‘Ready Player Two’ author sees dark side of technology

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 Austin, Texas-based 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.”

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, Cline says: “I try to show the good side and the bad side of technology, but this one is definitely more of a cautionary tale.”

In “Ready Player Two,” our hero Wade Watts, who has gone from living the life of a poor gamer to winning control of the virtual reality system OASIS, finds out about a technology called ONI that has been kept from the public. This suppressed technology enables users to experience OASIS with all five senses, to record and even upload real-life experiences.

ONI is a highly addictive, potentially brain-damaging simulation that will change the world forever. “That’s the end point in the evolution of video games and virtual reality,” Cline says. “When it becomes indistinguishable from reality. Then it becomes like you can’t tell the difference or feel the difference or smell or hear the difference. Then it would feel the same as reality and become highly addictive — especially since it would be a reality that you could have control over.”

Cline, who admits that his own addiction to games in his 20s inspired his first novel, is not sure how he would take to the kind of virtual reality temptations he details in his new book.

“I am glad that technology does not exist yet so I don’t have to find out,” he says, adding: “Once this technology becomes a mind-altering substance, then it, too, will have to be regulated like a narcotic.”