazon, 5 stars

‘Excellent. Even better than Ready Player One.’ – David Hay on Amazon, 5 stars

‘One of my favourite books of all time. Incredibly well written’ – Erin Coppin on Amazon, 5 stars

‘Awesome! If you liked Ready Player One, would be very surprised if you don't like this’ – T. Llewellyn-Sanders on Amazon, 5 stars

‘Absolutely awesome!!! Read in less than 24 hours, hooked on every page’ – R. Nicholson on Amazon, 5 stars

‘Amazing and a great follow up read to Ready Player One!’ – Chris on Amazon, 5 stars

‘an incredible story which had me on the edge of my seat the whole time… a joy to read’ – Helen Ratcliffe on Amazon, 5 stars

‘Cline brings you back to all those amazing, unbelievable things you imagined could happen as a kid and makes them real’ – Amazon reviewer, 5 stars

‘Absolutely brilliant! Couldn't put it down, a must read’ – Sam Bean on Amazon, 5 stars

‘a love letter to old school alien invasion sci-fi... Highly, HIGHLY recommended for all fans of Cline’s previous novel, Ready Player One, as well as any classic science fiction fan’ – Izzy on Amazon, 5 stars
‘Ernest Cline is celebrating this culture in a way that’s not just adding another book to the genre, but actually truly celebrating it, the possibilities, wonders and madness of it all’ – Heather on Amazon, 5 stars

‘majorly, fantastically geeky… Armada just ticked all my boxes’ – H. Ross on Amazon, 5 stars

What did I think?

The story is superficially reminiscent of THE LAST STARFIGHTER, a feel-good movie released in 1984, and one of the first to use CGI for its special effects. The premise is similar, with Zack Lightman's high scores in computer games landing him a role in defending Earth from alien invaders, just as Alex Rogan is recruited for an alien defense force in THE LAST STARFIGHTER. But it is a very different plot from there on.

ARMADA is a YA coming of age story and a fantasy rather like STAR WARS, with the basic elements of a quest. Zack's father is dead, killed in a workplace accident when Zack was just a baby. The boy grew up obsessed with the father he'd never known, keeping his diaries and his gamer jacket, longing to find out more about him. But Zack has a friend and father-figure in the man who runs the gaming shop where he works part-time and practices his combat skills. After he's recruited to the defense force, loner Zack discovers he has to work with a group of other gamers who he's never met to defeat the alien attack. There's a love interest, a tough gamer girl who looks nothing like Princess Leia but is every bit as strong. The alien armada is practically invincible, arrayed in overwhelming force. It's hard to imagine how the defences can hold. And of course, there's conflict among the defenders, with different views on the way to proceed.

There's a lot of serious geekery as there was in READY PLAYER ONE, with references to Zack's dead father's obsession with 1980's era computer games. In fact, I found myself skipping across whole paragraphs early in the book because (unlike READY PLAYER ONE) that level of detail about games I'd barely heard of didn't really add to the plot. Nevertheless, I persevered and finished the whole book.

However, I found myself wondering about a lot of key elements, along the lines of 'why would they have done that or why didn't they???'. I don't want to add details because spoilers. Some of the middle parts of the book sagged for me, too. The ending was good and unexpected in several ways. Zack and the rest of the survivors have grown – and grown up. And we readers are left with things to consider.

It's certainly not an enthusiastic five stars from me, but ARMADA was worth the time.

READY PLAYER ONE SCORES BIG ON FILM

Do yourself a favor. Run, do not walk, to your nearest multi-plex, plunk down the outrageous amount of money they charge you to see a movie these days, buy some popcorn and settle into your seat for the most fun you’ll have in a theater this year. Go see READY PLAYER ONE, director Stephen Spielberg’s adaptation of Ernest Cline’s SFR tribute to Everything Eighties. You’ll thank me for the recommendation.

I was over-the-moon about the 2011 book that serves as the source material for this movie. For those of you who missed it, I’ll reprint my 2013 Spacefreighters review here, only because it serves to describe the film, too:

It is that rarity among modern SF—a readable page-turner of a book, with a wonderful set of characters, a lovable geek of a hero and even a little romance. Yes, romance!  An arc (barely discernible, but there) and **spoiler alert** an HEA!

The set-up is this:  in the near future the economy is collapsing in on itself, with the predictable energy and global-warming crises reaching critical levels. Those who can (which is anyone with a nickel to spare), escape the gray drudgery of daily life by logging into the Oasis, a virtual universe which is combination Internet/entertainment center/shopping mall/travel service/role-playing enabler/alternate reality. Think Xbox on steroids, with the ability to put you anywhere or –when you want. You go to school in the Oasis (that much is free). You shop in the Oasis. You travel to see the Pyramids in the Oasis (much too dangerous and expensive to try and do that in the real world).  Want to explore space with Captain Kirk (or Banzai Buckeroo or Captain Mal Reynolds)? There’s a world for that. Want to fight orcs with Aragorn? There’s a world for that. You just slip on your visor and gloves (or your full body suit or sit in your chair, depending on what kind of gear you can afford), become your avatar,  and slip away.

Then the man who invented all this, by all accounts an antisocial geek of epic proportions, dies. In his will he states that all of his worldly goods (and control of the Oasis) will be bestowed on the person who finds an Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the vast universe of his Oasis. The race is on, with our hero, a lowly nerd in high school at the beginning of the quest, matching wits with thousands of other experts on this man, as well as the bad guys, sent by a corporation out to gain control of the Oasis.

The fun part is that the inventor was obsessed with the 1980’s—its movies, music, TV shows, technology and, especially, videogames.  He’s filled his Oasis with sly references to all these things, and the quest for the Easter egg depends on knowledge of them.  So the author of Ready Player One can gleefully send his hero through stargates or use warp drive or have him fight robots with names true nerds would recognize (but I, regretfully, didn’t) because it’s part of the Eighties thing. One test for our hero had him reciting the entire script for MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL. Hilarious!

Fortunately, of course, our hero shares his hero’s obsessions.  He can actually play those ancient videogames, even the ones we might have played on old Commodore 64 computers and the like.  For those of us who can remember what it was like to type in instructions for role-playing games (which is why I quickly bored of such games and never went back), this book is a hoot.

Of course, some things from the book had to be changed for the film. The action elements were played up, the slower character interactions played down. In the film there were only three keys to the Easter egg; in the book there were, I think, seven. But the romance survived the cut. And seeing the Oasis on the big screen was worth every penny of my entrance fee. The CGI was amazing and just as imaginative as Cline’s agile mind.

Speaking of Cline, who was a newbie author back in 2011, that nerdy fellow must be walking on air right now. To see his quirky vision of the near-future up there on the screen, directed by no less a figure than Stephen Spielberg, must be a dream come true. I’m thrilled for him, and for all of us who can enjoy his success with him.

Cheers, Donna

Ready Player One read by Wesley Crusher

Since I moved outside Seattle and have children who live half the time in the city, I do a fair amount of driving. I initially opened an Audible account because the girls got it into their heads they wanted to learn French, and it seemed a good way to pass the drive time. Now we've rearranged our schedule so they are going back and forth less, and I've been using the Audible credits to listen to books I might not otherwise have the time to read. Plus, some books are just made to be read out loud. I particularly love listening to Neil Gaiman's books, because they are read by the author and I could listen to him talk about organizing his sock drawer.

Recently I had some credits to use up and went to the Oracle (Facebook) to ask for advice. A fellow author recommended READY PLAYER ONE, in particular because it is read by Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley Crusher on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. Wil is a funny guy, and he's played a gamer in a couple of YouTube series (my favorite being Felicia Day's THE GUILD). He is the perfect voice for the first-person perspective of a post-apocalyptic gamer geek, and there is this awesome moment when ... nope, not gonna spoil it.

So let me start by saying Donna reviewed this book back in 2013. I read her review again before posting this one to ensure there wasn't too much overlap. If you are interested in seeing the movie (scheduled for release next spring) AND you're one of those people like me who prefers to read the book BEFORE watching the movie, now you have your deadline.

This review is high-level and only contains minor spoilers. It's adapted from my Goodreads review specifically for Spacefreighters.

READY PLAYER ONE by Ernest Cline, read by Wil Wheaton
Genre: Young-adult sci-fi with romantic elements

I didn't have high expectations for this book. I'm a middle-aged woman, and READY PLAYER ONE ("RPO" henceforth) is about a teenage gamer essentially living inside a virtual world anchored in a post-apocalyptic society. I have played both arcade and computer-based games, but not in decades. I did not expect that I'd relate. But as Donna notes in her review, this novel is RIDDLED with references to 80s culture, and I was a teenager in the 80s. Music, TV shows, movies, commercials, even specific computer models I owned in early adulthood. What a genius decision by the author, amirite? You get the young adult audience, because that's the age of the protagonists, plus all the Gen Xers and some Baby Boomers too. And I had further reason to identify with the protagonist: he lives in a trailer park in Oklahoma City, where I was born and raised. (I never lived in a trailer park, but I knew people who did. Plus they were on the news every time there was a tornado.)

From the original book cover art. It's gorgeous,
though based on Cline's description
the trailer stacks were much closer together. 

RPO is sci-fi at its best. There's an underdog hero and an evil corporate villain, and they fight their battles with super cool tech, in both the real and virtual worlds. The post-apocalyptic world Cline paints is very believable, as you can see the seeds of his calamities already germinating in today's society. For example, Cline depicts government so ineffective and in bed with corporations as to be useless in its original role of serving the interests of the populace, and corporations that have been given broad powers over the lives of private citizens.

Believe it or not this young-adult-centered geekfest even includes a sweet love story. It doesn't take up a lot of screen time, but it's critical to the plot and the ending wouldn't be nearly as satisfying without it. Can you really fall in love with a person you've never actually met? You be the judge. And as for the ladies, they DO represent in this story. Frankly when I started this book, I figured I'd have to just be okay with it being about a bunch of dudes in their basements. Granted, a lot of the 80s reference ARE very male-oriented. The only female rock musician I remember being referenced (Pat Benatar) was mentioned in conjunction with Artemis, the protagonist's crush. But whatever.

Admittedly it took me a while to get into this story. As stated above, I have little in common with the protagonist (Wade) beyond our knowledge of 80s culture, and besides that there is a fair amount of setup and backstory to get through. Wade also has a tendency to use cliché phrases (ie, "armed to the teeth"), which as an editor and fellow author pulled me out of the story at times. But once the story clicked for me, I was swept away. (Hubs started listening to it with me about halfway through, on one of our drives to town, and after a bunch of initial protesting, he was asking to listen to it at home EVERY DAY until we finished it.) There's so much attention to detail in the world building, it feels like you're inside the game. In fact at times the detail can be a little tedious, but it fits the story, as these details MATTER to Wade.

Now I'll tell you what I liked best about this story, besides the amusement-park-ride quality of the plot. As Wade goes about his quest for the ultimate high-stakes Easter egg, which has been hidden inside the virtual world (the Oasis) by its now-deceased creator, you find yourself rooting and cheering at every turn. He's just a kid vying for a prize along with thousands of other "gunters," but it's fun to watch his obsessiveness and attention to detail begin to pay off. The REAL payoff, however, comes as Wade begins to evolve as a person, developing relationships that bring out his more noble qualities—empathy, loyalty, openness to emotional vulnerability. Qualities that, fairly or not, we don't often associate with gamer personalities. Wade learns to use his powers for the greater good, and that's a quality with timeless, universal appeal.