Armada Is Another ’80s Love Letter from Ernest Cline

Whereas Ready Player One’s game of spot-the-references was arguably window-dressing (a setting inside of a massive online world incorporating a melting pot of characters and tech from dozens of geek franchises) atop a sturdy adventure narrative, Armada is direct homage on a plot level. Zack Lightman is a gaming-obsessed teenager who is a nobody at school, but, online, is one of the top players in the world at Armada, an earth-versus-alien-menace space combat game. Except one day, Zack is bored in class, staring out the window, when one of the game’s alien ships swoops low over his tiny Oregon town, and then disappears in a flash.
Zack is sure he’s lost his mind, following in the footsteps of his father, who died in an explosion at work when Zack was just a baby, leaving behind reams of notebooks sketching out a crazy conspiracy theory: that all video games, and in fact, most of geek culture, are part of a secret government project to prepare our hearts and minds—not to mention our drone piloting skills—for a coming alien invasion. When, shortly thereafter, another ship cruises by the school, this one an Earth military vessel sent to pick up the world’s sixth-best Armada pilot and whisk him away to engage in actual combat, Zack has less reason to doubt his sanity. It seems that for the last 40 years, the government has been developing a plan to fight a very real alien menace. And time has finally run out.

If you’re in Cline’s target audience, you’re already thinking it: video games as a recruiting tool for space pilots? Isn’t that the plot of The Last Starfighter? A war simulator as a cover for an actual interstellar conflict—that’s Ender’s Game. Yup, sure is. Cline cops to it fully, right there on page 28. By setting up basically every major sci-fi touchpoint of the last couple decades as one piece of an intricate plan to defend the world against certain destruction at the…hands? tentacles? of alien invaders, Cline is able to totally get away with cribbing from the best of them.
No one who read—and loved—Ready Player One will be the least bit surprised at the mashup plotting, nor will they care a lick, because both books share another key trait: in their pure escapism and irresistible enthusiasm, they’re downright impossible to stop reading. It’s easy to imagine Cline, with a huge grin on his face, engineering logical reasons to shoehorn in references to everything from the ’70s rock he adores, to the greatest geek films of the ’80s, to the coolest online games of the ’90s and ’00s. It’s just as difficult to read without giggling yourself at his unbridled geek romanticism. Sure, sometimes he has to stretch a bit to justify his characters’ anachronistic proclivities, but who’s to say your taste in pop culture wouldn’t be a bit dated after a few decades living on a secret moon base?

But it’s not all Star Wars references and characters speaking in movie quotes—Cline’s work connects because he clearly recognizes why we love all those vintage Spielberg films. There’s real heart underneath the spectacle, from Zack’s wish fulfillment romance with a fellow recruit; to his lingering resentment at his mother, who refuses to speak about his late father; to his pain and anger at having grown up half an orphan; and the narrative is as much a traditional hero’s journey as it is a rollicking sci-fi light show. By the time it reaches its fist-pumping climax, out in deep space, you might even shed a tear, provided you’re secure enough in your geekdom to let yourself. In space, no one can hear you cry.
Armada is available July 14.