Did you know Ready Player Two, the sequel to Ernest Cline’s best-selling Ready Player One, is just a week and a half away from release? It releases on November 24th and the author is already discussing potential plans for the next book in the series: a prequel focused on the creators of The Oasis, James Halliday and Ogden Morrow.
Ready Player One Sequel and Prequel
We originally learned about Ready Player Two back in July of this year, but the release date seems to have really snuck up on us all of a sudden it seems. If you’re unfamiliar, Ready Player One is a sci-fi dystopian novel about a young man named Wade Watts. In it, Wade and his friends are on an “Easter Egg” hunt across the VR metaverse known as The Oasis, after its creator died and left behind a single “Easter Egg” for someone to find. Whoever finds it wins a ton of money and inherits control of The Oasis.
The novel was adapted into a successful feature film, directed by Steven Spielberg. You can read our review of the movie itself (since, you know, VR) right here.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly that was published this week, Cline explains that he always envisioned the series as a trilogy. The third book, in his mind, would be a prequel about the origins of The Oasis’ creators:
“I’d always envisioned it as a trilogy of stories. One is a sequel, which I’ve just written and then another other one being a prequel about James Halliday and Ogden Morrow in Ohio. It’s a coming-of-age story. It won’t be called Ready Player Three, it’ll be more like Ready Player Zero. I do plan to take a break, but someday I’ll write that book too, which is more based on my own childhood — growing up, playing Dungeons and Dragons and video games as a kid. It’s like Stand by Me. It’s a huge part of my childhood being immersed in all the escapism so that I could write Ready Player One.”
Later on in the interview Cline goes to say that with the release of Ready Player Two, we’ll have the end of the story as he “currently” sees it.
What do you think? Would you read a prequel book about Halliday and Morrow? Let us know what you think down in the comments below!
