Armada: Ernest Cline Returns With New Sci-Fi Novel

WUNC | By Laura Lee,

Published April 15, 2016 at 12:25 PM EDT

Following the rapid rise of his debut novel, “Ready Player One (Random House/2011),” Ernest Cline felt pressure to produce another cult classic.

His latest sci-fi work, “Armada (Broadway Books/2016)," is a New York Times bestseller and is already a hit in tech circles. The novel will be made into a major motion picture.

At the same time, “Ready Player One” is in production with director Steven Spielberg at the helm. Host Frank Stasio talks with Ernest Cline about his writing process and the influence of science fiction on the tech industry. Cline speaks at Flyleaf Books in Chapel Hillon Tuesday, April 19 and Malaprops Books in Asheville on Wednesday, April 20.

A conversation with author Ernest Cline.

Laura Lee

Laura Lee began her journalism career as a producer and booker at NPR. She returned to her native North Carolina to manage The State of Things, a live daily statewide show on WUNC. After working as a managing editor of an education journalism start-up, she became a writer and editor at a national education publication, Edutopia. She then served as the news editor at Carolina Public Press, a statewide investigative newsroom. In 2022, she worked to build collaborative coverage of elections administration and democracy in North Carolina.

Laura received her master’s in journalism from the University of Maryland and her bachelor’s degree in political science and J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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Frank Stasio

Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.

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