Ready Player One author on sequel, VR and reality TV stars entering politics
- Ernest Cline’s Ready Player Two focuses on ‘the end point in the evolution of video games and virtual reality – when it becomes indistinguishable from reality’
- The author says he is unsettled about how the more dystopian aspects of his first novel have become real
Ernest Cline’s 2011 debut novel, Ready Player One, a kind of Willy Wonka-meets-Tron adventure story, validated the digital diversions of gamers and 1980s enthusiasts alike with its arcade in-jokes and allusions to John Hughes movies.
With the release of Ready Player Two, the author tweaks the expectations of his own brand of nostalgic escapism with an Easter egg of ambivalence regarding the addictive nature of the very internet-based obsessions that initially inspired him.
“Well, yeah, you know, I am 10 years older than when I wrote the first book, and 20 years older than when I started the first book,” Cline says. “I’ve matured, and my life has changed a lot.”
Based in Austin, in the US state of Texas, Cline – who is married to poet Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz and has two daughters – says he actually has a love/hate relationship with the internet and its corresponding technology.
Regarding the warnings of too much social media and screen time that seem sewn into his sequel, he says: “I try to show the good side and the bad side of technology, but this one is definitely more of a cautionary tale.”