Ready Player One (Novel) And It's Controversy

I want to get out of the way that I'm writing this  whatever it is (not a real review), without the context of the film adaptation. I'll get to that review later. If I had reviewed this book back when I first read it I wouldn't have had to devote paragraphs upon paragraphs of the representation problem. I'd have just said, here are the things that rubbed me the wrong way. The end. Jolly good read.

And it is, if you don't have a knee-jerk reaction to nostalgia. It's funny that my brother who turned me on to this book, me, another friend my brother turned on are not 80's kids really. We're 90's kids. We still enjoyed it anyway. Everybody who hates this book hates pandering Nostalgia. They hate successful geeks who made it and get to shove their love and passions down people's throats. I want to say that I don't have Nostalgia. My childhood is one dark pit and a lot of things I liked are ruined by the darkness going on in those times. I like media of many era's with bias for the 20th Century, most of it made before I was born, so I can't have Nostalgia, I just figure I stumbled on some treasure I can appreciate other's can leave behind as they age out. Cline could have made every reference and Easter Egg about the 1930's and I'd have had more of emotional resonance than I do with 80's, that I enjoyed, or discarded after the fact from it's time.

These people also hate Kevin Smith and his type of geek humor. I don't, even though he's said and had character's say shit that piss me off. Mallrats and the fucking often parroted Superman/Wonder Woman breeding shitfest, or Chasing Amy's Archie's the bitch, Jughead's the butch bullshit. The slashing isn't bullshit, it's the assumptions of putting them in a stereotypical dynamic and undermining Jughead's aromantic personality and function. This isn't an indictment of Smith though, it's a Cline review, and I will say one last comparison that when I would read Parzival and AECH, I read them as a Dante and Randall dynamic from Clerks.

I have read the book years ago, and I've met Ernest Cline himself. I didn't ask too much questions because I didn't want to pester him and make an ass of myself. You see acting like a warrior for better representation just gave me a kiss off and hostility in my days of dealing with jerks like Ethan Van Sciver. So there's a time to be civil. I could have said make better female characters, research people with different backgrounds and have them proof-read your work, but it was a brief meet and greet and I figure I take the picture of my brother and him standing by the Delorean and be done. Could I have made a difference in the world of shutting down old, entitled, geeks? No probably not. The thing I learn about any discourse is that the person on the other side is going to dig their heels in deeper into their thought process. Did we not learn this with the election two years ago? I think perhaps had I not been on the go, as one aspiring writer (who am I kidding) and a successful writer, perhaps I could have talked to him and he would have listened to what I had to say on representation, even if I'm not the right person to discuss race matters and gender. I'd like to think Ernest Cline is a sensible guy who could learn. That's just faith, I guess.

The book has some problems, but none that I would scream as blatant J.K. Rowling trash, but still coming from an older singular world view. This is probably why the future shouldn't be written by white male Generation X writers. However, whatever we're called now, are currently being outmoded by Generation Z as we speak and our values have turned out to be racist and archaic as our parents, or worse even because they still had the Holocaust etched in their minds. Our generation studied it and either got gunned down by cops if black, decided to be nazi's if white, or got worn out by the constant undermining of each other that fed into the hatred older people have of twenty year olds. Or so the generation theory goes. I'm not convinced it plays out quite like that. The thing is that when this whole gun legislation blows over and it's business as usual, I'm not convinced the white side of Gen Z isn't any less racist then we have been and if equality becomes more norm it's because white people will have aged and bred out.

With that in mind, I get the arguments, did Wade have to be white, or male? No probably not. I suppose no protagonist never need be both ever again, but here we are still.

Other problems in the book, are just how stereotypical are Daito and Shoto? Daito, I think is Japanese American? Correct me if I'm wrong. How much does white American culture feed into how Japanese Otaku culture is nevermind... It's not up to me to decide what is offensive.

AECH turning out to be a black lesbian, a cop out to not actually write a black lesbian? or an appropriation of the trans-narrative for a non-trans character. Don't know. Lots of women pretended to be men on the internet and didn't turn out transmen afterall like me, so I don't know. The argument is that the future should be less homophobic and racist to allow AECH to be comfortable to choose an avatar that reflects who she is, escept with the way things are going, I just don't see the future as better on identity rights and writing it that way divorced of modern commentary could be glaring. Even if the population becomes less white in the future, I just don't think by 2044, the power won't rest in the hands of white people. They're still the older generation. Perhaps we'll see a change by 2100.

One thing that isn't mentioned a lot is Art3mis and if you're me and have watched Fanboys, screenplay by Ernest Cline, you sort of know he has one way of writing geek girls, AECH notwithsatnding. Sarcastic, spunky and geek out about anything that isn't Star Wars, or Star Trek, or any space stuff. Girls can like James Bond ironically, make period puns with their Halloween costumes. These girls in Art3mis's case have to love distaff products like She-Ra, Supergirl, and the female-led John Hughes movies. Basically girls can be geeks, but they stay in their lane of what's catered to them. I don't think Ernest Cline did this on purpose, he just didn't know other types of women? A lot of the older women geeks retired into obscurity and started families while men like him and Kevin Smith grow up to make a career out of being a geek. There's tons of girls who hold themselves to this girl-only, pink-only mentality. I've known those types, but I also know the types who appreciate traditionally male products and franchises. The reason being that girl stuff is for girl's only, but because there's less of it, girl's have to seek out boy, or neutral for all products if their mother allows them. So a girl might be able to relate to Luke Skywalker, or Batman, because they're human, but a male can't afford the same courtesy to Princess Leia, or Catwoman because they have Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewie, Obi-Wan, the villains. It took until the last season of Batman: TAS to introduce Batgirl after all and in three episodes until they revamped the show to be a team format. Before you had the brief appearances of Summer Gleason and Renee Montoya if you wanted non-villains to look up to.

Before Cline's time growing up in the 80's, the earliest Star Trek Con organizers in the 60's were women, the earliest Star Wars fanzines in the 70's were edited with columns and had submitted stories by women. I found this out by digging through fanlore wiki, looking through credits and citations and finding either downloadable scanned fanzines, or in most cases the library university information where this stuff is filed in boxes. Some of these women writing Star Wars fanfic did become authors, maybe not on blockbuster levels, but they have goodreads pages, book listing on Amazon and I've lowkey wanted to message them about their fanwork, but think that's kind of cruel because these women are in their 60's having written a body of work of origial work and I message them about that story in that fanzine they hoped long buried?

The last thing about the novel I don't want to talk about, but feel I have to: The masturbation controversy. The passage spread around on social media out of context with no further commentary than it's sexist. It probably is, because it comes from the mouth of a socially awkward problematic nerd (Halliday) who someone initially in a similar place (Wade) eventually sheds as he makes meaningful connections with other people. Don't forget that in the novel he buys himself a blow up doll and then disposes of it in shame because he realizes how pathetic he is. The thing is whether the question is whether men, specially nerdy men on the internet with no real life social skills are toxic and disgusting, the point they always tried to tell me when I judge these men, is that masturbation is a normal function and that I, a dysphoric transmale who is completely not sexual or partake in bodily functions, is the weird one. Yet I here plenty of discourse that trans people should get to use their genitals, asexual people totally masturbate as it's a biological function, not a sexual one, and thta I'm still the oddball one. So my question is when did everybody agree with me on the masturbation passage in the novel as being gross and that men shouldn't masturbate? Did I step in Bizarro world?

You Had Your Chance

I'm slowly becoming an avid reader of Frederik Pohl as I get his paperbacks little by little. I don't have the biggest budget for recreational things and internet comes first until that too gets to high and I'll just ghost everyone and update sporadically through libraries and wifi spots. It could be sooner if net neutrality is repealed.

The question of why read Pohl when I can read more current science fiction is because accuracy and miring in current troubles is not what I'm here for when reading sci-fi. It's why I'll never be a true fan of the form. I want the fantasy of it, the parallel world that doesn't exist and has it's own rules, not the forecast of cold, hard facts you read in this weeks science journals, or the mere parody of today's social trends turning into tomorrow's exaggerated post-apocolyptic dystopias. That ain't me. Though all these old stories were written with those two mentalities and methods in mind, they long since been outmoded and I don't have a lot of interest in forecasters current predictions unless the book is that good. I read science fiction of the past like a parallel reality and as a context for the times it was written more than anything.

Recently I finished reading Age of The Pussyfoot by Pohl. It was about a fireman who died in 1968 and was cryo-freezed and wakes up in the 25th century where there's a the possibility of a Sirian invasion and people carry around controller like things on their belts that mine as well be smart phones. Also because people with insurance plans can get cyro-freezed, people can also put hits on people. Sexual norms are looser, nuclear families aren't the norm. Couples pick a name to refer to themselves, family members also have special names for each other in the context of their relation. I might steal this idea, honestly. It was a short book the way I liked that gave a glimpse of a place to get my mind running. That's what I'm here for. People wanting more detail and painstaking development will be disappointed. For one I liked the subplot of the main character going homeless and hanging out with the forgotten men and that ends too soon, but it's fine.

The first time I enjoyed Frederik Pohl's writing was when I was browsing through the bookshelf of a thrift shop and found a hardcover collection of the Starchild Trilogy he wrote with Jack Williamson, another writer I like. Williamson would write the first drafts and Pohl would add, fix up and edit it. So it's more a Williamson book, honestly. The cover has a hippie in a spacesuit riding what looks like a dragon. I'd show you, but this website sucks for uploading on my crappy internet. The Reefs of Space changed my life. The story involves a scientist being demoted and given an explosive collar that could detonate if he gets out of line, or doesn't check in with his appointments. He's called a "risk." The problem is he has amnesia and can't remember important details that would exonerate him. The government is ruled by a computing machine and there's people who read the ticker tape and put it into action.  The story has noirish mystery and feel with some thriller elements, even if I don't like amnesia plots (a common abused neo-noir trope that shows up in maybe a fraction of old noirs). Though I have an irrational phobia of coral in real life, the idea of it growing in spacelike a forest is beautiful imagery even though it's scientifically impossible. My favorite part of the book is the body bank. That's the one part everyone sort of ignores more than the rest when reviewing, but I think it has more development than the reefs of space itself and it's the culmination of the protagonists lot in life. The psychology of facing his ex-girlfriend, an undercover agent who turned him in was well done, but creepy. I think this may have influenced part of Miyra's characterization in my Red novel. I also liked the junkman mystery and the main character possibly being him and his identity crisis. My biggest disappointment was the protagonist coming to terms with his identity and then his memories come back that he isn't the junkman so he can live happily ever after with the semi-annoying love interest. If I crib this idea, I'm definitely playing it differently.

This gets to my new point. Since I'm feeling sick and want to vomit, I can't write, so I mine as well read. I had the choice of a Nero Wolfe mystery about a radio host, or two Frederik Pohl books. One was Plague of Pythons, which from what little I gather is about people who are mind controlled into doing horrible things that make me sick. I hate mind control stories as a rule. The other is Drunkard's Walk. The problem with this first edition book is that there is nothing on the back, or on the inside that tells you what you're in for. Just a bunch of blurbs about how cool The Space Merchants with C.M. Kornbluth is and I know this back when they were written before what was classic was decided, but everybody who's heard of Pohl has heard of Space Merchants at most. So my brother decides to flip through the book and tell me some things. The main character's name is Cornut, ewww. He's a professor. Math's involved including Pascal's Triangle. He has a wife, there's a senator, there's a guy with this name and that, one sounds suspiciously close to the author's, an author avatar, perhaps? He decides to read the last line and he won't spoil it, but he basically describes it like some Snape as Terminator shit and I'm like, whoa, I got to read this. He asks me if this was written before Day of The Daleks and Terminator. Yes. So Harlan Ellison can shut the fuck up. My brother surmises a strange plot involving the character becoming Darkseid and looking the equivalent of the anti-life equation and other things. So not wanting to spoil the ending, I decide to look up the wikipedia article to see if it had more plot information. The article has one sentence only. Something about a professor who discovers a monstrous plot. Very vague. Needless to say the plot is probably nothing like my brother's imagination. Also the original Galaxy digest cover totally looks like a superhero surrounded by atoms and holding a beer bottle. Definitely look up the article. Also the first two parts can be read through scans on Internet Archive. I wish they could make those scans have a text format that isn't fucked by the incoherent ocr they use because I do not fucks with smart phones, tablets, or kindle fire. Burns my eyes like reading a computer screen for too long. Either I find the original digests, or someone makes a text file for my black and white kindle. That's why I haven't taken advantage of all Internet Archive has to offer and mostly stick with the slow releases in Project Gutenberg.

Also one of my big regrets is that while Frederik Pohl was still alive and blogging, I didn't muster up the courage to comment on one of his articles and tell him how he influenced me. Got me that much closer to actually writing.

My Favorite Brother Published A Book And I Helped!

My favorite brother wrote a book and got it published! He drew this cover, front to back, as well as the map and postcard. We collaborated on the non-animal interior illustrations throughout the book. Basically I’d draw the crappy outline, he’d redraw or improve it, then digitally line and shade it. A friend of ours drew all the interior animals illustrations and they’re amazing. I took the author photo as well.

Here's the link to purchase, if you're interested.

If you want to give the author more of the profits, use this:
Create Space

If you just want the convenience, though we lose a little money, use Amazon which will take more of the cut. We honestly don't blame you, so don't feel ashamed. We just want it read (and hopefully reviewed).
Amazon

Goodreads Author Page

Link To Jay’s Tumblr Page
I apologize for the lack of posts there. It’s a working progress.