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[tensuke]

Apparently it panders even more to the 80's-90's and gets very laboured with its references,

Is this even possible? Lol. I enjoyed it (as read by Wil Wheaton, whose voice got annoying at times), but it was definitely cliched and overwrought with 80s references EVERYWHERE.

Still, I do want to see the movie if they include

Spoiler

a gundam vs mechagodzilla

.

Doubt I'll read this if it's just more of the same.

 

[BastardSamurai]

The hate for RPO is so strong! But I now have a better idea of how I probably come off to other people when I talk about how much I hated Thomas Harris's Hannibal back in 1999.

 

[ezekial45]

BRUTAL

I mean damn, I agree with it all. I still enjoyed RPO, but I totally recognize that it was in love with itself and the author wanted a pat on his back for making an insular fantasy around his own interests.

I still think he can write something really cool in the future.

 

[aeolist]

The hate for RPO is so strong! But I now have a better idea of how I probably come off to other people when I talk about how much I hated Thomas Harris's Hannibal back in 1999.

do people really defend hannibal that much? i was under the impression that it was widely regarded as the worst book in the series by a mile

 

[Piggus]

RPO was much better as an audio book that i got for free from the library... still worth the read.

Same narrator for Armada. He does a pretty good job, but some of his lines in Armada seem a bit forced in a way that makes the main character a bit annoying at times. Like sometimes he sounds like you would expect a high school senior to sound, and sometimes his nerdiness is over-exaggerated and stupid, like a part early on when they're arguing about swords from Lord of the Rings. So the image I have of this guy is the typical fedora-wearing passive-agressive neckbeard. I'm not that far into it though so maybe it gets better.

 

[Cyan]

I still think he can write something really cool in the future.

From another thread:

These press releases make me wish there existed an alternate reality estimation computer that allowed us to see what a Trump presidency would be like. I can almost see Trump being the first President who also is the most powerful press secretary.

Ernest Cline should totally write the alternate history where Donald Trump is the President. Donald Trump is from the 80s, right? It's a perfect fit!

 

[ezekial45]

From another thread:
Ernest Cline should totally write the alternate history where Donald Trump is the President. Donald Trump is from the 80s, right? It's a perfect fit!

Oh God. >_<

Now that we're all on this subject, what's a good work of fiction that actually uses pop-culture and entertainment references to say something deeper about the audiences? As in the opposite of what RPO and Armada does.

I'm talking about subversion via emotional connection to pop-culture, or something of the like. I've heard some good things about Wolf in White Van.

 

[BastardSamurai]

do people really defend hannibal that much? i was under the impression that it was widely regarded as the worst book in the series by a mile

Oh, not that people defend Hannibal, but when I see just how much hate people post about RPO that makes me go "damn, that person really didn't like it," I now think, "that's probably how I look when I get started on how much I hate Hannibal."

Also, I never got around to reading the prequel, Hannibal Rising, but wasn't that one worse? /shrug

 

[MHWilliams]

Oh God. >_<

Now that we're all on this subject, what's a good work of fiction that actually uses pop-culture and entertainment references to say something deeper about the audiences? As in the opposite of what RPO and Armada does.

I'm talking about subversion via emotional connection to pop-culture, or something of the like. I've heard some good things about Wolf in White Van.

Redshirts leans heavily on Star Trek, but actually has a bit of fun with the premise.

 

[PassiveObserver]

Oh God. >_<

Now that we're all on this subject, what's a good work of fiction that actually uses pop-culture and entertainment references to say something deeper about the audiences? As in the opposite of what RPO and Armada does.

I'm talking about subversion via emotional connection to pop-culture, or something of the like. I've heard some good things about Wolf in White Van.

Infinite Jest? Haven't read it myself, mind, but that's the gist, I've heard.

 

[ryseing]

Laura Hudson wrote a piece about Armada over at Slate.

Serious Bill-Paying Skillage: Ernest Cline&#8217;s Armada is everything wrong with gaming culture wrapped up in one soon-to-be&#8211;best-selling novel.

That's just the opening. Needless to say, she thinks it's a pretty damned problematic novel, even more than his previous one.

Sounds dreadful to me, and the little bits of Ready Player One I've seen excerpted and read about sounded bad enough already.

Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

We're also told the government has been tracking the habits of its elite players, and when they arrive at their virtual battle stations, they find their favorite snacks waiting for them, their favorite songs queued up to accompany their virtual space fights, not to mention a &#8220;special strain of weed that helps people focus and enhances their ability to play videogames&#8221; that's been cultivated just for them.

Keep on reinforcing those stereotypes Cline.

 

[Liberty4all]

I loved RPO but I spent my childhood (4 - 13) in the 80s ...

 

[Fmal]

"&#8220;My Terra Firma ranking is too abysmal to say out loud,&#8221; I said, laying on the false modesty with a trowel. &#8220;But in the Armada rankings I'm currently sixth.&#8221;
Her eyes widened, and she swiveled her head around to stare at me.
&#8220;Sixth place?&#8221; she repeated. &#8220;In the world? No bullshit?&#8221;
I crossed my heart, but did not hope to die.
&#8220;That's some serious bill-paying skillage,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Color me impressed, Zack-Zack Lightman.&#8221;
&#8220;Color me flattered, Miss Larkin,&#8221; I replied."

Has Ernest Cline ever actually heard two people speak to each other?

 

[jon bones]

"“My Terra Firma ranking is too abysmal to say out loud,” I said, laying on the false modesty with a trowel. “But in the Armada rankings I'm currently sixth.”
Her eyes widened, and she swiveled her head around to stare at me.
“Sixth place?” she repeated. “In the world? No bullshit?”
I crossed my heart, but did not hope to die.
“That's some serious bill-paying skillage,” she said. “Color me impressed, Zack-Zack Lightman.”
“Color me flattered, Miss Larkin,” I replied."

Has Ernest Cline ever actually heard two people speak to each other?

I can't believe people defend this author.

 

[Fmal]

I can't believe people defend this author.

What's the matter with you bro, cant you just have FUN!?

 

[PSqueak]

Holy shit.

HOLY SHIT.

We're also told the government has been tracking the habits of its elite players, and when they arrive at their virtual battle stations, they find their favorite snacks waiting for them, their favorite songs queued up to accompany their virtual space fights, not to mention a “special strain of weed that helps people focus and enhances their ability to play videogames” that's been cultivated just for them.

Keep on reinforcing those stereotypes Cline.

...

Part of my brain just commited suicide by reading that bit.

 

[diffusionx]

It sounds like Cline just wrote the same book.

He's a hack.

 

[Barrage]

How in god's name did Snow Crash's good name get caught up in a topic with THAT garbage.

 

[Nose Master]

/shrug. RPO was a guilty pleasure. It's objectively awful, but it was fun to read. I did get it for free, though.

Spoiler

LootCrate is the fucking worst. One of the packages had a single Warhead in it as one of the "items", ffs.

 

[harSon]

I enjoyed Ready Player One

 

[Haly]

I don't think Cline knows how pro-gaming works...

This is, in a strange way, the most insulting part. He writes masturbatory fantasies where the best gamers save the world using their gaming skills but he has no idea what goes into being one of these people or how they're perceived or the culture that surrounds them. Even here, his mind is mired firmly in the arcades of the 80s where having your name on the top of a sorted list was supposed to be impressive.

 

[pr0cs]

RPO started out interesting but by mid book was a real slog and damn near impossible to finish. No idea why my friend recommended it.
I will be skipping his new book.

 

[malingenie]

hey guys who liked this book, you should read this now and be prepared to be blown away at how good books can actually be:

that's the author's whole shtick

it's embarassingly cringe-worthy and makes me think less of people who relate to it



i'm so disappointed with many of the posters here

Funny that, I enjoyed both snowcrash and rpo.

It's almost like you are acting like a judgmental asshole.

 

[xxracerxx]

Ripped apart. I haven't read RPO, but is this kinda writing all over that one as well?

“I felt like Luke Skywalker surveying a hangar full of A-, Y- and X-Wing Fighters just before the Battle of Yavin. Or Captain Apollo, climbing into the cockpit of his Viper on the Galactica’s flight deck. Ender Wiggin arriving at Battle School. Or Alex Rogan, clutching his Star League uniform, staring wide-eyed at a hangar full of Gunstars.”

Hanging on extensive use of 80's references as descriptions of how a character feels?

Yes, it is just everywhere throughout the entire thing.

 

[P44]

Just don't write like this and you'll be clear of most of GAF's ire.

Fuck me that's something special alright...

Reading that other excerpt it seems to be a whole lot of telling, very little showing, with the telling done through shit references.

 

[Bobby Roberts]

Laura Hudson fucking murdered him. Jesus.

 

[Stumpokapow]

Something I've noticed come up is that people have a very hard time aggregating opinion. Multiple times in this thread you see it expressed that "GAF seems to think Ready Player One is the worst book ever". No one thinks that. What you're witnessing is almost everyone agreeing that it's bad. You're mistaking the number of people that agree that it's not good for people exaggerating how bad it is. A 5% on RottenTomatoes doesn't mean "worst movie ever", it means "everyone agrees it's a bad movie". That's what's happening here.

The same thing happens on gaming side as well. Few people thought Too Human was the worst game ever made, just a lot of people agreed it was a bad game.

It's OK to like something most people agree is bad, also. You don't need to impugn people's motives or imagine they're idiots or buzzkills because they disagree with you. It's possible they just like other things than you do. It's OK.

 

[Mandius]

“I felt like Luke Skywalker surveying a hangar full of A-, Y- and X-Wing Fighters just before the Battle of Yavin.”

The A-Wing didn't show up until Return of the Jedi. What a hack.

 

[JC Lately]

I liked this story better when it was called The Last Starfighter.

 

[Ventilaator]

Y'all can't have stupid fun anymore, can you? Thinking too hard about the silly plot of RPO is like getting caught up in the rules for time travel in movies. Just enjoy the ride.

Was there even a plot by the end of it? Because as far as I got, the book was basically:

Once upon a time there lived Jim. As he was waking up one day (Like Link wakes up at the start of Link to the Past, which is a videogame on the SNES which is sort for Super Nintendo Entertainment System and that's a console by Nintendo. Nintendo is a company that makes video games. AMAZING TRIVIA NOBODY KNOWS: Did you know they started as a playing card company? I'm the only person in the world who knows that, and now so do you! Nintendo makes the Mario games, which are sidescrolling platformers. A sidescrolling platformer is a game where the game is sidescrolling and you jump on platforms.

Other games featuring people waking up include Chrono Trigger, which also features time travel. Time travel is also featured in things like the TV show Doctor Who.

Anyways, Jim (Whose name is kind of like Earthworm Jim which is also a sidescrolling platformer, which are games where the game is sidescrolling and you jump on platforms) heard his brother (Mario has a brother too! His name is Luigi!) calling for him, so he opened the door to his room to go downstairs. A door is a moving structure used to block off, and allow access to, an entrance to or within an enclosed space, such as a building or vehicle. Similar exterior structures are called gates. Typically doors have an interior side that faces the inside of a space and an exterior side that faces the outside of that space. While in some cases the interior side of a door may match its exterior side, in other cases there are sharp contrasts between the two sides, such as in the case of the vehicle door. Doors normally consist of a panel that swings on hinges or that slides or spins inside of a space.

'Having fun' is great, which is why I stopped reading this.

 

[PhoncipleBone]

Laura Hudson fucking murdered him. Jesus.

That prompted me to Google for a link to the review.

EDIT: And stupid me, I realize someone else linked it earlier. I am an idiot.

EDIT: Hell, it is brutal from the opening paragraph:

Armada nonetheless demands to be bronzed as the perfect embodiment of the impulses that so often make games&#8212;and gaming culture&#8212;boring, self-indulgent, and regressive.

Ouch

Armada is a book designed entirely around getting the reference&#8212;high-fiving the readers who recognize its shoutouts while leaving everyone else trapped behind a nerd-culture velvet rope of catchphrases and codes.

So it is like an episode of Family Guy then?

 

[Dr_LucienSanchez]

"“My Terra Firma ranking is too abysmal to say out loud,” I said, laying on the false modesty with a trowel. “But in the Armada rankings I'm currently sixth.”
Her eyes widened, and she swiveled her head around to stare at me.
“Sixth place?” she repeated. “In the world? No bullshit?”
I crossed my heart, but did not hope to die.
“That's some serious bill-paying skillage,” she said. “Color me impressed, Zack-Zack Lightman.”
“Color me flattered, Miss Larkin,” I replied."

Has Ernest Cline ever actually heard two people speak to each other?

Jesus, this is amazing stuff. I can't believe that that's a real passage in a real book, and that book is going to sell gangbusters.

 

[unpopularblargh]

Armada is for everyone who wants the latter, a book-length love letter of cultural hyperlinks that refer you elsewhere but contain no meaningful content themselves. Take away the shout outs and the plot points borrowed wholesale from far better works of science fiction, and the story in Armada doesn't just fall apart—it doesn't exist at all.

This sounds exactly like RPO. I don't hate RPO but was it too much to ask for not another 80's pop culture infused rehash of Ender's Game?

 

[renegade_dewitt]

Sounds like a book made for 11 year olds. Nothing wrong with books written for 11 year old dorkwads. I wish I had this instead of Hardy Boys or whatever the hell else I was reading that sucked balls.

Looks like this is something we share in common. For whatever reason, the 1st introduction I had to mystery novel was The Hardy Boys as well....and I grew up in the 90s :/

 

[renegade_dewitt]

I have now come to the conclusion (after just browsing this thread for 5 min) that I will abstain from any further interactions with this thread. I loved RPO, and with the polarizing and controversial nature of this thread ATM, I am afraid that it will ruin my experience of reading Ernest Cline's next book.

See you later folks!

 

[banefirelord]

The excerpts in Laura Hudson's review are making me physically cringe.

 

[OrlanisWorks]

Yes, it is just everywhere throughout the entire thing.

That's a terrible way to write a novel.

 

[jooey]

Something I've noticed come up is that people have a very hard time aggregating opinion. Multiple times in this thread you see it expressed that "GAF seems to think Ready Player One is the worst book ever". No one thinks that. What you're witnessing is almost everyone agreeing that it's bad. You're mistaking the number of people that agree that it's not good for people exaggerating how bad it is. A 5% on RottenTomatoes doesn't mean "worst movie ever", it means "everyone agrees it's a bad movie". That's what's happening here.

The same thing happens on gaming side as well. Few people thought Too Human was the worst game ever made, just a lot of people agreed it was a bad game.

It's OK to like something most people agree is bad, also. You don't need to impugn people's motives or imagine they're idiots or buzzkills because they disagree with you. It's possible they just like other things than you do. It's OK.

This is all true, but it's also a vicious cycle of people saying flippant shit, then others getting worked up over that and saying more flippant shit, so I think the message should be: stop getting worked up when people say flippant shit.

With that in mind, these books are surely the worst atrocities perpetrated against humanity. You can quote GAF me on that

 

[Slayven]

Redshirts leans heavily on Star Trek, but actually has a bit of fun with the premise.

That twist kind of hit me, had to take shot of brown liquor. It is actually nightmare fuel when you think about out it.

 

[ultrazilla]

That was exactly what I thought too.

I have a really strong suspicion that this *IS* a clever "The Last Starfighter" remake.

The synopsis practically hits you over the head with it.

BTW, if you're a NEOGAF member and have never seen "The Last Starfighter"...you need to seek it out and watch it. Good stuff!

 

[Zaptruder]

RPO probably was a very bad book in the grand scheme of things.

But for a certain crowd of people - people that visualize and don't get too hung up on the details and the prose, and have emotional connections to various pop culture references been thrown around in it...

It's a fun book.

And it was actually a good visualization of a VR future (not necessarily accurate - but spurred the imagination with some relatively plausible details. Many implausible ones... but again, not too bad if you don't get sweat the small stuff).


I guess in that sense, RPO is akin to a summer blockbuster that scores low on RT and other critic indicators but ends up doing well at the box office. Kinda like the latest Jurassic Park.

 

[Nexus Zero]

Jesus, this is amazing stuff. I can't believe that that's a real passage in a real book, and that book is going to sell gangbusters.

I'm someone who bought Grey in the hope it would be more of the same genuine laugh-out-loud so-bad-it's-good word soup as 50 Shades, only to discover the author had improved just enough to make the book so bad it's simply fucking terrible. So it makes me very happy indeed to see that if his current trajectory holds, Cline's third book will fill that hole nicely.

 

[aeolist]

I'm someone who bought Grey in the hope it would be more of the same genuine laugh-out-loud so-bad-it's-good word soup as 50 Shades, only to discover the author had improved just enough to make the book so bad it's simply fucking terrible. So it makes me very happy indeed to see that if his current trajectory holds, Cline's third book will fill that hole nicely.

as someone who loved the twilight books for the cultural milestone of comedic genius they really were, i couldn't manage to read more than a third of the original fifty shades before i tapped out. can't even imagine how bad the new one is.

 

[Branduil]

So this is basically the 50 Shades of Gray of nerddom, only with far more masturbation.

I don't think Cline knows how pro-gaming works...

This is, in a strange way, the most insulting part. He writes masturbatory fantasies where the best gamers save the world using their gaming skills but he has no idea what goes into being one of these people or how they're perceived or the culture that surrounds them. Even here, his mind is mired firmly in the arcades of the 80s where having your name on the top of a sorted list was supposed to be impressive.

Sounds like the American Reki Kawahara.

 

[Jakoo]

Now that we're all on this subject, what's a good work of fiction that actually uses pop-culture and entertainment references to say something deeper about the audiences? As in the opposite of what RPO and Armada does.

I'm talking about subversion via emotional connection to pop-culture, or something of the like. I've heard some good things about Wolf in White Van.

I feel like Haruki Murakami pretty frequently makes his main characters fans of either classical music or American classic rock. Unfortunately, most of the references are over my head so I can't comment on how representative the characters musical fandom is of the character themselves.

As for Wolf and White Van,

Spoiler

the whole story is about this emotionally unstable person that makes this alternative universe via mail-in game. It definitely is a light critique of people that immerse themselves in fiction, however, by the other side of the coin, you can also see how the universe he creates also gives his life purpose when hes destined to be isolated. Depressing book.

 

[HK-47]

"On more than one occasion, soldiers salute each other en route to world-ending battles by solemnly swearing that “the Force” will be with them, and one character flies to his supposedly tragic and moving death while screaming quotes from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is a book that ends with someone unironically quoting Yoda."

This is hilarious. Is Cline secretly the greatest comedy novelist of our time?

 

[Wensih]

So I read a paragraph from a review, and it's worse than I thought. If you're going to reference pop-culture at least do it in a clever way, not "I felt like Luke Skywalker surveying a hangar full of A-, Y- and X-Wing Fighters just before the Battle of Yavin. Or Captain Apollo, climbing into the cockpit of his Viper on the Galactica&#8217;s flight deck. Ender Wiggin arriving at Battle School. Or Alex Rogan, clutching his Star League uniform, staring wide-eyed at a hangar full of Gunstars."

Is the rest of the book formatted in "I felt like X to describe Y situation?"



You can at least try to play with language, like, "He's driven out, away, east over Vauxhall Bridge in a dented green Lagonda by his batman, a Corporal Wayne"

 

[Ape Gone Insane]

So I read a paragraph from a review, and it's worse than I thought. If you're going to reference pop-culture at least do it in a clever way, not "I felt like Luke Skywalker surveying a hangar full of A-, Y- and X-Wing Fighters just before the Battle of Yavin. Or Captain Apollo, climbing into the cockpit of his Viper on the Galactica&#8217;s flight deck. Ender Wiggin arriving at Battle School. Or Alex Rogan, clutching his Star League uniform, staring wide-eyed at a hangar full of Gunstars."

Is the rest of the book formatted in "I felt like X to describe Y situation?"

It varies between that and Wikipedia entries.

 

[Haly]

Don't you see? Cline is now post-prose. He is moving beyond description by constructing his own language out of 80s references. Instead of "I felt overwhelmed", it's "I felt like Luke Skywalker...". A hundred years from now, Armada will be like an ancient Egyptian dig site, full of strange hieroglyphs that are obviously pictures anyone can recognize, but nonetheless contain hidden meanings that must be slowly decrypted by experts.

This is a bold new approach to the act of writing itself.

 

[Wensih]

Don't you see? Cline is now post-prose. He is moving beyond description by constructing his own language out of 80s references. Instead of "I felt overwhelmed", it's "I felt like Luke Skywalker...". A hundred years from now, Armada will be like an ancient Egyptian dig site, full of strange hieroglyphs that are obviously pictures anyone can recognize, but nonetheless contain hidden meanings that must be slowly decrypted by experts.

This is a bold new approach to the act of writing itself.

Hmmmm.... I think this may be the Rosetta Stone of the future