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‘Ready Player Two’ Novel Available Come November

By George Robbins

When the novel ‘Ready Player One‘ released to the public in 2011, it became something of a hit when it almost immediately made it to the top of the New York Times Bestseller list. The novel itself followed character Wade Watts as he searches for easter eggs that could lead to a treasure left behind by one of the greatest game developers the world ever had. For many reasons, people fell in love with the book because of all that is depicted in the novel and how it gave people of all ages something to identify with. Whether this be the massive number of pop culture references littered throughout the book or the depiction of a future that many children themselves hope for as time goes on. It is also for these reasons that the novel was dissected and everything people loved from the novel were pointed out as flawed.

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Many people saw the novel as something light-hearted and fun to read in their spare time as well as a means of yet again experiencing their own lives growing up again. The amount of nostalgia that it gave people who read it made it an instant hit for most people, but it had its flaws that were pointed out by reviewers. It lends itself heavily to the idea that nostalgia is everything and that, unless someone knows everything about pop culture, then they are not really into the “geek culture.” So it has been pointed out that the movie is less of a coming-of-age story and more of a “stunted adolescence” story where the characters never really grow up. On top of that, it has been said that the characters in the novel are perfect examples of what people today are like when it comes to “geek culture” and that it is nothing more than gate-keeping at this point.

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The movie, also called ‘Ready Player One,’ did a few things to correct the issues people had with the characters and gave people a reason to like the main character more. However, since the movie was meant to be an adaptation of the book, it was really just a visual representation of pop culture. This ended up being why the film did so well to begin with and I have nothing against it, and in fact, I rather enjoyed watching the movie because it is fun to see so many things interacting from different source material. That is something previously stated to some extent in a review done for the film. They made the characters feel less like they were gate-keeping the culture, but the fact remains that it was just nostalgia that made the movie do as well as it did.

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This reliance on pop culture doesn’t seem like it is going to stop any time soon because the sequel novel, aptly named ‘Ready Player Two,’ has been said by the author to contain more references. The biggest problem with this is the fact that nostalgia will still be the leading factor for how well the book does when it hits the market. Nostalgia is the reason why progress itself ends up stunted and why, to some, the characters in the novel seem like they don’t actually grow up at all throughout the whole ordeal they go through. At this point, there is no telling if the characters will really go through any life-changing events throughout the story, but hopefully it will not just be a repeat story of the first novel. The only way to find out now is to wait until the sequel novel releases on November 24th, 2020.

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