GregHowley.com

Having recently completed reading Ready Player One, I've gotten to thinking about the role of nostalgia in fiction. I was first exposed to it a few years back when I listened to the podcast novel Brave Men Run, wherein a man who appears to have the powers of Superman announces the existence of superhumans, and demands autonomy for himself and his people - his sovereign people. This all happens in 1985, and the details of this alternate history include John Hughes movies and Rubix cubes. Needless to say, I really enjoyed the story's setting.

But Ready Player One drops eighties references the way that Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden drops Star Wars references. And I've come to realize that I really enjoy intertextuality and allusion in my fiction. When Dresden blows up some hideous bug-eyed monster and says "I didn't hit it that hard. Must've had a self-destruct.", or when Ready Player One's Parcival shows up outside Art3mis's stronghold holding a boom box over his head playing Peter Gabriel's In Your Eyes, I can't help but crack a smile.

And this is also a part of why I think Super 8 will be my favorite movie of 2011. Even without having taken place in 1979, the movie was flat-out excellent. Action adventure movies with good humor mixed in work so very well for me. That's why I love movies like Sneakers, True Lies, and The Last Crusade. The fact that it took place during the time when I grew up was just a bonus.