Ready Player One is finally getting a sequel this November

It’s been a long nine years since Ernest Cline published his bestselling, ’80s nostalgic, “LitRPG” novel Ready Player One. And now, the author is ready for fans to log back into the OASIS with his aptly-named sequel, Ready Player Two.

Earlier this week, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed that we’re getting Ready Player Two from Ballantine Books. Set to release on November 24, the sequel is now available for pre-order. This is Ernest Clines’s first book published for a while, with the last one being Armada in 2015.

Ready Player One took the world by storm when it released back in 2011. Set in the year 2045, it tells the story of how one determined gamer, Wade Watts, managed to solve various challenges in order to find an easter egg hidden within the vast digital world of the OASIS. The “gunter” who locates the easter egg inherits the OASIS and wins a huge cash prize left by its dead creator, James Halliday.

Halliday is a child of the ’80s, and Cline laces his book with as many pop culture references to that decade as possible. “Remember Pac-Man?” the book asks readers. “How about WarGames?” And so on.

Critics have blasted the book as being a nostalgia trip disguised as a novel, but it spent 100 weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and has been translated into 37 languages, so obviously fans feel very differently. In fact, the book was so popular that Cline was able to go out and buy his very own DeLorean, the iconic car from Back to the Future. If he could actually time travel back to the ’80s, we’re pretty sure he would have.

In 2018, Steven Spielberg directed a movie adaptation that got mixed reviews from critics and fans alike and grossed $582.9 million worldwide. It did well; not amazing, but well.

We don’t have any plot details for Ready Player Two yet, but if you’ll indulge me, I have some predictions. At the end of the first book, when Wade is getting lectured by Halliday about how to run the OASIS, he points to a “big red button” on the wall. He says that, should the button be pressed, all user accounts would be deleted and the virtual world will come to an immediate end. Surely the big button is getting pressed, right? Seems like a perfect set-up.

Will there be another easter egg hunt? Will the red button be pressed? We’ll have to wait and find out in Ready Player Two when it releases November 24.

Speaking of sci-fi and fantasy books, Penguin Random House has announced it’s going to publish a new novella from Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy. The novella, Serpentine, will follow a teenaged Lyra Belacqua after the events of HDM but before the start of the sequel book, The Secret Commonwealth, as she returns to the northern town of Trollesund — where she met her first armored bear — to try and find out why she and her dæmon Pantalaimon can separate for long periods of time without feeling much pain, something few people in her world can do.

Image: Penguin Random House

I just threw a lot of words out you, but if you want to learn more, the series if very much worth a read. Or you could always watch the HBO show, which has a new season coming out soon:

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h/t SyFy Wire