A Comparison Of Ready Player One And The Pedestrian

Dystopian novels are no new object in the literary world. Ray Bradbury and Kurt Vonnegut paved the way for many dystopian writers today who have made dystopian novels one of the top-selling genres across the world. Ernest Cline is one of these writers who is following in the wake of Bradbury and Vonnegut. His most famous book: Ready Player One, has been compared to Bradbury’s The Pedestrian. Ready Player One and The Pedestrian share similarities of a deep connection to a screen, and automated police forces, while being dissimilar in their appreciation of free thought and creativity.

Ready Player One and The Pedestrian both regard a deep connection to a screen, Ready Player One with the OASIS and The Pedestrian with the television. Ready Player

Wade describes the OASIS as a completely separate world “The OASIS is the setting of my happiest childhood memories”. (p26) The author of Ready Player One even uses the OASIS as a separate world by using language that suggests that what is happening in the virtual world is in fact real, “I looked straight up at the crystal gate floating twenty meters above me”. (p538) Ready Player One treats the OASIS as its own world, while it is virtual, the OASIS even has its own public school system which has more students enrolled than in-person schooling. The people in the Ready Player One universe are glued and connected to their screens with every fiber of their being. Similarly, the residents of the world The Pedestrian is set in, are glued to their television sets. In, The Pedestrian, TV is something everyone watches and does at the same time, it is the only acceptable thing to do. We even see a police officer confused when someone is walking the streets instead of consuming televised media. "And there is air in your house,

The Pedestrian is a world where there is almost no creativity, when the main character is stopped by the police and tells the robot his profession (writer) the profession is not recognized as legitimate. “Business or profession?"
"I guess you'd call me a writer." "No profession," said the police car”. Creativity is not valued in the world of the Pedestrian as it is in Ready Player One. Ready Player One has a world based in creativity. The OASIS was primarily created by James Halliday and Ogden Morrow. Their vision for the world was utterly unique, set in 80’s nostalgia, a super world where anything was possible, X-Wings from Star Wars and giant robots from The Iron Giant, and 80’s anime were commonplace. The entire premise of the book is finding a hidden treasure through creativity and problem-solving skills. Players can even create their own private rooms in which to talk and decorate as they please. “He’d programmed it to looks like a large suburban rec room, circa the late 1980’s” Ready Player One’s OASIS is a dedicated world where anyone’s creativity can be displayed in the way they want it to be. If you want a giant asteroid to build a fortress on, all you have to do is work. In The Pedestrian, society no longer values creativity, writers are no longer a true profession, only one person in a city of millions takes a walk at night, and everyone is glued to