Ernie Cline's Ready Player One became something of a sensation when it was published back in 2011, shooting up the bestsellers lists and staying on them for many a week. It was also the basis for Steven Spielberg's 2018 movie adaptation. Now the book has a sequel arriving, with Ready Player Two to be published this year.
The first book, of course, tapped a deep vein of 1980s pop culture, set in 2045 when climate chaos, overpopulation and poverty have driven humanity into the welcoming arms of massive virtual realm known as The Oasis, loaded with the chance to, for example, drive the Back To The Future__ DeLorean or visit the Overlook hotel. Created by '80s pop culture-loving genius James Halliday, it's thrown into chaos when he dies and launches an easter egg hunt to hand over his fortune and control of the digital world. A young man named Wade (Tye Sheridan in the film), who along with a group of friends, fends off a corporation desperate exploit the Oasis for its own ends.
Cline has been at work on the new tome – which will tie more directly into the original book than the movie itself. But, talking to Empire when the movie arrived, he did admit that the film has a tie to a potential sequel story: "Anorak, in the novel, is described as a ghost in the machine. A lot of Gunters think that he's somehow an AI copy of Halliday left to roam the Oasis, that he's left in charge of the contest. It's never really explored, but it's hinted at,” Cline explains. “When Steven and I were talking about that scene he asked me, what do you think Anorak is? I told him, and I told him how I thought that might play into the sequel, and I think that's why he included it in the movie. We're going to leave that a mystery and open-ended, but I will tell you that the sequel I've been working on, it flows right into that." You can read more from Cline here.
No actual details of the story itself were given, but the book will be published on 24 November across the pond.