Title: Armada
Author: Ernest Cline
ISBN: 9780804188753
No. of Pages: 368
Genre: Science Fiction
Origins: Mine. All mine.
Release Date: 14 July 2015
“Zack Lightman has spent his life dreaming. Dreaming that the real world could be a little more like the countless science-fiction books, movies, and videogames he’s spent his life consuming. Dreaming that one day, some fantastic, world-altering event will shatter the monotony of his humdrum existence and whisk him off on some grand space-faring adventure.
But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little escapism, right? After all, Zack tells himself, he knows the difference between fantasy and reality. He knows that here in the real world, aimless teenage gamers with anger issues don’t get chosen to save the universe.
And then he sees the flying saucer.
Even stranger, the alien ship he’s staring at is straight out of the videogame he plays every night, a hugely popular online flight simulator called Armada—in which gamers just happen to be protecting the earth from alien invaders.
No, Zack hasn’t lost his mind. As impossible as it seems, what he’s seeing is all too real. And his skills—as well as those of millions of gamers across the world—are going to be needed to save the earth from what’s about to befall it.
It’s Zack’s chance, at last, to play the hero. But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can’t help thinking back to all those science-fiction stories he grew up with, and wondering: Doesn’t something about this scenario seem a little…familiar?”
Ernest Cline knows how to make geeky cool. While his second novel is by no means as good as his debut novel, Armada is still fun. The focus this time is on science fiction movies of the late 1970s and 1980s. I suspect the fact that I have seen every single one of the movies referenced in the book at least once may contribute to my general loving of the story. In any event, I found Zack’s battle for Earth to be thoroughly entertaining and well worth the read.
