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Short of being abducted by a benevolent alien race to save
the universe from imminent destruction, author Ernest Cline is living
every geek's ultimate fantasy. His best-selling debut novel, video-game
dystopia Ready Player One, will soon be a film directed by Steven Spielberg. His Last Starfighter-style sophomore title, Armada
(Crown, 368 pages, $26), was optioned for film before it was even
written. And he drives a customized DeLorean. We asked him about his
stance on video-game conspiracies and alien attacks.
WW: Armada is set in Beaverton. Was this to tie in with the local urban myth about the hypnotic Polybius video game?
Ernest Cline: Oddly enough, that didn't occur to me until I had already set the story there. The Goonies is set in Oregon, and Stand by Me. And I came through Oregon on my book tour and did a signing in Beaverton, and there were a lot of kids; it seemed like a great place for that kind of wish-fulfillment story. Meanwhile, I was doing research and thinking about video-game urban legends, and then made it a much larger part of the story with the Polybius legend.
Are you a believer in conspiracy theories?
I think the two biggest urban legends in the history of video games are Polybius and the E.T. cartridges buried in the desert. And I got to be part of a documentary that they made about digging those up and proving they were really there. I actually found old news articles about it, and there was one revisiting the Polybius conspiracy and seemed to get to the bottom of it. The Atari game Tempest, early versions of it, the cycle time on the vector-graphic monitors caused some kids to have epileptic seizures. And I guess kids at Malibu Grand Prix in Beaverton, one got taken away in an ambulance after trying to set a high score on Asteroids.
How did you react when you learned that Steven Spielberg was going to direct Ready Player One?
Oh my God, I still think it's like "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and I'm making it all up in my head. Or, like, I died in a car accident three years ago.
So it's the alien invasion; what's your game plan?
I'll fight! Drones are already so cheap, I'll just institute a localized Earth Defense Alliance around my house and at least defend my neighborhood. I need to get a helicopter; that's one of my plans for the near future.
GO: Ernest Cline signs copies of his books at Powell's City of Books, 1005 W Burnside St., 228-4651, at 12:30 pm Wednesday, July 15. He reads at Powell's Books at Cedar Hills Crossing, 3415 SW Cedar Hills Blvd., 800-878-7323, at 7 that evening.
WWeek 2015