It's a post-apocalyptic... Yeah, it takes place in like the 2040s. The world has changed dramatically and what most people do to get away from it all is they disappear into this like VR landscape called the Oasis. He was writing it during the Bush era of American politics,. so the aughts and was not happy with the way the world was. So what if in the future we just like fell into a rabbit hole instead? And the most interesting stuff he has to say is about the futurist bits of it and how what we're living through in our current era could blossom into something bad.