Somehow, I missed out on reading Ready Player One when it came out. Someone at my son’s school gave me a copy one day and I was hooked. Even though it was written at the height of Second Life in 2010, the technology ideas still hold up with Virtual Reality making a comeback. Also of interest are the ways the author describes education in a VR-dominated world. Of course, there are still issues of access that create have’s and have not’s. But still, an interesting way of looking at how VR could be used in education make their way into the story from time to time. If you are not familiar with it, the basic premise is that at some point a Second Life world takes off in VR and over half the world begins working, playing, living in it. The creator becomes insanely rich and a bit odd. He is obsessed with 80s geek culture and then finds out he is dying. So he creates a super complicated game in his VR world that gives the winner control of the VR and his vast riches. An entire culture and economy develops around finding this treasure, with the hunt dragging on for years and years. Oh, and did I mention they are currently creating a movie about it with Steve Spielberg directing? Can’t wait to see that. The video above in a fan trailer, but it captures a lot of the 80s/90s SciFi/Fantasy references in the book.