It's been years since people have talked much about Ready Player One. I've always liked it, but I understand why some people wouldn't. I do think, however, that most of the vitriol Ernest Cline got was undeserved,
Many of RP1's detractors compared it to Twilight, and I think that turned out to be apt in an unintended way, in that a lot of people have now come to the conclusion that the Twilight hatred was overblown and Stephenie Meyer never really did anything to warrant all the vitriol she got. I think the same way about Cline since he's mostly kept a pretty low profile and never really lashed out at his many critics. As far as I know the worst thing he's done was write some sexist poetry when he was younger, and considering what alleged feminists Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon did in real life it's weird Cline got tarred with the Gamergate brush.
by DinoIronbody1701
9 Comments
He’s a one trick pony of a writer with really poor character development. His latter books were retreads and hard to read.
His weird “nerdy” reference spurging is painful after a few pages and fail to disguise his inability to write any kind of feminine character.
RP1 was fine. An enjoyable book that leaned heavily on nostalgia. Armada is the book that deserves some shit talking, but to be fair, most authors suffer a sophomore slump to some degree.
I think people get upset when a bad writer becomes rich because of their bad writing.
Of course not. Classic internet pile on.
I DNF’d it but I don’t hate the guy or anything
Our minds react stronger to cringe because it directly impacts our brains and causes a negative first-hand experience.
Hearing about awful things a person has done to someone else requires empathy and necessitates a greater degree of imagination to understand how awful the acts are.
Joss harassing the crew of Buffy (especially poor Michelle Trachtenberg, RIP), isn’t met with the same level of overwhelming and widespread ire because we weren’t witness to it and therefore don’t have a direct emotional connection.
The Internet is a very “me” centered place and anything that negatively impacts our personal experiences will be talked about to death.
It’s probably an inverse reaction to all the praise he got, which was *definitely* undeserved. Cline was just smart enough to cash in and keep a low profile while releasing more trash.
My issue with Cline is how heavily his writing relies on the works of other people. If you look at RP1, RP2, Armada, and even Bridge to Bat City, it’s just wall to wall references where it feels like he tried to describe something, couldn’t do it, and then just points at something from pop culture and yells “that! I’m trying to describe that!”
I always recommend the 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back podcast by Mike and Conor of Rifftrax. They’ve covered all the above books in great detail and even named their podcast after the page count of RP1.
Ready Player One got me into reading, for which I’ll always be grateful for. I never saw him get hate, but I also don’t know many people who read his books.
The audience of his books was obviously very nerdy teenagers, maybe that’s why people disliked his writing?
I’ve been a big fan of Ernie Kline ever since his spoken word album [*Ultraman is Airwolf*](https://archive.org/details/ultraman-airwolf-ernest-cline), back at the turn of the century.
When I heard he’d written a book, I was expecting entertainingly-presented nerdy ’80s stuff – I wasn’t expecting James Joyce.
I was not disappointed.
I think being familiar with his previous work may help to set expectations: “*That* guy wrote a *book?!*”, but also “Awesome!”