Ernest Cline’s sequel to his blockbuster novel Ready Player One—unimaginatively titled Ready Player Two—finally has a release date: November 24th, 2020, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Penguin Random House hasn’t revealed a plot for the novel, but presumably, it’ll pick up the adventures of Wade, Aech, and Art3mis now that they’re in charge of the OASIS, and will come with plenty of nerd references.
Cline published Ready Player One in 2011, which followed a teenager named Wade Watts who lived in a dystopian future where the entire world is plugged into a global virtual reality system called OASIS. When the founder of the system dies, he kicks off a global easter egg hunt to find his successor to run the system. Wade, along with a group of friends, Aech and Art3mis, work to solve the late founder’s puzzles to take control of OASIS before a malevolent company called Innovative Online Industries (IOI) does.
The book was a huge hit when it was published, and was praised for its references to all things geek culture and 1980s video gaming. But the book has earned its share of criticism for gatekeeping, over-reliance on nerd references, depictions of women and race, and weak characters.
Despite that, the book gained a film adaptation by none other than Steven Spielberg, which came out in 2018.
Cline revealed that he was working on a sequel in 2018 during a Facebook Live event for the movie, noting at the time that “I can’t talk about it too much, but there’s no better inspiration for a writer [than] to return to a world they’ve already worked on when they’re watching Steven Spielberg bring that world to life.”
The book is the latest from Cline, who published another reference-ladened novel, Armada, in 2015. Ready Player Two will hit stores on November 24th (right in time for the holiday shopping season), and doubtlessly, it’ll be snapped up for a movie adaptation before too much longer.
Name aside, the movie version was a 1000x better than the book. I have little expectation for this book being worth much unless he learned a lot from watching Mr. Spielberg turn it into a good story.
I quite enjoyed the original, but really have no need for a sequel.
Whew, the atmosphere of dislike is rather thick around here.
I’ll read up on the criticisms as due diligence, but the first was a fun romp and, providing Cline can recapture that spirit, I’m on board for a sequel. Who needs a more imaginative title for it? It’s still in perfect keeping with the nostalgia factor, and could even foreshadow the plot. Now, a third volume called “Ready Player Three”, I might have a gripe with.
That Verge article is peak irony.
@3 I think the book and movie have different strengths.
The book’s strengths, paradoxically, are outside the OASIS itself, but when Kline describes how grim the world of the book is. Oil shortages, famine, economic depression, etc. It felt very plausible for the 2040s. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to offset how the book felt like a Wikipedia summary of pop culture at times.
On the flip side, the movie is better paced overall – as a visual medium, it can pop in lots of easter eggs without slowing down the story for them. On the other, it removed the ‘edge’ of the book in that the world is no longer dystopic.
I’m excited to read this.
Actually I almost postive Ready Player Two will take place at the same time as the first book but will be told from Artemis point of view. This in my opinion makes the most sense given the title name as Artemis was probably the next best person to win. While she in the book we don’t everything she was doing or her thoughts and feelings on things. So it make sense to do a book from her point of view. Plus it will be a great nod towards Ender’s Shadow which takes place at the same time as Ender’s Game and centers on Bean who is some what in the first book. I could be wrong about this but it makes the most sense.
The book was awesome! The movie was as well but it’s incredibly difficult to translate a book to the big screen so it had to be different in order to achieve a visual format in a much shorter space of time. I’m excited for the follow-up book. My expectation is to simply be entertained for a while. After all, I didn’t take the time to write it.