Seriously. Stop doing it.

Ernest Cline, an author with two books under his belt and at least one mega-smash in his 2011 novel Ready Player One, is now the subject of renewed ire from people who should know better. This is because that book has now been turned into a movie, directed by Steven Spielberg, which means it’s back in the spotlight and everybody who enjoys being outraged can start greasing their hot take cannon.

Ready Player One is a novel, set in the near future, where gamers escape into a virtual world – the Oasis – that is dominated by 80s pop culture references. It sold in huge numbers. I thought it was great fun: a little ridiculous, a very tiny bit up its own ass, but still an enjoyable read. I wasn’t even remotely surprised that it exploded the way it did. And my thinking, both now and at the time, was that if someone was able to bring such a singular vision into being, and do it in such a way that he enchanted and delighted millions, then he deserved his success.

(I was less keen about Armada, Kline’s second novel, but that’s because it was a bit boring. You can hear what I thought about it at 1:12 in the video below, which is a rap video, because that’s the kind of thing I like doing – link if it doesn’t play).

Over the years, I’ve had various conversations with friends who sneer at Cline for his style, for the work that he’s done, and for how he’s successful when he’s not that good a writer. And today, I read what must be the most pointless piece of criticism on a book ever written, over at Vox. It’s written by Constance Grady, and it is so muddled and mangled and poorly thought-out that I’m amazed it was composed of complete sentences.

Grady’s argument is this: Ready Player One was harmless fun when it was released, But since then, we’ve lived through the horrors and hellholes of the Gamergate situation, and so we have to see the book in a new light. That light, she argues, is the fact that Cline’s book and his slavish devotion to nerd culture are somehow emblematic of the attitudes that gave rise to Gamergate in the first place. “In a pre-Gamergate world,” she writes, “the sheer glee and fun…were enough to make the dark underbelly of the fantasy disappear and carry Ready Player One to the heights of cultural phenomena. But post-Gamergate, the dark underbelly has become all too apparent. The fun isn’t quite enough to carry the book anymore — so now the onus is on Spielberg’s forthcoming movie to overcome its Gamergate baggage.”

What a load of utter nonsense.

To be clear: Gamergate was one of the most awful things to happen in popular culture in the entire history of our planet: a group of motivated, militarised fuckknuckles ganging up on people in the nastiest way possible, using atrocious slurs on gender and race and sexual identity, based on imagined slights against them. It was disgusting, and anybody involved should hang their heads in shame. But the key point here is that those fanning the flames of Gamergate were still a relatively small group. They may have had technical skills on their side, and they may have been angry enough to cause a ton of trouble, but they were still only a small group – a few thousand, at best. We are not talking armed legions here.

(And before you smash the comments section: yes, I know about how they link to the alt-right and Trump voters and neo-Nazis and other assorted forms of pond life, but I’m not sure it applies here. The folks directly responsible for GamerGate weren’t that big a group, relatively speaking).

These people were and are human shitbags, and the consequences of their actions should never be downplayed, but they certainly didn’t represent the vast majority of people who take an interest in nerd culture. And yet, Grady would have us believe that a book that was written for this vast majority is suddenly unpalatable because a few of those people decided to act like scumbuckets.

While she does make an argument that Cline’s female characters are a little flat – and she will get no disagreement from me here – it’s a very, very long way from writing unsuccessful female characters to ripping a scab off the festering, pus-filled wound that was Gamergate. What, exactly, is Mr Cline guilty of here? Writing a book that talked about the pop culture he so very clearly loves? Opening the door for Gamergate to happen? I don’t know where this next phrase came from, originally, but I’m gonna use it anyway: that argument is so full of shit it squeaks.

Grady even appears to acknowledge this: “To be fair to Cline, at no point does his work endorse harassing women or minorities or suggest that Gamergate was a super-good idea that’s just been tragically misunderstood. So to some readers, the persistent association of his work with Gamergate seems to be both a stretch and fundamentally unjust. Why can’t they just read a fun dumb fantasy about gamers saving the world without feeling like they’re somehow endorsing rape threats?”

Yup. Pretty spot on there, Constance old sport.

I am heartily sick of this – this idea that authors must get everything right, in all circumstances, both when they release their work and in some imagined future. God knows, Ready Player One isn’t perfect, but it is a very long way from the things Constance Grady is accusing it of. The piece is weird, clumsy jumble of arguments that shouldn’t have made it past its editors.

The article, by the way, is headlined ‘The Ready Player One backlash, explained’, and yet it never bothers to explain just who, exactly, is offended enough to cause a backlash, or what this backlash might actually entail. The sources quoted are three or four journalists, writing in a similar space to Grady, saying similar things to what she is saying (here’s an example).

That’s not a backlash. That’s a few critics trying to generate clickbait. A backlash is what turfs politicians out of office. It’s what starts wars, and revolutions, and coup d’états. A single handful of critics getting grumpy about the success of a book or a film that they deem unworthy is not a backlash. It’s just annoying.

And if I could extend my rant to the countless others who have opined to me that they hated Ready Player One, that they can’t understand why it was successful, that it was nothing more than a collection of pop culture references: so what? Who gives a shit? Let the man live. Accept the fact that people got enjoyment out of the book, and be on your merry way. Being grumpy about its success doesn’t help you or anybody else, in any way, shape, or form.

I get just as annoyed with people who still give 50 Shades of Grey shit. Now, that book is genuinely terrible. But what am I going to do, get mad about it? Be infuriated because E.L James made bank off a wildly successful bit of fan fiction? Neither she nor Cline are burning down innocent villages here. They aren’t cackling as they roast the hearts of their enemies to feed to weeping children. They aren’t even endorsing things like Gamergate. They’re just doing their best to make sense of the stories in their heads, and they were fortunate enough to present them such a way that a very large number of people made sense of them too.

And by the way, if you’re a writer and you have ever shit all over Ernest Cline or E.L. James – and I’ve heard a few of you do it, yes, you, hiding behind the soda machine, come out this instant – you should stop that right now. You would give your left kidney for either of their careers, and don’t try and tell me different. Whatever you think about their work, they made something out of nothing.

To say we can no longer enjoy a book like Ready Player One because part of its worldview happens to inform those held by a few noisy scumbags is the absolute height of false, pointless, manufactured outrage. It isn’t perfect, but judging a book written in 2011 by the situations of 2018 is the height of pomposity. Let it go.

ADRIFT
Dropping 5 June 2018 – Orbit Books

‘AN EDGE-OF-THE-SEAT EPIC OF SURVIVAL AND ADVENTURE IN DEEP SPACE’ Gareth L. Powell, the BSFA award-winning author of Embers of War

‘A UNIQUE MIX OF THRILLER, SPACE ADVENTURE AND CONSPIRACY NOVEL – HIGHLY RECOMMENDED’ Jamie Sawyer, author of the Lazarus War novels

‘ADRIFT IS RICH IN DEEP CHARACTER-DRIVEN DRAMA, BUILT ON A HIGHLY SUSPENSEFUL PREMISE‘ D. Nolan Clark, author of Forsaken Skies

PREORDER NOW: 
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Book Depository
IndieBound
Google Play
iBooks
Kobo
Waterstones 
Indigo Chapters

(Don’t see your favourite store here? Let me know, and I’ll add it!)