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Summary
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A rollicking alien invasion thriller that embraces and subverts science-fiction conventions, from the author of the worldwide phenomenon Ready Player One
"Exciting . . . mixes Star Wars , The Last Starfighter , Independence Day, and a really gnarly round of Space Invaders ."-- USA Today * "A thrilling coming of age story."-- Entertainment Weekly
Zack Lightman has never much cared for reality. He vastly prefers the countless science-fiction movies, books, and videogames he's spent his life consuming. And too often, he catches himself wishing that some fantastic, impossible, world-altering event could arrive to whisk him off on a grand spacefaring adventure.
So when he sees the flying saucer, he's sure his years of escapism have finally tipped over into madness.
Especially because the alien ship he's staring at is straight out of his favorite videogame, a flight simulator callled Armada-- in which gamers just happen to be protecting Earth from alien invaders.
As impossible as it seems, what Zack's seeing is all too real. And it's just the first in a blur of revlations that will force him to question everything he thought he knew about Earth's history, its future, even his own life--and to play the hero for real, with humanity's life in the balance.
But even through the terror and exhilaration, he can't help thinking: Doesn't something about this scenario feel a little bit like . . . well . . . fiction?
At once reinventing and paying homage to science-fiction classics, Armada is a rollicking, surprising thriller, a coming-of-age adventure, and an alien invasion tale like nothing you've ever read before.
Author Notes
Ernest Cline is an American screenwriter and novelist. He was born in 1972 and grew up in rural Ohio.
In 1998, Cline wrote a screenplay entitled, Fanboys, about the craze surrounding the prequels to the Star Wars movies. Over a decade later, the movie was finally released in 2009. However, creative differences and his dissatisfaction with the final edit, led Cline to quit screenwriting and write a novel. That novel, based on an idea he had been considering for years, became the New York Times Bestseller, Ready Player One. His second novel, Armada released in 2015 also became a New York Times Bestseller.
He made the Hollywood Reporter's 'Most Powerful Authors' 2016 list, entering at number 12.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
What if the X-Files were a "fictional alien cover-up created to conceal [a] real one"? Cline (Ready Player One) makes this kind of paranoia intriguing in an SF novel whose strong opening compensates for a less gripping ending. After Zack Lightman's father died in an accident, the teen distracted himself with gaming, achieving one of the world's top scores in a human vs. alien invaders game called Armada. To Zack's astonishment, one morning he looks out of his classroom window in Beaverton, Wash., and sees a Sobrukai Glaive, one of the enemy ships from that game. Skeptical of his own senses, Zack flees school to take a more careful look at his father's writings, only to find an unsettling level of conspiracy thinking. Zack soon finds the connection between his vision and his father's theories, at which point the story becomes more conventional and less imaginative. The plot holes get harder to ignore as the conclusion approaches, but the book's beginning offers glimpses of Cline's significant potential. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Cline's first novel, the irresistible gamer quest, Ready Player One (2011), became a big best-seller now slated for a movie adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg. In his second geek-coming-of-age tale, Cline presents Zack Lightman, a teen with anger issues obsessed with his late father, who left behind some rocking mixed tapes and notebooks delineating a wild conspiracy theory about the truth embedded in popular science fiction novels, movies, and videogames. When Zack looks out a school window and sees an alien spacecraft just like those he shoots down so decisively while playing the online alien-invaders videogame, Armada (he's ranked sixth best player in the world), he fears he's losing his mind. Readers, however, will feel confident that they're in for another hard-charging adventure that blasts open the barrier between the actual and the virtual. And indeed, Cline once again brings crackling humor and fanboy knowledge to a zesty, crowd-pleasing, countdown-clock, save-the-planet tale featuring an unlikely hero, adrenaline-pumping action, gawky romance, and touching family moments. If the interactions among characters tend to be as predictable as fast food, Cline's sly, mind-twisting premise and energetically depicted and electrifying high-tech battles make for smart, frenetic, and satisfying entertainment.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
High schooler Zack Lightman is staring out of the window during class one day and sees what appears to be a Glaive fighter, an alien ship from his favorite video game, Armada. Zack isn't imagining things. The aliens are real, they are on the attack, and it's up to the gamers of the world to save humanity. While some plot elements are unsurprising, Cline has created a fast-paced story with so much excitement and drama that readers will be happy to go along for the ride. Readers learn that some popular conspiracy theories are true: video games really have been used to train people to defend the Earth against aliens, with the leaderboards used to find the best fighters; science fiction movies and television shows have been funded by the government with the intention of getting the general population used to the idea that aliens do exist; and the world's most famous scientists, including Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Carl Sagan, have all had a hand in it. This compelling story is made even richer through different perspectives brought by the diverse group of elite gamers tasked with leading the fight. Fans of the author's Ready Player One (Crown, 2011) will not be disappointed. VERDICT Although this is a great book for teen gamers, Cline's sophomore effort with young protagonists and questions about alien civilizations and government secrets will also appeal to fans of science fiction and conspiracy theories.-Carla Riemer, Claremont Middle School, CA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
From the author of Ready Player One (2011), another book centered around video games and the 1980s. Teenager Zack Lightman loves playing games online with his friends, although any similarities to teenagers of today end there. He's obsessed with '80s science fiction, ostensibly because it's a way to fill the void left by his dead father. In the attic, Zack finds not only his dad's favorite movies on VHS, but also a detailed conspiracy theory his father wrote when he was 19, claiming video games and movies about alien invasions have been secretly funded by a shadowy organization to prepare humanity for the real thing. It's a crazy theory that, of course, turns out to be absolutely true. When aliens invade, Zack is whisked away to a secret training facility where he learns the game he's devoted years of his life to playing has always been an advanced tactical simulation, much like the plot to the 1984 movie The Last Starfighter. Now, Zack and his fellow gamers must step up and defend Earth for real. In the hands of a more skilled writer, the book could have drawn on familiar stories to launch into a new science-fiction adventure. Instead, it offers little more than interminable video game-style battles and timeworn tropes, including a plot twist that can be seen coming for miles. Zack's love interest is impossibly attractive, swigs booze from an R2-D2 flask, and laughs at all his jokesa nerd-fantasy centerfold and just as one-dimensional. Meanwhile, Zack's two friends are indistinguishable from one another and do little more than argue over geek minutiae, because as everyone knows, that's all nerds ever do. However, in the end, it's the unrelenting references to '80s movies that squander any possible tension in the narrative. Readers never doubt whether the good guys will win because they're constantly reminded: good guys always win in the movies. A hackneyed sci-fi spectacle. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
High schooler and gamer Zack's world is rocked when the aliens from his favorite video game actually invade Earth. Wondering at the eerie similarity of this attack to the books and movies he loved as a kid, Zack, along with other game aficionados, gears up to defend the planet. VERDICT Expect huge demand for this coming-of-age gamer kid adventure after the author's big splash with Ready Player One, but with pop culture references, action, and a relatable main character the appeal for all ages was already there. (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 I was staring out the classroom window and daydreaming of adventure when I spotted the flying saucer. I blinked and looked again--but it was still out there, a shiny chrome disc zigzagging around in the sky. My eyes struggled to track the object through a series of increasingly fast, impossibly sharp turns that would have juiced a human being, had there been any aboard. The disc streaked toward the distant horizon, then came to an instantaneous stop just above it. It hovered there motionless over the distant tree line for a few seconds, as if scanning the area beneath it with an invisible beam, before it abruptly launched itself skyward again, making another series of physics-defying changes to its course and speed. I tried to keep my cool. I tried to remain skeptical. I reminded myself that I was a man of science, even if I did usually get a C in it. I looked at it again. I still couldn't tell what it was, but I knew what it wasn't--it wasn't a meteor. Or a weather balloon, or swamp gas, or ball lightning. No, the unidentified flying object I was staring at with my own two eyes was most definitely not of this earth. My first thought was: Holy fucking shit. Followed immediately by: I can't believe it's finally happening. You see, ever since the first day of kindergarten, I had been hoping and waiting for some mind-blowingly fantastic, world-altering event to finally shatter the endless monotony of my public education. I had spent hundreds of hours gazing out at the calm, conquered suburban landscape surrounding my school, silently yearning for the outbreak of a zombie apocalypse, a freak accident that would give me super powers, or perhaps the sudden appearance of a band of time-traveling kleptomaniac dwarves. I would estimate that approximately one-third of these dark daydreams of mine had involved the unexpected arrival of beings from another world. Of course, I'd never believed it would really happen. Even if alien visitors did decide to drop by this utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, no self-respecting extraterrestrial would ever pick my hometown of Beaverton, Oregon--aka Yawnsville, USA--as their point of first contact. Not unless their plan was to destroy our civilization by wiping out our least interesting locales first. If there was a bright center to the universe, I was on the planet it was farthest from. Please pass the blue milk, Aunt Beru. But now something miraculous was happening here--it was still happening, right now! There was a goddamn flying saucer out there. I was staring right at it. And I was pretty sure it was getting closer. I cast a furtive glance back over my shoulder at my two best friends, Cruz and Diehl, who were both seated behind me. But they were currently engaged in a whispered debate and neither of them was looking toward the windows. I considered trying to get their attention, but I was worried the object might vanish any second, and I didn't want to miss my chance to see this for myself. My gaze shot back outside, just in time to see another bright flash of silver as the craft streaked laterally across the landscape, then halted and hovered over an adjacent patch of terrain before zooming off again. Hover, move. Hover, move. It was definitely getting closer. I could see its shape in more detail now. The saucer banked sideways for a few seconds, and I got my first clear glimpse of its top-down profile, and I saw that it wasn't really a saucer at all. From this angle, I could see that its symmetrical hull resembled the blade of a two-headed battle-axe, and that a black, octagonal prism lay centered between its long, serrated wings, glinting in the morning sunlight like a dark jewel. That was when I felt my brain begin to short-circuit, because there was no mistaking the craft's distinctive design. After all, I'd seen it almost every night for the past few years, through a targeting reticle. I was looking at a Sobrukai Glaive, one of the fighter ships piloted by the alien bad guys in Armada, my favorite videogame. Which was, of course, impossible. Like seeing a TIE Fighter or a Klingon Warbird cruising across the sky. The Sobrukai and their Glaive Fighters were fictional videogame creations. They didn't exist in the real world--they couldn't. In reality, videogames did not come to life and fictional spaceships did not buzz your hometown. Implausible shit like that only happened in cheesy '80s movies, like TRON or WarGames or The Last Starfighter. The sorts of movies my late father had been nuts about. The gleaming craft banked sideways again, and this time I got an even better look--there was no doubt about it. I was looking at a Glaive, right down to the distinctive claw-like grooves along its fuselage and the twin plasma cannons protruding from the front end like two fangs. There was only one logical explanation for what I was seeing. I had to be hallucinating. And I knew what sort of people suffered from hallucinations in broad daylight without any help from drugs or alcohol. People who were cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, that's who. Cats with a serious marble deficiency. I'd long wondered if my father had been one such person, because of what I'd read in one of his old journals. The things I'd seen there had given me the impression that he'd become somewhat delusional near the end of his life. That he may have even lost the ability to differentiate between videogames and reality--the very same problem I now seemed to be experiencing myself. Maybe it was just as I had always secretly feared: The apple had fallen right next to the Crazy Tree. Had I been drugged? No, impossible. All I'd eaten that morning was a raw strawberry Pop-Tart I'd wolfed down in my car on the way to school--and the only thing crazier than hallucinating a fictional videogame spaceship would be to blame it on a frosted breakfast pastry. Especially if I knew my own DNA was a far more likely culprit. This was my own fault, I realized. I could've taken precautions. But instead, I'd done the opposite. Like my old man, I'd spent my entire life overdosing on uncut escapism, willingly allowing fantasy to become my reality. And now, like my father before me, I was paying the price for my lack of vision. I was going off the rails on a crazy train. You could practically hear Ozzy screaming "All aboard!" Don't do this, I pleaded with myself. Don't crack up now, when we've only got two months to go until graduation! This is the home stretch, Lightman! Keep it together! Outside the window, the Glaive Fighter streaked laterally again. As it zoomed over a cluster of tall trees, I saw their branches rustle in its wake. Then it zipped through another cloud bank, moving so fast it punched a perfect circular hole through its center, dragging several long wisps of cloud vapor along with it as it tore out the other side. A second later, the craft froze in midair one last time before it streaked straight upward in a silver blur, vanishing from sight as quickly as it had appeared. I just sat there for a moment, unable to do more than stare at the empty patch of sky where it had been a second earlier. Then I glanced around at the other students seated nearby. No one else was looking in the direction of the windows. If that Glaive Fighter had really been out there, no one else had seen it. I turned back and scanned the empty sky once again, praying for the strange silver craft to reappear. But it was long gone, and now here I was, forced to deal with the aftermath. Seeing that Glaive Fighter, or imagining I'd seen it, had triggered a small rock slide in my mind that was already growing into a crushing avalanche of conflicting emotions and fragmented memories--all of them linked to my father, and that old journal I'd found among his things. Actually, I wasn't even sure it had been a journal. I'd never finished reading it. I'd been too disturbed by its contents, and what they'd seemed to imply about the author's mental state. So I'd put the old notebook back where I found it and tried to forget that it even existed--and until a few seconds ago, I had succeeded. But now I couldn't seem to think about anything else. I felt a sudden compulsion to run out of the school, drive home, and find it. It wouldn't take long. My house was only a few minutes away. I glanced over at the exit, and the man guarding it, Mr. Sayles, our elderly Integrated Mathematics II teacher. He had a silver buzz cut, thick horn-rimmed glasses, and wore the same monochromatic outfit he always did: black loafers, black slacks, a white short-sleeve dress shirt, and a black clip-on necktie. He'd been teaching at this high school for over forty-five years now, and the old yearbook photos in the library were proof that he'd been rocking this same retro ensemble the entire time. Mr. S was finally retiring this year, which was a good thing, because he appeared to have run out of shits to give sometime in the previous century. Today, he'd spent the first five minutes going over our homework assignment, then given us the rest of the period to work on it, while he shut off his hearing aid and did his crosswords. But he would still spot me if I tried to sneak out. My eyes moved to the ancient clock embedded in the lime green brick wall above the obsolete chalkboard. With its usual lack of pity, it informed me there were still thirty-two minutes remaining until the bell. There was no way I could take thirty-two more minutes of this. After what I'd just seen, I'd be lucky if I managed to keep my shit together for another thirty-two seconds. Off to my left, Douglas Knotcher was currently engaged in his daily humiliation of Casey Cox, the shy, acne-plagued kid unfortunate enough to be seated in front of him. Knotcher usually limited himself to lobbing verbal insults at the poor guy, but today he'd decided to go old-school and lob spitballs at him instead. Knotcher had a stack of moist projectiles piled on his desk like cannonballs, and he was currently firing them at the back of Casey's head, one after another. The back of the poor kid's hair was already damp with spit from Knotcher's previous attacks. A couple of Knotcher's pals were watching from the back of the room, and they snickered each time he nailed Casey with another projectile, egging him on. It drove me nuts when Knotcher bullied Casey like this--which, I suspected, was one of the reasons Knotcher enjoyed doing it so much. He knew I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I glanced at Mr. Sayles, but he was still lost in his crossword, clueless as always--a fact that Knotcher took advantage of on a daily basis. And on a daily basis, I had to resist the urge to knock his teeth down his throat. Doug Knotcher and I had managed to avoid each other, for the most part, ever since "the Incident" back in junior high. Until this year, when a cruel act of fate had landed us both in the same math class. Seated in adjacent rows, no less. It was almost as if the universe wanted my last semester of high school to be as hellish as possible. That would have also explained why my ex-girlfriend, Ellen Adams, was in this class, too. Three rows to my right and two rows back, sitting just beyond the reach of my peripheral vision. Ellen was my first love, and we'd lost our virginity to each other. It had been nearly two years since she'd dumped me for some wrestler from a neighboring school, but every time I saw those freckles across the bridge of her nose--or caught sight of her tossing that curly red hair out of her eyes--I felt my heart breaking all over again. I usually spent the entire class period trying to forget she was in the room. Being forced to sit between my mortal enemy and my ex-girlfriend every afternoon made seventh-period math feel like my own private Kobayashi Maru, a brutal no-win scenario designed to test my emotional fortitude. Thankfully fate had balanced out the nightmare equation slightly by placing my two best friends in this class, too. If Cruz and Diehl hadn't been assigned here, I probably would've snapped and started hallucinating shit midway through my first week. I glanced back at them again. Diehl, who was tall and thin, and Cruz, who was short and stocky, both shared the same first name, Michael. Ever since grade school I had been calling them by their last names to avoid confusion. The Mikes were still engaged in the same whispered conversation they'd been having earlier, before I'd zoned out and started seeing things--a debate over the "coolest melee weapon in the history of cinema." I tried to focus in on their voices again now. "Sting wasn't even really a sword," Diehl was saying. "It was more like a glow-in-the-dark Hobbit butter knife, used to spread jam on scones and lembas bread and shit." Cruz rolled his eyes. " 'Your love of the halflings' leaf has clearly slowed your mind,' " he quoted. "Sting was an Elvish blade, forged in Gondolin in the First Age! It could cut through almost anything! And its blade only glowed when it detected the presence of orcs or goblins nearby. What does Mjolnir detect? Fake accents and frosted hair?" I wanted to tell them what I'd just seen, but best friends or not, there was no way in hell they'd believe me. They'd think of it as another symptom of their pal Zack's psychological instability. And maybe it was, too. "Thor doesn't need to detect his enemies so he can run off and hide in his little Hobbit hole!" Diehl whispered. "Mjolnir is powerful enough to destroy mountains, and it can also emit energy blasts, create force fields, and summon lightning. The hammer also always returns to Thor's hand after he throws it, even if it has to tear through an entire planet to get back to him! And only Thor can wield it!" He leaned back. "Dude, Mjolnir is a bullshit magical Swiss Army knife!" Cruz said. "Even worse than Green Lantern's ring! They give that hammer a new power every other week, just to get Thor out of whatever asinine fix they've written him into." He smirked. "By the way, lots of other people have wielded Mjolnir, including Wonder Woman in a crossover issue! Google it! Your whole argument is invalid, Diehl!" Excerpted from Armada by Ernest Cline All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.