A Meal of Thorns 48- READY PLAYER ONE with Matthew Leggatt

The pleasures and perils of nostalgia & reference, the importance of identifying real play versus gamified labor, and whether the internet used to be fun: Matthew Leggat of the Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast joins to discuss Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One. Podcasts, reviews, interviews, essays, and more at the Ancillary Review of Books. Please consider supporting ARB’s Patreon! Guest: Matthew Leggatt Title: Ready Player One by Ernie Cline Host:Jake Casella Brookins Music byGiselle Gabrielle Garcia Artwork byRob Patterson Opening poem by Bhartṛhari, translated by John Brough References: ARB’s Fundraiser!!! Matthew’s Cultural and Political Nostalgia in the Age of Terror, Play in Utopian and Dystopian Fiction, and Wastelands and Wonderlands The Utopian & Dystopian Fictions podcast I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel A. Olivas U&DF episode with Olivas Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash & Reamde William Gibson’s Neuromancer K.A. Teryna’s Black Hole Heart translated by Alex Shvartsman Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenya’s Chain Gang All-Stars Was It Yesterday: Nostalgia in Contemporary Film and Television edited by Matthew Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code Gamergate “Playing the Game of Literature: Ready Player One, the Ludic Novel, and the Geeky ‘Canon’ of White Masculinity” by Megan Amber Condis Captain Crunch: phreaker John Draper Kyle Chayka’s "Why the internet isn't fun anymore" William Gibson’s “The Gernsback Continuum” Ling Ma's Severance Helen MacDonald & Syn Blaché’s Prophet MacDonald’s H is for Hawk Stanislaw Lem's Solaris Alice Landsberg's Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture The television series Stranger Things Mark Fisher's Ghosts of My Life Richard Fleischer’s Soylent Green (based on Harrison’s Make Room! Make Room!) & Paul R. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb Samuel Butler’s Erewhon B.F. Skinner’s Walden Two Voight-Kampf Test from Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner / Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The "lusory attitude" from Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia Ernst Callenbach's Ecotopia Philip Nel’s “I Love the ‘80s: Dystopia, Nostalgia, and Ready Player One” Michael Jackson 372 Pages We'll Never Get Back (That's Mike Nelson of MST3K Fame) High Fidelity by Nick Hornby Jordan Carroll's Speculative Whiteness Paul Hardisty'sForcing trilogy