When it comes to big sci-fi novels from the last decade Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One (2011) has to be highly placed, having spent over 100 weeks on the coveted New York Times bestsellers list as well as the Steven Spielberg movie adaption. Fans of the book will be pleased to hear a sequel is on its way, scheduled to arrive this November.
Imaginatively called Ready Player Two, the book is slated to continue on from the original, taking readers back into the dystopian future where humanity spends most of its time in a massive online universe called the OASIS, escaping their normal lives in the process.
Apart from continuing that theme nothing else is known about the plot for Ready Player Two. The book will be published by Penguin Random House subsidiary Ballantine Books on 24th November 2020 and it’ll contain 384. Pre-orders have now gone live on Amazon for Kindle (£9.99 GBP), Hardcover (£20.00) and Audio CD (£20.00) editions.
Launched before consumer virtual reality (VR) headsets were available, Ready Play One became a novel all fans of the technology had to read. Set in the year 2044, the world is riddled with famine, poverty, and disease because the climate is a wreck. The story follows Wade Watts and his friends as his lives his life in the OASIS, obsessively trying to locate a hidden easter egg left by James Halliday, the creator of the OASIS.
Upon his death, Halliday issued a challenge to everyone in the OASIS, as he had no heir whoever found the egg would gain control over the OASIS, as well as his billion-dollar fortune. However, he didn’t make it easy and years have passed with no one succeeding. Of course, that soon changes.
As Halliday grew up in the ’80s there are masses of references to classic videogames and films throughout the story. That does look to have been continued as the Ready Player Two cover does have what it appears to be a reference to Pitfall (1982) a classic Activision title.
With VR being a far more dominant entertainment medium in recent years, it’ll be interesting how the author has taken this on board. For further updates, keep reading VRFocus.