I've noticed that we've all had our expectations reset by the onslaught of utter bullshit that is the modern entertainment industry. Stranger Things is the most brilliant thing since X-Files but people forget that at the time, X-Files was mediocre at best. Star Wars has become big-budget Star Wars fanfic. The whole of the industry hinges on "remember that good movie? Does this movie remind you of that good movie? See? That means it can't actually be a bad movie!" DS9 has about a season and a half, maybe two seasons of good material. That puts it ahead of pretty much everything that has come out in the past 20 years.
Ernest Cline was born in '72. The Duffer brothers were born in '84. Duffer Brothers definitely smear second-hand nostalgia all over Stranger Things but Cline's mainlining his own fuckin' self-grown nostalgia. I mean yeah. I guess it's nice that Winona Rider is working again. But I mean... Cline had to have read Neuromancer. he had to have read Snow Crash. He had to have read Ender's Game. And what he took from that was Ready Player One.