Ready Player One and Snow Crash

I finally got around to reading a book I've been meaning to for a while now, Snow Crash.

Snow Crash is a light-hearted cyberpunk novel published in 1992 the same year the first photo was published to the web. The plot takes place in grim future of north america which as been broken up into a lawless land where the only rules are based on whatever corporation operates in the area. There are really two worlds that everyone operates in, the real world filled with dark scenery and lawless abandon, and the Metaverse a virtual reality world simulator where half of society (and the book) spend their time. A "snow crash" is an old term for a computer crashing while it was writing a bitmap causing the computer send jibberish to the screen looking like t.v. static, although more colorful. A good book, holds it's age well considering how much has changed in computer science since it was released.

And then we have Ready Player One, a video game themed book loaded with pop culture references from the 80's and 90's.

Ready Player One is about a bleak future, where half of the population spends time in a virtual reality MMO that is more game like. The creator of the virtual world has a program trigger when he dies that gives the rules for a competition to win his inheritance, a nerdy scavenger hunt of sorts. The basic plot structure is the same, big corporations want to take over the virtual reality world and by extension the outside world too, and the extremely talented, but not well off, protagonist has to stop them. They're both filled with nail biting action, tons of comedy, Ready Player One is probably the less serious but more fun of the two. I enjoyed Ready Player One way more than Snow Crash but that might just be because it was focused around early video game culture instead of religious tie-ins to computer science like Snow Crash was.

Both are excellent alternate reality cyberpunk books though, and both are definitely worth your time if you're interested in the genre. Snow Crash is clearly the inspiration for Ready Player One (and many others), but I really think Ready Player One was the better of the two books if you're looking for something funny and light to read.