Ready Player One is a science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel by Ernest Cline

Ernest Cline

-Spoken word:From 1997-2001, Cline performed his original work at the Austin Poetry Slam venues. He was the Austin Poetry Slam Champ in 1998 and 2001, and competed on the Austin Poetry Slam Teams at the 1998 Austin National Poetry Slam and the 2001 Seattle National Poetry Slam...

. The book was published by Random House

Random House

Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...

 on August 16, 2011. The audiobook is narrated by Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton

Richard William "Wil" Wheaton III is an American actor and writer. As an actor, he is best known for his portrayals of Wesley Crusher on the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, Gordie Lachance in the film Stand by Me and Joey Trotta in Toy Soldiers...

.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 bought the rights to the film in June 2010.

It is set in a dystopian future where reality is so grim people spend most of their lives living in a vast, global virtual reality game. The story starts with the eccentric billionaire game designer, James Halliday (based on the personalities of Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes

Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...

 and Richard Garriott

Richard Garriott

Richard Allen Garriott is a British-American video game developer and entrepreneur.He is also known as his alter egos Lord British in Ultima and General British in Tabula Rasa...

) dies and leave his vast fortune to the first person to find three keys he has hidden in his popular online gaming world. The novel is follows the quest of its narrator, a teenager named Wade Watts, to be the one to find Halliday's three keys, gaining not only his fortune but control of the only world that matters anymore: the virtual reality game 'Oasis.'

Reception

• The New York Times
  The New York Times
  The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
  
   says "The book gets off to a witty start" but then complains that it lacks at least one dimension, stating that gaming had overwhelmed everything else about this book.
• USA Today
  USA Today
  USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
  
  states "This novel undoubtedly qualifies Cline as the hottest geek on the planet right now."