Armada

Armada is a 2015 science fiction action novel by American novelist Ernest Cline. Like his previous book, Ready Player One, Armada went on to become a New York Times bestseller and inspired an upcoming film adaptation. The book tells the story of teenager Zach Lightman, who helps save the world from an alien invasion.

Zach Lightman, a high school student, one day notices a UFO outside his classroom window. The UFO bears a striking resemblance to those piloted by aliens he fights in the video game simulator Armada. When Zack isn’t playing Armada, he works at a used video game store, the Starbase Ace, owned by a man named Ray. Ray also serves as a surrogate father for Zach who lost his real father, Xavier, when he was just a one-year-old boy. Zach’s mother, a nurse, never remarried.

When he’s not obsessing over conspiracy theories that his father believed in or working, Zach plays Armada. He is ranked in the top ten against millions of other players worldwide. One day, Ray gives Zach an early graduation present—a brand new controller for Armada. When Zach gets home, he tries out the controller on new missions recently posted for the game involving the defense of Earth against alien invaders. After trying out the simulation, the team of humans fails to protect Earth from the invasion.

Still curious about the UFO he sees and uncertain about whether he’s losing his mind, Zach learns that it isn’t a hallucination when a huge spaceship resembling the ones piloted by the Earth government in Armada lands on the lawn of his school. And who steps out but Ray himself, who recruits Zach to fly with him to a top-secret base in Nebraska. There, Zach learns that Armada is, in fact, a simulation created by the government to train drone pilots against an imminent attack from aliens hailing from Europa, one of the moons orbiting Jupiter.

At the base in Nebraska, Zach is escorted into a briefing room where he sits next to a woman with tattoos named Lex. Apparently, the government has known about an upcoming three-tiered attack from the aliens for forty years. The attack is set to begin in ten hours. Suddenly, the base is attacked without warning and the new recruits must immediately take to battle stations to defend the base. During the battle, Zach disobeys explicit orders, causing the destruction of numerous precious drones. At this, Zach worries he will be forcibly removed from the program.

Instead, after meeting with the admiral, he learns that his father, Xavier, is still alive. His death was staged and now he’s a high-ranking officer at Moon Base Alpha where Zach, along with four other top-ranked recruits, is en route. Once at Moon Base Alpha, Zach finally meets his father, but because they have just a precious few hours before the full-on attack on Earth, their reunion is cut short. In lieu of a proper reunion, Xavier gives Zach a flash drive containing letters written over the past seventeen years along with videos. In one of the videos, Xavier says he has something to tell Zach but he must do it in person.

The thing Xavier must tell Zach in person is this: Xavier believes this is not an attack but rather a test of humanity’s violent ends. Why else would the aliens warn them of the attack then wait forty years to carry it out, both men wonder? Xavier believes that if the humans use their most powerful weaponry against the Europan aliens, humanity will be extinguished. Unfortunately, Xavier’s superiors do not believe him.

After some convincing, Zach believes his father. Zach returns to Earth to Starbase Ace from which he will pilot a drone that will destroy humanity’s weapons. He is successful and hailed as a hero, but unfortunately, his father dies playing his part as a distraction to keep Zach safe while he destroys the weapons. It turns out there weren’t any Europans to begin with, just a computer on Europa placed there by a peaceful community of intelligent alien lifeforms.

Although Zach’s father perishes, something good comes out of his death. Before the attack, Zach brings Xavier back to Earth to reunite briefly with his wife. During this meeting, they conceive J.R., Zach’s new baby brother. Zach also becomes an ambassador to Solarity, the peaceful intergalactic alien community, not to mention Lex’s boyfriend.

It’s true that the book engages in the same nostalgic wish-fulfillment for gamers that Cline’s Ready Player One embraced wholeheartedly. For example, Slate’s Laura Hudson writes, “Ernest Cline’s Armada is everything wrong with gaming culture wrapped up in one soon-to-be–best-selling novel.” Seen another way, however, Armada is a fun science fiction romp with a smart message regarding humanity’s future—or lack thereof.