Ernest Cline: How the geek god of fiction became Hollywood’s hottest new property

Tech-loving author Ernest Cline tells Tom Bailey how he became Hollywood’s hottest new property
Hot wheels: Ernest Cline with his DeLorean (Picture: Dan Winters)
Dan Winters
Tom Bailey9 July 2015

Milky, white and maladjusted: the archetypal nerd is swiftly becoming an endangered species. In case you hadn’t noticed, the world has embraced its inner geek. Be it thick-rimmed specs, Tube carriages full of commuters buried in smartphone games, or the news that a Swedish YouTuber raked in £4.5 million last year, we’re living in a full-on Nerdtopia.

Further — and entirely unnecessary — proof comes in the shape of novelist Ernest Cline, currently the hottest geek on the planet. The 43-year-old Hollywood screenwriter-turned-king-of-gamer-fiction drives a DeLorean, is friends with Game of Thrones author George R R Martin and fills his office with arcade machines. Oh, and his first novel, 2011’s bestselling Ready Player One, is being made into a blockbuster by Steven Spielberg.

If you haven’t read Ready Player One, you should. Particularly if you ever owned a hand-me-down Atari console and appreciate killer Eighties references. The pixel-popping adventure, set in 2044, sees a McFly-esque schoolboy enter a virtual reality to hunt for a fortune hidden by a billionaire games designer. But strip out the “nerdgasms” and it’s as mainstream as your geek specs (see: massive Spielberg film).

American icon: Cline's first novel is being made into a blockbuster by Steven Spielberg (Picture: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty)
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for DGA

“Oh, my gosh” sighs Cline. “It was unthinkable to me because he’s the most successful director in the history of cinema. I was bred on a diet of Spielberg films — I wouldn’t have been able to write Ready Player One without him.”

Has he met the auteur yet? “No, but I’ve heard he’s been reading aloud from my book at meetings. I would just pass out … it’s almost too good to be true.”

Cline may be the modern poster boy for nerd fiction but he isn’t the only writer drawing on video games for inspiration. Look out for <A Boy Made of Blocks>, a moving father-son novel based on journalist Keith Stuart’s experiences playing Minecraft with his autistic son.

It’s out next year, but if you can’t wait that long Cline’s second (equally brilliant) Eighties-tinged novel, Armada, about a virtual reality gamer who saves humanity, arrives on July 16.

So why has nerd culture conquered the mainstream? “It’s simply about being proud of the things you love,” says Cline. “I love people who take a single facet of pop culture and live and breathe it — watch every episode of Doctor Who, join a fan club, buy a sonic screwdriver. Sports fans are that way, too, but for some reason there’s no stigma. They dress up and paint their faces but you’d better not tell them that they’re cosplaying.”

With even Hollywood acknowledging that video games are the dominant cultural medium — Universal Pictures snapped up the film rights to Armada for a seven-figure sum — expect Ready Player One to zap box office records next summer.

It’s all a far cry from Cline’s twenties, spent providing tech support in a “depressing cubicle farm”. Though it does explain the “platinum nerd” office decor. In addition to arcades, he’s added a pair of Oculus Rift VR googles (“The next level of entertainment”) and a replica of Sean Connery’s sword from Highlander, “so I can can deal with any immortals I run into.” They’ll have to catch him first — Cline’s DeLorean is, of course, fitted with a replica flux capacitor.

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