Ready Player Two

 

Ernest Cline has done it again.

Not content to sit back and reap in the success of his first novel, and subsequent film success, Ready Player One, he has now managed to repeat his achievement with a sequel: Ready Player Two. A film is already rumored to be in the works.

Sequels tend to be weak. If nothing else, they tend to be weaker than the initial film. But science fiction seems to be the exception to this rule. The sequel to the 1977 success of Star Wars, namely, The Empire Strikes Back, is arguably the greatest of the entire film series. The same can be said of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Other examples abound. Terminator 2: Judgement Day comes to mind. Or Mad Max: The Road Warrior.

With Ready Player Two, Ernest Cline keeps the tradition alive, and has at least come close to matching his debut novel.

Cline is what I refer to as an Ultrafan - that is, one of those writers who initially appeals to the science fiction fan-base before breaking into traditionally published and produced books and films. Cline did this back in the 90's, when his underground Buckaroo Banzai script actually made its way to comic book store shelves. He did it again in 2009 with his independently produced film, Fanboys. The film was mostly an ode to science fiction fans, and Star Wars fans in particular, which got the attention of many Hollywood celebs who agreed to jump on the bandwagon for cameos. It put Cline on the map, and set him up for later success. As such, when Ready Player One was near publication, there were already bigwigs in Hollywood fighting over who would get to produce and direct the film. In the end, it went to the Grandmaster himself, Steven Spielberg.

In appealing directly to fans first, Cline repeated the success of others who have taken the same tactic in recent years, including John Scalzi, Cory Doctorow, Andy Weir, Dennis E. Taylor, Hugh Howey, and Kevin Smith.

The setting in the initial book was very much classic cyberpunk: Little guy vs. mega-corporation, and the little guy wins. But how does one set up the next adventure when the underdog now has everything he could ever want?

Answer: He screws it up again, mostly on his own, and unleashes a new terror which must be defeated.

I don't want to say too much for fear of giving out spoilers, but the new antagonist, as well as the way the hero screws up his own well-earned paradise, is set up rather well. He digs his own hole with his lady-love, and it seems to be a case of irreconcilable differences. But then, a nemesis which had been lurking in the virtual reality world known as the Oasis literally comes to life, and it jeopardizes not only he and his entourage, but also everyone who turns to the Oasis to escape the drudgery of everyday life, which is pretty much the entire global population.

In the first novel, it was essentially a two-candidate race: Parzifal, a.k.a. Wade Watts, vs. the Sixers, led by Nolan Sorrento. In this new adventure, the antagonist finds a new opponent: time! Watts is given less than twelve hours to solve another Halliday-written Easter egg hunt. And if he fails, everyone pays the price. Nolan Sorrento is brought back to play a significant, if minor, role, and just as in the first novel, the final pitched battle at the end spills out into the real-life world.

Like before, the book is chock-full of 80's nostalgia, taking the reader everywhere from John Hughes' films like Pretty in Pink and The Breakfast Club, to an all-out-musical battle with seven different incarnations of Prince (!), all the way over to the nearly-lost Peter Wolf song on MTV, 'Lights Out.' ("Lights out! Unh-huh! Blast, blast, blast!") It delves deep into the depths of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, while playing with long-buried video game trivia relating to Sonic the Hedgehog, and Princess Kurumi, a female video game character who deserved greater recognition.

The book does have its problems. Like its predecessor, things have to get info-dumpy for a general audience who simply won't know every little trivia item essential to the plot. Sci-fi historians such as myself don't mind this so much, but even I, myself, had to groan a little bit towards the end as I told myself, "Aw, shit, yet another deep dive?" What's more, the book may appeal to GenX'ers such as Ernest Cline and myself, but might be somewhat lost on millennials who don't know what it was like back when cable television was new, and MTV was the center of our world. This problem is emphasized by the secondary antagonist, Nolan Sorrento, who accuses our Hero and his comrades of "living in a graveyard" of bygone culture. And, to be blunt, Sorrento is not wrong. For a futuristic adventure, it has surprisingly little which is all that futuristic.

Critics called Cline's first novel somewhat misogynistic, in that it glorified an era when female video game players were ostracized, video game players were mostly boys, and the entire culture seemed to revolve around tempting the dicks of adolescent boys. (I mean, look how Laura Croft was drawn back then!) This book seems to be designed to deliberately resolve that, not only by emphasizing 80's culture which was popular with women at the time, but also by exploring one of the founding members of Gregarious Games (GSS). No, not James Halliday. Not even Ogden Morrow. Rather, it focuses on Kira Underwood, the woman who dumped Halliday for Morrow, leaving Halliday forever pining for a love he could never have. By focusing in on her, and her role in Halliday's and Morrow's lives, it resolves much of the male-centric cultural problems of the first novel, although at times, it seems determined to over-compensate for it (though I don't believe it does).

The ending of this novel is somehow even more satisfying than the first, ending on a decidedly trans-humanist note which provides tremendous hope for the future, in spite of humanity's persistent problems of overpopulation and poverty. The resolution and denouement settle into a happily ever after which is truly (you'll understand this at the end) interstellar.

Eric

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