Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/11/25/i-asked-a-bot-to-re-write-ernest-clines-ready-player-two.html
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Man there are so many subtitle “Are you kidding me’s” in this book so far.
So he finds and starts producing the ONI and joyfully creates a new monopoly and talks about how good that shit is as you would expect from say a Zuckerberg… it pulls in billions so he decides to release the debts of all the indentured servants. Oh how nice of you. This is a few years after you took over the company and NOW you release the fucking slaves. He experienced being one of those slaves but he didn’t take care of that day one? It was a throwaway line that spoke volumes about the main character.
I guess this is a unintended example of how silicon valley sociopaths happen.
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The text these bots create is so wierd. You start reading and it almost seems to make sense and you try to parse the meaning of it, even if there is none.
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There’s two typos in the first paragraph of the original text. Are proofreaders not a thing anymore?
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Wow. I just woke up, so I was half-skimming and thought the sample paragraphs were the AI generated ones. The writing is such an affront that I can barely track what is happening. I think the main character got on an elevator?
I can only hope this is a sign that we’ve hit peak fan-service and story, structure and character are poised for a comeback. The bleaker view is that this is a massive success with the critics giving RP2 and the inevitable movie “good enough” reviews and more writers jump on this bandwagon.
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That guy just blows. And one can tell that with his success he will never improve
his writing. I neither enjoyed nor hated the constant referencing. It did fail to take me in,
at all. I did kind of enjoy the story. The writing though is the very bottom of the heap.
I hope never to read another book so poorly written.
What will make that easier for me is that when an author slips in words just because they
sound kinda’ right, but are not, those books I put down.
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To me Cory’s enthusiasm over the first of these books was when he jumped the shark. I’m grateful for all he does on digital liberties and EFF stuff and for his anti-DRM, anti-walled garden stances. But I can’t take him seriously on literature anymore. Extremely depressing that so many people from communities I cared about actually found value in the book.
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Same. I was both amazed at the quality that an AI could generate and horrified. I was horrimazed.
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tl;dr - Thom hates all nostalgias 
(to be fair, “Two” 's exposition does appear to be worse than “One”)
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When I first read (well, listened to) RPO, I enjoyed it, but I think it was because the constant 80s/90s nostalgia was undiulted nerd crack for my aspie brain. Then I discovered 372 Pages We’ll Never Get Back (http://372pages.com/), and that opened my eyes to how truly terrible the writing was.
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… I’m so glad that I’m not alone in my dislike of “Ready Player One”… granted it seems like your reaction was more visceral 
… The whole thing was just so hollow… I dubbed it “Nostalgia Porn”… its on par with all of those articles “Can you spot all of the 80’s references in the new ‘Stranger Things’ trailer?”… but in novel form…
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I couldn’t understand why they put this book in the regular genre section of the bookstore rather than the young adult. I read 30 pages and couldn’t see why anyone who was actually alive in the 80s would find it either interesting or enjoyable.
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I was also in the apparent minority that found Ready Player One to be a truly awfully written book, and the story not engaging. I get all of the 80s references, and I even like some of those things, but not an entire novel of it with nothing else. The dialog in particular was memorably awful. It was just a pile poorly written of pandering crap that didn’t even pander well.
I put Ready Player One in the same category that I put the movie Crash; critically acclaimed crap that I am honestly baffled by their success.
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I enjoyed RP1, but this excerpt is just too heavy-handed and clunky, with none of the charm I remember the first book having.
Everyone so far here just seems to be bashing the first book, so they’re not really who I want to ask if this one is worth reading. Can anyone who actually liked the first book, and has read the second weigh in here? Is the whole thing as bad as this excerpt, or is this not really indicative of the rest of the book?
I wouldn’t say it “speaks volumes about the main character” because the main character is a cypher. The throwaway nature speaks much more loudly about the author.
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…tries to remember when else I’ve revealed my bitterness towards nostalgia when it’s only used as cheap emotion-tugging, 'cause it’s definitely a hangup of mine…
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Actually, that.
I did like the first book but so far this one is a bit cringe. It’s watching the character now turn into Zuckerberg but from the point of view of Zuckerberg so all the internal excuses. I’m not THAT far in but there quite a few “Wait, what?” moments I have run into.
It’s possible I have gotten less tolerant over the CIS white straight gamer power fantasy over the past 4 years for some hard to fathom reason.
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I thought Ready Player One was such a terrible book, I couldn’t understand how it had become so popular. It was a throwback to the teen, white, male masturbatory sci-fi of old that I thought we had moved past, but apparently still has its draw. This guy can’t write to save his life. Glad to see this sequel getting the trashing the original should have gotten. I wouldn’t crack the cover of this book regardless of reviews.
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I liked the first book as light nostalgia-inducing brain-candy written for a geek of my age (fan service/Mary Sue stuff), but about 2/3 of the way through I got tired of the endless 80s references and wanted more exploration of the horrible debt-peonage system and how it came to be.
A sequel wasn’t needed. I won’t be bothering with this one.
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