I just read Ready-Player One on the recommendation of a cop friend. Really, it recommended itself.  A story about an eccentric genius game designer, obsessed with 1980s trivia, who leaves his vast fortune to whoever can solve the online riddles and games the designed has larded around a massive virtual universe?  I expected to be entertained.

And I was, but . . .

But the author didn’t have confidence in his own story. Winning a fabulous game against stiff competition and having the massive good fortune of having  hundreds of billions of dollars drop into the hero’s lap apparently wasn’t good enough to keep a story going.   So the author tried to make the story more hefty in two ways.

First, he set up an evil corporation that is also competing for the prize, and he made them evil not just in the online arena (where their evil legitimately consists of not respecting the game and of cheating) but makes them evil in the real world, where they want to commercialize the game in ways that alternate between sounding really dumb and sounding not bad at all.  Oh, and they go about doing comic-book villain assasinations and things because Mwahahahaha.

Second, he makes the real word really horrible, because Global Warming and Republican Presidents.  Yes, because of Bush, people have run out of space to live or are allergic to gasoline or are too fat to walk or something so they have to live in mobile homes stacked on top of each other.  The author is really proud of this idea—let’s be frank, of this really dumb idea—and keeps pounding it over and over.  But never fear, the hero is going to use his fortune to make life better, somehow. Handwave, handwave.

The root problem here is the inability to realize that games and rituals and having fun are worthwhile in themselves. Dressing them up in “significance” just cheapens them.  The author is somebody who announces he’s in love with a girl, and when someone asks why, rationalizes that its ok to love the girl because she’ll probably help him get into Harvard.  He excuses their courtship on the grounds that some of their dates are to feed the homeless.  He’s excusing what needs no excuse.  He’s apologizing for what needs no apology.

Some people feel the need to make Christmas a more serious holiday. Power to them, if that is their thing.  But in the middle of the twelve days of Christmas, let’s recall that doing the good ol’ Christmas rituals, having fun with family and friends, and celebrating our immense and undeserved good fortune of having the son of God sent to us, doesn’t need a justification.