Leofish posted:

I'm genuinely curious how many people who aren't weird internet nerds like us know what Gamergate is. This book sold very well and presumably a lot of people who are only on the periphery of the geek world Cline idolizes read it and maybe even enjoyed it, but did Gamergate really resonate that much outside of the online gamer bubbles? I wonder what people who read it in 2011 who never paid any attention to gg would think about RPO today.

I'll agree that the world is a much different place now than it was when RPO was released and seeing the book through this new lens can't be helped. In a similar vein, one of the pop culture podcasts I listen to recently did an episode on Fight Club and about how the movie is terrifying and horrible when you view it through the lens of recent history. I can see how gg can have that effect on this book for the people in those overlapping Venn circles.

Darth Walrus posted:

I did think that making Tyler less of a pathetic fuckup was a bad adaptation choice. That bit where his bombs don’t work because he’s poo poo at chemistry was a fantastic punchline.

Leofish posted:

I'm genuinely curious how many people who aren't weird internet nerds like us know what Gamergate is. This book sold very well and presumably a lot of people who are only on the periphery of the geek world Cline idolizes read it and maybe even enjoyed it, but did Gamergate really resonate that much outside of the online gamer bubbles? I wonder what people who read it in 2011 who never paid any attention to gg would think about RPO today.

I'll agree that the world is a much different place now than it was when RPO was released and seeing the book through this new lens can't be helped. In a similar vein, one of the pop culture podcasts I listen to recently did an episode on Fight Club and about how the movie is terrifying and horrible when you view it through the lens of recent history. I can see how gg can have that effect on this book for the people in those overlapping Venn circles.

Wikipedia posted:

Otherland is a science fiction tetralogy written by Tad Williams and published between 1996 and 2001. The story is set on Earth near the end of the 21st century, probably between 2082 and 2089, in a world where technology has advanced somewhat beyond the present. The most notable advancement is the widespread availability of full-immersion virtual reality installations, which allow people from all walks of life to access an online world, called simply the Net. Tad Williams weaves an intricate plot spanning four thick volumes, and creates a picture of a future society where virtual worlds are fully integrated into everyday life.

quote:

Meanwhile, in the late 21st century, technology has advanced so that the internet has become a vast Virtual Reality network. The most realistic connections to the network are achieved by using an expensive, surgically implanted bio-port interface at the back of the user's neck called a 'neurocannula'. However, around the world, children are falling victim to a disease known as Tandagore Syndrome, which in its most serious form is a deep coma from which the patient cannot wake.

quote:

Irene "Renie" Sulaweyo, an instructor in "virtual engineering" at a polytechnic institute in Durban, South Africa, is devastated when her younger brother, Stephen, falls victim to this disease. She and her former San technology student !Xabbu (pronounced with an unspecified clicking sound, as in the Xhosa language) begin to investigate what has happened and start discovering strange goings-on in the Net, including an evil hypnotic entity and the constant reappearance of a mysterious golden city.

quote:

She seeks expert assistance from a previous instructor, Susan van Bleeck. But it soon becomes apparent that she has made powerful enemies: Renie is dismissed from her job, the apartment complex where she and her unemployed father Long Joseph live is burned down, and Professor van Bleeck is murdered. Renie turns to two of van Bleeck's acquaintances: a retired security expert and hacker called "Blue Dog Anchorite" and the French researcher Martine Desroubins. Blue Dog Anchorite informs the others that Otherland, the mysterious network where the golden city is located, was specially commissioned by a cryptic organization known as the "Grail Brotherhood", comprising some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful men and women, and that he is the only surviving member of the team who devised Otherland's security, his colleagues having died in unusual circumstances. With the help of Martine and Blue Dog, Renie, !Xabbu, Long Joseph and van Bleeck's assistant Jeremiah Dako break into Wasps' Nest, a mothballed military base in the Drakensberg which nevertheless contains equipment facilitating extended stays online. While Long Joseph and Jeremiah stay offline, she, !Xabbu and Martine (who remains in France) break into the Otherland network to reach the golden city.

quote:

In North America, Orlando Gardiner and his friend Sam Fredericks, famous contestants in the Middle Country, a Medieval fantasy gameworld, go on an apparently routine quest, where Orlando finds his own image of the golden city. While he is distracted by the image, his gaming character is killed, and he becomes obsessed with finding out what the city is and why it was shown to him. Following the trail of the city, he and Fredericks gain access to the online fringe community TreeHouse, from where they too find their way into Otherland.

As they try to discover the motivations of the Grail Brotherhood — obviously not world domination, since they already control the world — they discover that they are unable to log off. They are trapped, and if they die in the network, they also die in real life. The series covers their adventures as they seek to uncover the truth and wake their loved ones from their comas.

Zanzibar Ham posted:

I actually read one of the Otherland novels and remember not really enjoying it much, though it was a long time ago so I don't remember enough details to really say why. At least I think it was an Otherland novel, can anyone who read it tell me if Martine's blindness was caused by some experiment where children were put in a dark room for a period of time, and after doctors weren't able to find anything physiologically wrong with her eyes?

anilEhilated posted:

It's not that good. Sure, it is a masterpiece compared to RPO but otherwise a pretty generic sci-fi/fantasy romp throughout. The finale is metal as gently caress though.

chitoryu12 posted:

Can we just comment on how incredibly creepy the movie Art3mis is?



I’ve seen GIFs and it’s even weirder in motion.

quote:

Unfortunately, the creator, James Halliday — who cut out his friend and co-creator a la Steve Jobs — hated his creation so much that he destroyed this delicious pleasurescape where everyone could relax and have a good time. When he died, he announced that he'd hidden an "Easter egg" in the game that would give whomever found it control of the entire system. With one masterful stroke, he turned his paradise into a second dystopia, where everyone routinely logs in to run awful races until they die in a variety of horrid ways, losing all the money and riches their avatars had accumulated.

This is not, by the way, quite how the movie puts it. Ready Player One will keep trying to tell you that James Halliday is a good guy — a gentle, brilliant soul, in fact. A guy who loves his creation and whose approval our hero craves. I have decided that, like so many things in this movie, this is a test, and if I passed it, so can you! Don't be fooled: Halliday is bad. After all, who but a monster would decide to subject these sad human souls who just want some whimsy in The OASIS for goodness' sake to a second set of dreary incentives beyond the ones they endure in their real lives? And not just any incentive: an incentive so world-bendingly powerful that an evil company literally hires people to play the game — which Halliday ostensibly designed for FUN — as work? As literally anyone could have predicted they would? Because Halliday injected hyper-mega-capitalism into a world that he claimed stemmed from his hatred of rules and love of play?

Besesoth posted:

The Week wasn't a huge fan of the movie either.

nerdz posted:

According to this review they added the scene where wade kills his family by proxy and is remorseless and it's pretty much intact.

chitoryu12 posted:

Also apparently the movie shows everyone using the OASIS outside of the book’s login points or computers, which means you see people not only walking down the street with VR visors but also participating in the big final battle wherever they happen to be. This all seems horrifically unsafe in a world with cars and walls.

Besesoth posted:

quote:

In both the book and the movie, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) lives in an Optimus Prime head inside an EVA unit’s head inside a giant Neo head (Keanu Reeves). In the movie, Watts calls this his “apartment,” while in the book he is infuriated by that term and exclusively refers to it as his “popculturducken.”

there wolf posted:

If we're throwing out better alternatives to RPO, how about Summer Wars? Anime, but a cute movie about a threat to the OASIS/matrix/virtual reality that the world depends upon that focuses on the importance of family and friends to keep poo poo going.

Hyrax Attack! posted:

I listened to the audiobook and I’d disagree that Wheaton adds anything. He’s passable as a narrator, but is incapable of doing character voices so just reads their dialogue with the disclaimer “I said” or “Max said.”

Deptfordx posted:

Wait. He still can't do voices for characters. I listened to Scalzi's Redshirts, which was the worst performance, in the sense there wasn't one, I've ever heard. The same slightly sarcastic WW delivery for every character. In a book with a lot of snappy back and forth dialogue. I assumed he only got the gig as a pal of Scalzi and the whole riffing on Star Trek thing that the book was. But he's still doing them, and he still hasn't mastered what I'd hitherto considered a basic requirement of a reader of audiobook fiction.

Jesus wept.

chitoryu12 posted:

https://twitter.com/jennyenicholson/status/980007977124904961?s=21

Deptfordx posted:

Wait. He still can't do voices for characters. I listened to Scalzi's Redshirts, which was the worst performance, in the sense there wasn't one, I've ever heard. The same slightly sarcastic WW delivery for every character. In a book with a lot of snappy back and forth dialogue. I assumed he only got the gig as a pal of Scalzi and the whole riffing on Star Trek thing that the book was. But he's still doing them, and he still hasn't mastered what I'd hitherto considered a basic requirement of a reader of audiobook fiction.

Jesus wept.

Hyrax Attack! posted:

“Lol what if the red shirts realize they die a lot” is enough for a five minute SNL skit, not a whole book. I bailed when Scalzi began pointing out that actors in Los Angeles may be clueless.

Choco1980 posted:

A couple updates late, but I realized I forgot to point something out. Before the Deus Ex Ogica appears and offers the High Four sanctuary at his estate, Aech says he's willing to pick up everyone in his RV...including Shoto, who he KNOWS is in Japan, across the ocean from him. What a dick.

Brother Entropy posted:

another part that would've made more sense if those two had just been huge weebs and not from japan at all

nerdz posted:

I don't know if that would make them more endearing or racist

nerdz posted:

I don't know if that would make them more endearing or racist

huh posted:

There's enough about this book to hate without pulling out the racism card.

Old Kentucky Shark posted:

Racism (and sexism and classism) is all through it, though. From Aech's reveal, which is the biggest load of performative anti-racism "tolerance" that actually ends up being waaaay more racist and sexist than if it had just been racist and sexist, to Daito and Shoto's introduction, where Cline expects you to provide your own gong sound effect.

Gorilla Salad posted:

Another thing to be annoyed about - Morrow revealed he had full creep-level access to everywhere in the OASIS and could turn invisible to perv on anyone he wanted. But he still knocked over all the magazines in Aech's private room.

Fucker never heard of noclip?