Ernie Cline's book Ready Player One is set in a dystopian American future where everyone is searching for treasure in an online universe.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Ernie Cline is living the geek dream. The Fanboys screenwriter, who once worked in tech support to pay the bills, has turned a love of all things nerd into a full-time gig scrawling yarns about, well, all things nerd.

After he spent a roller coaster couple of years getting the Star Wars-steeped script he wrote for Fanboys made into a film, he decided his skills might be put to better use as a fiction writer.

Now, he’s on a whole new ride — releasing his first novel, Ready Player One, while simultaneously watching the book be developed for the big screen (it was optioned by Warner Bros.).

Much like Cline’s own life, Ready Player One, which hits bookstores Tuesday, has “fast-paced ride through nerdia” written all over it. But, by and large, the similarities end there.

Cline is a chill family man living in Austin, Texas. Ready Player One’s main character, Wade Watts, is a kid living in an American dystopia (Oklahoma City, circa 2044) who spends most days in an online world known as Oasis. While Cline possesses encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and knows about the 1980s because he lived through them, his protagonist must learn about those things through old videos and books so he can try to solve a puzzle in the Oasis that was left by its eccentric creator and, if solved, unlocks a king’s ransom.

The book is a treasure for anyone already nostalgic for the late 20th century who also loves the idea of finding Easter eggs in real life. But it’s also a great read for anyone who likes a good book, as evidenced by the dust-jacket recommendation from Sookie Stackhouse author (and unlikely fan) Charlaine Harris, a “non-gamer” who “loved every page.”

Wired.com caught up with Cline on a recent trip to San Francisco to find out what the ride’s been like.

Ready Player One by Ernie Cline.

Wired.com: Most Wired readers probably remember you from your work on Fanboys. What was that experience like?

Ernie Cline: At the time when [Wired] initially interviewed me, I thought the movie was going to be coming out at any time. That was right when we had just started the big battle with the studio over them wanting to change the ending.

What happened the rest of that year was that the movie kept getting delayed and then Star Wars fans found out they were going to change the whole plot of the movie and then there was a big nerd uprising on the internet with everyone e-mailing Harvey Weinstein and calling him nasty names. It finally got to the point where he was like, “I give up!” and gave us the movie back and allowed us to keep the original ending.

It was the craziest thing ever, but it was still really painful. Fanboys ended up being bittersweet; I was really excited to finally have my movie come out, but the end product was not what I or the original director intended. It was a disheartening experience and what led to me trying fiction.

It took 10 years for Fanboys to get made, and the end product is not what I wanted, so I thought, “Well maybe I’m not cut out to be a screenwriter after all.” The movie was a lot geekier when I originally wrote it and it got watered down. I thought, “If Hollywood is never going to let me be as nerdy as I want, because they don’t understand what I’m talking about, the only way I’m ever going to get to flex my geek muscles is in a book where I can have complete freedom.”

Wired.com: What’s happened since Fanboys?

Cline: Shortly after that, I sold my second screenplay, which was called Thundercade. That got bought by Lakeshore Entertainment, and it still hasn’t gotten made, but I made enough money off that for my family to live on for like a year. So, I decided to spend that year finishing this novel that I’d been working on off and on. I ended up finishing and selling the book in June of last year.

Wired.com: How would you describe Ready Player One?

Cline: It’s kind of like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but if Willy Wonka was a videogame designer. It’s about a videogame contest that this eccentric billionaire creates — this really popular version of Second Life that the whole world uses every day. He dies and leaves his fortune to whoever can unlock these videogame puzzles that he’s left behind.

Because he was kind of a Generation X kid and obsessed with ’80s pop culture and old videogames, all the puzzles have to do with geek culture and ’80s videogames and things like that. It’s basically me geeking out for about 400 pages.

Wired.com: You essentially sold the book and the movie rights at the same time, right?

Cline: Yeah, within like the span of 48 hours. There was a bidding war. I was hoping I was going to make enough to buy a new car because our Toyota Camry was falling apart. Then every publisher in New York was interested in it. We were still freaking out over what it sold for when they told us that because of the interest in the publishing world that Hollywood was interested.

A bidding war started that same night between Paramount, DreamWorks and Warner Bros. So, we didn’t get any sleep that night, and the next morning they told us that Warner Bros. had won the bidding war for the film rights. So, it was the biggest book publisher in the world on Tuesday and the biggest movie studio in the world on Wednesday. It was the most awesome, craziest 48 hours of my whole life. I’m still freaking out about it.

Wired.com: What’s the status of the movie?

Cline: I got to write the first draft of the screenplay. I had to start on that right after I finished the edits on the book and turned those in to my editor at Random House. I handed in the book and that same week I had to start on the screenplay for Warner Bros. and they wanted me to completely rework the book into a giant summer Hollywood action movie, which was like the hardest writing job of my life.

They’re using the draft of the screenplay that I wrote to find a director now. When the director comes on board it’ll either be a writer/director or that director will hire a writer to continue developing it with the studio. So I’m done.

‘Hollywood thinks of a book like a salad bar. They just want to take what they want and leave the rest.’

Wired.com: Do you have a dream director for the film?

Cline: I’m a cinephile, so there are a lot of directors I would freak out over. But the names of people they’re sending it to is crazy. Because it’s Warner Bros., they’re sending it to Zack Snyder, Christopher Nolan, just people like that. If any one of those guys ends up doing it [that'd be great]. I just try to count my blessings and try not to be picky.

Wired.com: What did they want you to do to Hollywood-ize the film?

Cline: I don’t think they knew what they had bought. One of the first things they said to me was, “Can we tone down the ’80s references?” And I’m like, “What book did you guys buy? That’s what this whole story is.”

Also, Tron had just come out and Hollywood studios are very reactive to whatever just happened. And since Tron had just come out and it was very related to the ’80s and had classic videogames in it and it didn’t do as well as Disney thought it was going to do, they were all freaked out about that. They also said, “We also think that it would be good if there wasn’t anyone standing in a videogame anywhere in this movie.” And that’s what a lot of the book is about.

Hollywood thinks of a book like a salad bar. They just want to take what they want and leave the rest. They just had me change the pacing and a lot of the references had to come out.

It’s funny, you can talk about somebody re-enacting WarGames in a book or describe scenes from Blade Runner and you don’t have to pay for that, but if you do it in a movie you have to pay. So, I understand that it can’t be a direct translation or it would be insanely expensive. I worked with them as much as I could.

Wired.com: Do you have a dream actor for Wade?

Cline: I really like Jay Baruchel. He’s like 27 but when he shaves off his beard he can look like 4 years old. I can dream all day long, but it’s going to end up being whoever the director likes.

Wired.com: What about for the others?

Cline: For the older characters, I would love it if they would get someone who has some ’80s cache. Like John Cusack playing the bad guy or something.

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