Easy Summary of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Looking for a refresher of the widely popular science fiction novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline? Whether you’ve seen the book (or film adaption) around for the last few years or just discovered it, it’s a great sci-fi read! Here’s the full summary to help you remember and better understand the main points of the book before reading the review.
If you haven’t finished the whole book, I highly recommend it because of all the small details of the quest that you’ll miss with a summary.
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Chapter 0
In a news video played across the world, it’s announced that James Halliday, an eccentric billionaire video game creator, has died and left a video outlining that his entire fortune goes to whoever can find his Easter egg in his famous virtual reality world OASIS. In the video, he says the first clue is the three keys that appear on the screen to open three gates. After five long years, one 18 year old from Oklahoma City is the first person to find the first copper key, the only progress that’s been made in the tournament.
Level 1
Chapter 1
In the year 2045 when Earth is going through a global energy crisis, multiple wars, widespread poverty, and a climate crisis, Wade lives with his aunt and two other families in a trailer home stacked on top of other trailers in a trailer park full of these stacks. Every morning, he goes to an old van hidden under a pile of other abandoned vehicles where he keeps his electronics and virtual reality equipment to go to school inside OASIS. As soon as you log in, the screen says “Ready Player One”.
Chapter 2
All the public schools are on the planet of Ludus, where Wade is stuck because he can’t afford to travel. While waiting for school to start, Wade checks online forums for gunters, the name for egg hunters in OASIS. He also checks the website of his favorite gunter and online crush, Art3mis.
Chapter 3
Wade’s avatar joins his best friend Aech in his chat room with other gunters where they discuss 80s trivia. Since Halliday grew up in the 80s and was a huge fan, gunters believe knowing as much about 80s movies, music, video games, tv shows, and pop culture will help find the egg.
Chapter 4
Wade starts school which he likes as the teachers can show them anything or take them anywhere as part of the simulation. But he’s stuck on the planet his school is on within OASIS because while accessing OASIS is free, it costs money to travel between the hundreds and hundreds of worlds or planets within it. Wade had only been able to very sparingly travel to other gaming worlds within OASIS to gain experience points and work on finding the egg.
Chapter 5
Wade attends his favorite class, Advanced OASIS, learning about Halliday and OASIS. Today, they talk about Halliday starting his video game company as a teenager with his best friend, Ogden Morrow. After many years of making the most popular video games, that same company made OASIS.
Chapter 6
Wade is rereading Halliday’s journal/book, Anorak’s Almanac, when he sees notches over some of the letters throughout the book. The notched letters spell out another riddle about the Copper Key which Wade believes points to an old Dungeons and Dragons tomb, one of Halliday’s favorite games.
Chapter 7
In Latin class, Wade realizes that the clue may be hinting that ‘tomb’ where the key is hidden may be on his high school planet, Ludus, which also means game in Latin. Halliday himself made the OASIS public school system and his fund still gave millions of dollars to ensure kids could go to school there. On Ludus, in the middle of a large forest, Wade finds the entrance tunnel to an exact replica of the Dungeons and Dragons Tomb of Horrors.
Chapter 8
Wade makes his way through the tomb using the map in the Dungeons and Dragons guide book to find an evil king at the end. Wade has to then beat the king at the classic arcade game Joust, and, when he finally beats him, the king gives him the first key. On the key, the next clue tells him to go to Halliday’s replica hometown on a planet he coded.
Chapter 9
As he was leaving, Art3mis appears in the doorway and tells him that she’s been trying to beat the Joust game for five weeks. They talk about what they would do with the money, but Wade leaves as soon as Art3mis starts to play the game.
Chapter 10
Wade makes it to the replica of Halliday’s childhood home to his first computer to beat the game Dungeons of Daggorath. In his studies, Wade knew this game was in Halliday’s childhood room, so he has already learned to beat it. When he finished the game, the first gate appears that he opens with his key and jumps into the endless stars beyond.
Chapter 11
Wade is transported into the movie WarGames and has to act out everything the main character says and does. This was one of Halliday’s favorite movie, so Wade luckily has it memorized. Once he gets through the movie, he’s back in Halliday’s room until he heads back to Ludus.
Chapter 12
After sleeping for 12 hours straight, Wade wakes to see the news is all about him, including an interview with Ogden Marrow who encourages him to stay anonymous. Wade finally talks to his friend Aech in OASIS who’s found the tomb because Aech knows Wade could never afford to get off Ludus. Wade also has thousands of emails, but only replies to the one from Art3mis.
Chapter 13
After Aech gets the key and passes the gate, two more players, Daito and Shoto, do as well. Wade is still trying to figure out the next clue, he gets a bunch of emails from Innovative Online Industries, IOI, a company who pays players to find the egg to ultimately take control of the OASIS (hated among the gunters). Wade agrees to meet the head of operations, Nolan Sorrento, just to say no in person.
Chapter 14
At the meeting with IOI, they offer all kinds of deals of millions of dollars and benefits, but Wade refuses them all. Then, Sorrento reveals they know who Wade really is and threaten to blow up his aunt’s trailer where they think he currently is. Wade still thinks they’ll kill him in the end no matter what, so he refuses and leaves the meeting only to hear the stacks of trailers, including his aunt’s, blow up.
Chapter 15
On Ludus, IOI ships, players, and equipment swarm the planet looking for the tomb until they eventually find it and put force fields around it to stop other players (which later gets attacked and destroyed by Gunter clans). Wade sets up a meeting with Art3mis, Aech, Shoto, and Daito to warn them what IOI did to him and may try with them, too. After thanking him, they all agree to still work alone. Once it’s just Aech and Wade, some comic books mysteriously fall over, but Aech assures him it must be a glitch because they’re in a private, encrypted chat room.
Chapter 16
After agreeing to a few endorsements for the image of his OASIS avatar, Wade uses the money to a bus ticket to Columbus, Ohio, where GSS, the company behind OASIS, is headquartered. After buying a new identity on the dark web in OASIS, Wade rents a tiny apartment made for gunters with a direct connection to the OASIS servers and within a high security building.
Level Two
Chapter 17
Wade starts chatting with Art3mis more and more until they start hanging out and even going on dates in OASIS. Art3mis won’t reveal too much about her real self, but Wade tells her about himself, including his real name. He doesn’t get much further on the clue, but is too obsessed with Art3mis to care.
Chapter 18
While attending Ogden Marrow’s exclusive birthday party, Wade tells Art3mis that he’s in love with her, but she turns him down because they don’t actually know each other and should be focusing on the egg. Then, IOI members break in and start attacking the party, primarily Wade and Art3mis. Ogden uses his one of a kind ability to kill them all, but Art3mis disappears.
Chapter 19
Two months after Art3mis broke up with him, Wade has spent the whole time inside his apartment having everything delivered and upgrading everything he has to the newest technology. He does have software to help him exercise and eat healthy everyday along with a virtual personal assistant, but still feels that he made himself a small prison he’s stuck inside. And after six months, no one including himself has made any progress finding the Jade Key.
Chapter 20
Wade is lonely now that Art3mis is gone, and he hasn’t talked to Aech is a long time. To try to be friends, he completes a quest with Daito and Shoto, but still feels lonely most of the time. Then, he sees on the scoreboard Art3mis found the Jade Key.
Chapter 21
Because the IOI paid for an artifact that can tell you which sector any avatar is one time a day, the IOI swarmed sector seven the day Art3mis found the key giving everyone else an extra clue. Wade scolds himself for getting distracted, and refocuses on the next clue. He thinks it leads him to a planet in sector seven that holds old arcades with Halliday’s old trophies.
Chapter 22
Wade checks through all the arcades and trophies without finding anything significant until he stumbles upon a replica of Halliday’s favorite hometown pizza place hidden amongst the old arcades. In the book, Wade finds an old Pac-Man that says out of order, which would be odd for Halliday to code, so he plugs it in to see to beat the high score he’d have to play a perfect game of Pac-Man. After several hours, he does play a perfect game and a quarter appears in his inventory just as he sees Aech found the Jade key.
Suddenly, Wade gets an email from Aech with a picture of the classic game Zork. Wade immediately flies to the Zork planet also in sector seven.
Chapter 23
After making it to the planet before IOI, Wade completes the Zork game and gets the Jade key. As he’s leaving, fleets of IOI ships show up and attack him, but he just makes it out. The planet turns into a war zone as IOI members and Shoto find keys, but Wade assumes his partner Daito was killed in the battle because his name never appears on the scoreboard.
Chapter 24
In the following days, Sorrento and IOI members are the only ones to pass the next gate as well as find the final Crystal key. Wade thinks they must be cheating, but it sends him into a depressive spiral. Then, Shoto contacts him about giving him some of Daito’s items.
Chapter 25
When Shoto shows up to the meeting, he tells Wade that IOI killed Daito in real life by throwing him out his apartment window and making it look like a suicide. Shoto tells Wade his real name, Akihide, and gives him a very magic object from Daito that the three of them won in a quest together.
Chapter 26
Wade finally realizes he has to go to a Tyrell Building from the movie Blade Runner which is found on almost every planet (because it was one of Halliday’s favorites), so he figures any will work and goes to the closest one. The key fits into the Voight-Kampff machine which opens the gate into a bowling alley then into the game Black Dragon. When Wade beats the game, he gets a custom robot skin and a clue to the next key that he instantly knows.
Chapter 27
Wade headed for the city of Megadon on the planet Syrinx based on the Rush album to find a hidden guitar behind a waterfall that, if played in the cave, gave him an extra clue that the third gate couldn’t be opened alone. After taking the guitar to the Temple, he receives the third, Crystal key with a calligraphy A on it to symbolize Halliday’s avatar, Anorak. As Wade approaches Halliday’s castle Anorak on his planet Chthonia, he finds the entire IOI army has it surrounded in a force field even though no one has ever been able to get into the castle.
Level 3
Chapter 28
After telling Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto how to find the next gate and key, Wade starts his plan which begins with him being arrested by IOI in real life because of debt he accrued with the company under his fake identity (which they believe is his real identity). The IOI break down his security system into his apartment and take him away, just after he deletes everything from his computers.
Chapter 29
Wade is taken to be an indentured employee for IOI until he pays off his debt. He’s assigned a job in customer service and tech support because of the made up background of his fake identity. After working 12 hours a day and being watched at almost all times, he gets a small sleeping pod with very limited access to the internet.
Chapter 30
After work, Wade stays awake in his pod and accesses the internet with IOI passwords he bought on the black market before being arrested. Each night, Wade uses this to get into IOI’s computer system and download all their information on the third gate and the hunt onto a hidden flash drive.
Wade finds files on him, Art3mis, Aech, Shoto, and Daito (including the video IOI took killing him) along with all their personal information like Art3mis’s picture and real name, Samantha. She looks just like her avatar except for a birthmark covering the left part of her face, but Wade still thinks she’s beautiful. Then, he finds a memo for Sorrento to his bosses asking permission to kidnap Art3mis and Shoto to make them open the third gate before they’d be disposed of.
Chapter 31
After hacking into the IOI database so he can impersonate a repairman, Wade escapes the IOI building, makes it to a mailbox he earlier mailed everything he would need, and finds an obscure Internet cafe unassociated with IOI to log back into OASIS. First, he deletes everything about his fake identity, and, next, emails the videos of IOI killing Daito and planning to kill Shoto and Art3mis to all major new sources. Then, after reloading his avatar with everything from before, he meets Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto in the private chat room in OASIS.
Chapter 32
The group agrees that the clues suggest three of them need to insert the key into the gate at the same time, so they start planning how to get past IOI. After Wade assures them he’s taking care of the force field and it’ll definitely go down in 36 hours, they send messages to every Gunter in OASIS to show up to fight the IOI army at that time. Suddenly, Ogden Marrow’s avatar is in the chat room with them, offering to get them all to his home in Oregon.
Chapter 33
Marrows admits he’s been listening to them in the chat room (and knocked over those magazines) because he promised Halliday he would help keep the spirit of the competition if something like IOI ever came up. So, Marrow sends them all private planes to come to his home in real life in Oregon away from where IOI can get them.
Because Aech happened to be close by to Wade and the same plane is coming for both of them, Wade gets to meet Aech in person. Even though he’s shocked to find out Aech is a black girl his own age, he still feels that they’re best friends. Once they get to Marrow’s house (a replica of Rivendell), he shows them to immersion bays where they’ll log into OASIS like Shoto and Art3mis already have because they don’t want to meet each other in person until after the quest.
Chapter 34
Upon arriving at the Castle surrounded by thousands and thousands of gunters ready to fight, Aech, Art3mis, Shoto, and Wade fit themselves with the robot bodies they got after finding the Crystal key. Sorrento’s avatar comes out of the castle and does the same, changing into a giant robot twice their size. Then, a robot Wade programmed while inside IOI denotes a bomb next to the magic artifact making the force field which immediately goes down.
Chapter 35
Chaos ensues as all the gunters attacks, and Shoto starts fighting Sorrento’s robot, so the other three can get to the gate. As Aech and Art3mis enter the castle, Wade turns back to see Sorrento kill Shoto, so Wade decides to stay and fight him. Wade uses the magical artifact Daito left him to turn into a giant, indestructible lizard that he uses to kill Sorrento.
As Wade enters the castle, they sing the Schoolhouse Rock song that makes three key holes appear. Right after they turn their keys and the gate appears, the IOI set off the Catalyst, a rumored magic artifact bomb, that kills everyone on the planet and levels everything, even Halliday’s castle, except the Third Gate.
Chapter 36
Instead of seeing Game Over like everyone else, Wade’s screen says he has an extra life because of the quarter he has from beating the Pac-Man game. He’s the only one left in the sector, but IOI has more avatars on the way there that they purposely held back for this. Wade promises to split the prize money between himself, Aech, Art3mis, and Shoto no matter what, and they promise to help him with the Third Gate through the connected headsets at Marrow’s house.
Chapter 37
Inside the Third Gate, Wade has to beat Halliday’s high score at the classic game Tempest which is not his best, but Art3mis tells him about a glitch that gives him unlimited credits to try. When he finally beats the score, the IOI has 18 avatars who have started playing as well, and Wade is taken into Monty Python and the Holy Grail where he has to act out the movie again. Then, he’s transported into a copy of Halliday’s real office with every single one of his old computers and game consoles.
Chapter 38
Once Wade figures out the secret password, the computers and consoles power up, and Wade finds the Atari game Adventure which contains the first ever video game egg that inspired Halliday’s quest. When Wade locates the secret room in the game, he finds a silver egg that brings him to Halliday’s study in the Castle.
Anorak appears to congratulate him, and, when he gives Wade his wizard robe, the avatar appears as Halliday looked in real life. Halliday explains that Wade is now in charge of the entire OASIS with unlimited power and abilities, even showing him a red button that will completely shut down the virtual world, before disappearing. Wade resurrects his friends with his new power as they watch a news clip of Sorrento being arrested in real life.
Chapter 39
After everyone congratulates him on his win, he logs out to go find Art3mis outside Marrow’s house in the real world. Although she’s shy at first, Wade tells her that he thinks she’s beautiful and that he’s still in love with her. After she kisses him, they agree to help the country and all the real whole world problems with all their new money.
Read the Full Book Review
Now that you’re reminded of the main points of the book, read my full book review here. There’s also more book recommendations and things to think about before you see movie version, too, if you plan on it. You can find the book here if you need it.
