(editor’s note- this interview originally appeared on ComicsOnline on July 28th 2012, conducted by Mary Anne Butler during Ernie Cline’s first book tour for Ready Player One.)

We caught up with Ernie Cline during his recent book tour promoting his latest best selling novel, Ready Player One. For anyone who came of age in the golden era of arcades (the mid 80’s), this is a story for you. How can any story that is one part Tron, one part Matrix, one part WarGames, and four parts 80’s pop-culture tribute, not be an awesome mix?

The story is set in the mid 21st century and the world is falling apart at the seams. In order to escape the anguish of humanities real-world problems, the population has largely retreated into a descendant of today’s MMORPGs called the OASIS. Thousands of worlds exist within the OASIS where players can do or create anything they can imagine. Themed worlds like Gygax (a Dungeons & Dragons planet) and Transsexual (a Rocky Horror themed world) give a range of settings rather unlike anything else I’ve come across in a long while.

The OASIS creator James Halliday has passed away and as all good eccentric billionaires tend to do – decided to go out with a flourish. The flourish in this case is in creating a series of riddles hidden within the game, and whomever is the first to solve them all will win a Wonka-esque prize: that of ownership of the company that owns and runs the OASIS (as well as Halliday’s personal fortune). The world collectively loses it’s shit and a good chunk of the population goes into an all-encompassing quest to solve the riddles to win the prize.

Since Halliday was himself a child of the 80s, most of his own elements of the massive online universe are exquisitely recreated echos of his childhood. Wade Watts (who goes by Parzival within the game), is the protagonist of the story, and takes us on an expansive and thrilling series of adventures spanning the OASIS. Encountering other quest hunters willing to kill both within the game as well as in the real world.

Falling in love with the Ready Player One universe is something that just happens. Anyone who grew up from that era will be taken back to a rose tinted version of the sounds of an arcade, the feel of a high school gaming group, to the debating over which game console is better than the other (Intellivision vs Atari vs Collecovision). X-wings, flying Delorians, light sabers, Voltron, Oingo Boingo and a Demi Lich all figures into the threads that just spin on and on in an homage to popular culture in a fantastic adventure that will be hard to put down.

Check out the interview with Ernie Cline from ComicsOnline: