That’s probably why I enjoyed BBC2’s the Adventure Game – it was quite a fun celebrity puzzle game but, also, the characters, planet and the currency were all anagrams or partial constructs of “dragon”. A good word and the “cleverness” of spotting anagrams – because everybody likes to feel a bit clever, right? I mean, that’s why we like quizzes. Only Connect is far more entertaining than University Challenge precisely because it is more vague, allowing for odd, intelligent and pattern-matching connections in the brain rather than degree level art history (or 12 year old science).

Anyway, dragons. The main problem, if such it is, I have is their representation in fantasy literature: they are almost always the villains or are just dumb monsters guarding treasure (the Hobbit, anyone?). From the first moment I saw a picture of one, and I have no idea when or what that would be, they were smart, wise and ostensibly the good guys. In my mind. They might be mischievous or guileful; tricky and sometimes untrustworthy but never actually villains. That just seemed wrong to me because they were clearly better than humans – humans always make the best villains in anything other than horror (where monsters are a must) because we understand that. People suck.

In the Lord of the Rings, orcs or trolls may be foot soldiers but the villains are really Saruman and Sauron – humans, effectively, if not technically. In Alien, the xenomorph is the monster but the real villain is the corporation – a very human concept. Dragons are just too sexy for that kind of treatment – which is probably why I like “How to Train Your Dragon” so much, even if the hero dragon of the piece looks too fish-faced (and even in this, the most impressively dragon-like dragon is a baddie).

When I was a kid, I read a book called Dragonworld, partially because of the outstanding illustrations. In this, if I remember correctly, whilst the hero was a hobbit, in essence (Amsel?) the trick was to make the “bad” dragons a separate species – firedrakes. Dragons themselves weren’t so bad – though they were fearsome. Again, if memory serves, the main difference with firedrakes and dragons was that firedrakes had two legs and dragons, also larger, had four as well as being smarter and less bellicose. Even so, the firedrakes were drawn so well I had a bit of an issue with them being villainous… Even Harry Potter disappoints – the films beautifully render the dragons, as seems so easy now (e.g. the somewhat unusual use in “Reign of Fire”), but they remain dumb animals on film and in print.

When I started playing Dungeons and Dragons, the same problem persisted: not only were dragons far too powerful for my D&D Basic, 2^nd level character to take on, so I was unlikely to meat one without instant death by one of any number of breath weapons, but they were pretty much always just treasure hoarders and evil, to boot, even if the Monster Manual indicates a full range of alignments.

In the last campaign I ran, I perverted the very idea I loved. It ran something along the lines of there being key, “Prime” versions of various magical creatures and, specifically, three dragons. The players were going to find out a lot more about these, one of them having some blood relation, but whilst the online game lasted a long, long time, it never got to a point where they fully found out about them. The key element, their secret antagonist, was a dragon that had been bitten by the Prime werewolf and had become something altogether evil and transformed (I know, I know – but it’s D&D, OK!). This was The Mogradjinn, a word I liked so much that it became my online ID – primarily because “Andy” is usually taken (“dragon” probably is, too, but I’m not cool enough to try for that one, anyway), so it’s just easier to have something…odd.

Ursula le Guin’s Earthsea dragons are maybe the closest to my mind’s eye version, being smart and powerful, somewhat benevolent, if unconcerned with men. Thought they are still treasure hunters. But for any version like that, there are countless other mindless beasts.

And that, in the end, is the reason why I like dragons: they remain mysterious, like the concept of magic itself, and also just acompelling word; however they are presented by others as dumb or vain or evil – and I don’t pretend to have read everything dragonesque – there’s a version of them that remains mine. Unspoken, ill-defined, like a dream that waits, dragons are childhood, waiting in the wings. With wings.

LINK

Well, that was fun! I can’t think of anyone more apt than Wil Wheaton to have read this and he does an excellent job of capturing the character and the drama, even dealing with the odd situation of referencing himself in the narrative.

The story itself has me in two minds: is it too geeky or is it a comment on geekery?

It’s not wondrous literature in writing style and there are moments where the writing jars with its awkwardness; there are also some plot moments that make little sense – e.g. everything is thumb prints and retina scans until an escape is required, whereupon security is managed by scanning an ID card; our hero is worried that passwords he has acquired on the black market might leave him trapped in indentured servitude forever, if they don’t work – but a chapter later he has to change his plans because the automatic transfer of funds that will free him is going happen later than needed (so not trapped, then!).

There are plenty of other examples but that’s not really the point here: this story is about 80s nostalgia and, above all, REFERENCES!

I’ve never really been a gamer, so the central theme of old video games and consoles is not one I can relate to well. I played Pac-Man, Space Invaders and Defender on a BBC Micro, when school needed someone to help code and data entry a basic database, so leant me the machine over summer. But that’s about it. Ernest Cline manages, however, to keep all the references whizzing above my head from being too dull (except when he’s getting carried away with lists) and even manages to make a Pac-Man game almost sound dramatic. That’s no mean feat for describing a video game in prose.

I would say, though, that if you are not interested in either video games, anime, dungeons and dragons, 80s music or 80s films, then steer clear. There is no way interest will be held without some equating of values with these media; the tale depends upon them. If neither John Hughes movies, Neo-Genesis Evangelion, World of Greyhawk nor a Commodore 64 elicit a smile or ping of nostalgia, then it’s probably best to step away now.

Fortunately for me, D&D, films, a little anime, and some of the music (notably an actually 70s album by Rush) are part of my background and loves, so there was plenty to take joy in spotting (the double reference of the password “reindeer flotilla setec astronomy” from Tron and Sneakers, respectively, a particular highpoint that even had me editing the Ready Player One wikipedia entry: bonus geek points!).

To some degree, this was a surprise as I will happily describe the 80s, generally, as the worst decade in history. But that’s mainly the fashions, crap music and, above all, the politics and subsequent decline of civilisation into a subservient muscle to the all-powerful gods of Capitalism and Greed above the value of humanity and social justice that has led, in a direct line, to the situation the world now finds itself in…[/rant]

Er, where was I?

The plot: in a dystopian future, with fossil fuels exhausted and the planet in deep, continual recession, the creator of a vast virtual reality, the Oasis, has died and left his entire fortune to be found in the form of a game. Hidden in the Oasis are three “Easter Eggs” – keys that will lead to the vast fortune. Wade Watts is a Gunter (easter egg hunter) who, like so many others, spends most of his time in the Oasis and it’s his story as he searches for the keys, pitted against the mega-corporation that wants it for themslelves so they can, *shudder*, monetise it (even though, actually, it already is)…

The real world is only lightly realised but it’s enough to make the reader understand the preference for the online world, even if it feels light and, frankly, a bit silly (it’s too near-future, so that the 80s references work in the timeframe, to be convincing). The Oasis itself is more fleshed out with all sorts of worlds described and the rules and interactions given more substance than the real world. There is a point in the final third of the story that is the only lengthy tract taking place in the real world; it’s more tech-thriller than scifi/fantasy at this point but the set-up is horribly simplistic.

And there’s the problem. Everything in the Oasis reads as a “then I did this, then I did this, then I did this and it was brilliant!!” wish fulfilment. The bad guys – a corporation of Unstoppable Evil – are far too clichéd and obvious, resting the entirety of their Evil upon one focussed bad guy who does everything but laugh maniacally. It’s geeks versus corporate. The savvy, courageous hacker versus Microsoft.

The thing I can’t decide, therefore, is whether this is Cline indulging his loves in a naive narrative where he gets to describe and have his character play with all the best toys – swords, blasters, spaceships, giant Japanese robots, virtualised versions of dungeons and so on – kick the corporation’s ass and get the girl. Or whether he’s commenting on the sort of people who would want to do this.

In the end, the message is, surprisingly, possibly, that real life is better because that’s the only place that love lives. But it’s not that clear. The love in question is based upon two people getting to know each other’s minds, rather than any sexual attraction, because they meet as avatars (which can look however the player wishes) in the Oasis. Most of the readers, I think, would prefer the Oasis and I tend to feel that this IRL aspect is a comment – or warning – on the growth of social media and the sorts of people who live by it, rather than a specifically relevant plot point.

I suppose a resolution of my dilemma matters little – in the end, it boils down to whether this is Cline’s style and capability or whether he’s writing like this purposefully because of the subject matter, neither of which affects the quality of the experience, just the academic merit. The most relevant bit is, given the caveat of caring about at least some of the trivia, that this is a fun ride. Even if the D&D reference in one of the riddles was too obvious (surely?*) to anyone who’s played D&D, the main character is simply too gifted and too lucky (the coin too obvious), the bad guys too evil and stoopid, the real world too one-dimensional and the demographic of the High Five painfully PC.

Because none of that matters. After all, what’s not to like about Mechagodzilla vs Ultraman;  a spacecraft called Vonnegut; a virtual world where the Discworld exists (sadly untravelled); where you can use magic or tech or both; where Gygax is also a world and Benatar an asteroid; where the Great and Powerful Og uses the finest forked-lightning spell ever; where you can world hop by spaceship, teleportation or stargates; where Monty Python’s the Holy Grail (fittingly) is crucial to a quest and where Temples of Syrinx is important I ask?

I’ll probably listen to it again, with reference detectors turned up to 11,  and see what I missed…

One mild annoyance, given my love of the medium: other than Wade’s alliterative name, there is barely any comic reference, even though the notion of them is mentioned often and heaps of them – unnamed – abound. A hole in Cline’s knowledge, perhaps?

And one last thing: did I miss a detail, because a demilich doesn’t have a body..?   [/nerdoff]

From the Any Excuse Department:

*Don’t call me Shirley.