Ready Player One Literary Analysis

Though Money: The Unauthorized Biography & Ready Player One are vastly different books written for completely different audiences, major economic themes shine through in both pieces of literature. Money: The Unauthorized Biography is a non-fiction piece which focuses on the development of currency as we know it today, & the debunking of common inaccuracies in that history which many believe to be true. The novel, Ready Player One, is fiction in its entirety & doesn’t focus on economic themes. The novel follows the story of a teenage boy living in a not far off dystopian future, which inadvertently relays economic issues prevalent in its time period.

Money: The Unauthorized Biography produces several key themes: that money is a social invention, how money can check & balance governments, and the constant struggle between public & private entities over the control of money. The first two mentioned definitely take the driver’s seat within the Money: The Unauthorized Biography, though the latter theme is commonplace within both books. Money: The Unauthorized Biography references the abuse of
currency perpetrated by kings and princes in 14th century Europe. Due to the high cost of war, kings would debase their coinage covering the excessive cost. In the late middle ages, merchants and traders began to rise up against the flagrant policies of their kings. a large international coalition of financiers began to produce their own credit based currency, a system of IOUs which allowed them to completely circumvent their sovereigns’ financial catastrophes. Thus began the argument of weather public or private entities should control monetary policy. This struggle continued brutally for a lengthy period of time, but was finally resolved, with the creation of the Bank of England in 1694. The Bank of England served as a middle ground between the two entities. a public-private partnership, in which prominent financiers would have some control over the management of monetary policy, in exchange for supporting the state’s currency with their loans. This "Great Monetary Settlement" became the foundation of the modern monetary system.

Ready Player One’s dystopian future depicts the end result of a broken financial system which led to the same issue faced by 14th century monarchs in Money: The Unauthorized Biography.
In Ready Player One, an energy crisis forced nations to scavenge for the last remaining supplies of fossil fuels on the planet. For the United States, this was a costly endeavor which debased the US Dollar and led to huge issues within the nation. Lack of housing, unemployment, and food shortages led society to escape their poor standard of living and find sanctuary within the OASIS, a virtual reality video game mimicking a much better version of their reality. With the creation of the OASIS came the creation of the credit, the currency used for purchases within the oasis. The author mentions that the credit was the world’s most stable currency, valued higher than the dollar, pound, euro, or
yen.

“ The OASIS became such an integral part of people’s day-to-day social lives that users were more than willing to shell out real money to buy accessories for their avatars: clothing, furniture, houses, flying cars, magic swords and machine guns.“ - Ready Player One, Pg. 59

The rise of the OASIS credit over the US Dollar highly resembles the fall of the currencies used by 14th century monarchs in favor of credit based currencies produced internationally by financiers. The lack of a stable currency due to war in the middle ages is highly akin to the destabilization of the dollar after fossil fuel shortages. History is prone to repeat itself, and within the fiction of ready player one, this reigns true.

Although a focus on economic themes was not the intended goal of Ready Player One, realities of monetary issues appear within the text. Money: The Unauthorized Biography does seek to explain past and current economic themes and theories, which brings into realization the existence of economic theory present within Ready Player One, a fictional novel. Weather it was the intention of the author or not, monetary themes appear within both books and within human culture as a whole. The entire premise of Money: The Unauthorized Biography was to delve into the beginnings of currency and its development at the hands of man. It’s progression ends at the current date, and Ready Player One furthers that history into the future.