While both The Martian, and Ready Player One operate in science fiction worlds, their projected futures are starkly different. As we determined in class, The Martian projects a future in which the whole world comes together to save one man. The future is very optimistic and not too hard to reach. Weir models his created world as a semi-utopia that we as modern-day civilians aught to work towards. Ernest Cline throws this notion out in Ready Player One.
Despite a future filled with technological advancements and a faceless public constantly checking in to one specific goal, Wade Watts' world is not one we want to emulate. There is widespread abject poverty, starvation, and overcrowding, which forces people all over the world to turn to cyberspace and neglect their own physical needs. In this world, we see that there are major class struggles as well as a fight between a free world and corporate takeover. Instead of a goal, Cline provides this as a well-written warning that we are only a few decades from this reality that faces all of our current struggles one hundred-fold. So instead of a guide that instructs society on how to go forward, as in The Martian, Cline offers one that praises the past and what we must avoid at all costs in the future.
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