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Microserfs Paperback – May 30, 1996

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Douglas Coupland (Author)
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Douglas Coupland (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 241 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 384 pages
  • Publisher: Harper Perennial; First HarperPerennial Edition edition (May 30, 1996)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0060987049
  • ISBN-13: 978-0060987046
  • Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (241 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,125,321 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

2.0 out of 5 starsKindle Edition badly in need of editing/proofreading.
By Trevor Whitaker on July 8, 2011
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
This would easily be a 4 star book for me and in paperback I'd give it that in a heartbeat but the Kindle edition is horrible. It seems like someone ran a hardcopy through a scanner and then OCR'ed it without proofreading it at all. There are letters missing, a few entire words missing and many, many instances of the wrong letter over and over (like a U instead of a V - there's an entire section where it says Silicon Ualley over and over) and places where the wrong word was picked up (ie - Interiority becomes Inferiority, somewhat appropriate in describing this edition).

I've read the book before and enjoyed it but the Kindle edition was a bit of a chore. It looks like the publisher didn't even proofread this book once before uploading it. A shame, really.
5 Comments 64 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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5.0 out of 5 starseverything that is important about engineering culture
By Philip Greenspun on April 30, 2000
Format: Paperback
After reading Tracy Kidder's acclaimed (by the New Yorker crowd) Soul of a New Machine, I thought to myself "here's a guy who spent 12 hours/day with engineers for an entire year and learned nothing about engineering, nothing about what matters to engineers, and nothing about the hearts and minds of engineers. After reading Microserfs, I thought "here's a guy who seems to have spent a week with engineers and effortlessly absorbed everything that is important about engineering culture, everything that matters about working at a big company, and everything that matters about working at a startup." Coupland's writing is better crafted here than in his earlier books, e.g., Generation X.
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5.0 out of 5 starsImaginative and enjoyable
By Eduardo Zarate Gonzalez on January 17, 2002
Format: Paperback
Being a spanish-speaking person and spanish-language reader, I don't have much opportunities to read American contemporary authors, unless they're writing computer systems technical books. So I must admit, my first glance at Microserfs was motivated by the curiosity of someone trying to describe how tech-obsessed, workaholic and project-slaved workers (as most people in my carreer) thought, felt and dreamed. I thought it would certainly be a challenge to build a plot with such characters. Copeland proved me wrong.
As I read this book, I got lest interested with the similarities to real geeks and more involved in the real metaphor of Microserfs: the search for personal realization in each of this genious but not so life-wise characters. This process, narrated with humor, tech & tv real-world metaphors, self-inspection and lots of deliciously imaginative - and fantastic- theories in the minds of each character, is what really drives the reader to love this book from beginning to end.
So I would recommend Microserfs twice: 1: to get a good understanding of geeks - which after reading this book will probably be no stranger to the reader than any average football fan, or any other obsessed kind, 2, to read a funny and imaginative novel while learning how this 21st century life is reshaping American's relationships and personal quests. The book's ending, fantastically crafted and at the same time full of new questions, is the best example of how this two ideas live together in Copeland's book.
Comment 16 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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1.0 out of 5 starsShame on Harper Collins
By Anthony Paladino on August 27, 2011
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
Microserfs is my all time favorite book, so when I received my Kindle, it was the obvious choice for the test drive of my new gadget. I was so disappointed to find the multitude of typos due to OCR scanning (words misspelled, modified, or just plain missing; u's instead of v's, etc.) and seemingly zero proofreading. On top of that, there a several image scanned pages (notably the "subconscious file" pages) where the edges are trimmed and words are clipped. Finally, the book doesn't even have a proper cover, just a clip-art page with the title unceremoniously typed in the center.

Harper Collins should be ashamed of themselves for releasing this e-book in the state that it's in, and doubly ashamed for charging $9.99 for it. If a publisher is just going to OCR scan a book, then they need to proofread it before releasing it, or better yet, just use one of the original electronic manuscripts (if available) and bypass the issues with OCR altogether.

By all means, read the book, but avoid the e-book at all costs and pick up a paperback or hardback instead.
1 Comment 19 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...
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1.0 out of 5 starsKindle version is a mess
By BeanThereDoneThat on December 21, 2011
Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase
When I spend ten bucks on a digital copy of a book, I assume it's going to be free of sloppy OCR errors and will be proofread. This is not. It is a mess, and chapters near the end are almost unreadable. This is at the quality level of a pirated ebook that some teenager scanned. I want be buying any ebook titles from Harper again, this is just appalling.
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4.0 out of 5 stars`We assume that tomorrow is another world'
By Jennifer Cameron-Smith on June 12, 2008
Format: Paperback
I first read this novel in 1996 just after it was published. Twelve years later and in a new century, it is disturbing to read how much of this is still relatively realistic. It is almost as though the organisational arrangements and lifestyles described have been adopted both as a management and lifestyle model and transplanted, at least in part, around the world.

This book was funny in 1996 when it seemed in part a satirical comment on the new world of geeks and technology. Now it seems more ironic. Many of those for whom this was an accurate depiction of life in the 1990s are still caught in this time warp. The tragedy is that so many others have joined them.

If you have not already read this novel and wondered about the design of a working world in which human interaction through technology has largely replaced direct human interaction: the time is right. After all, in reading this review you are relying on the technology developed by geeks and nerds.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 starsGreat book, awful paper

Book itself is great, I love it. Have read the digital version (multiple times) and decided to get the hardcover version just to own it. Read more

Published 13 days ago by Maria
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

great thanks

Published 7 months ago by Glossarist
5.0 out of 5 starsMy favorite novel. Superficially like JPOD

My favorite novel. Superficially like JPOD, but much warmer.

Published 14 months ago by Afghan Whig
2.0 out of 5 starsIt didn't work for me

I wanted to like Microserfs, but frankly, there's a lot of nothing in here. The plot leaves Microsoft pretty quickly and I kept waiting for something, anything to happen. Read more

Published 17 months ago by Mark Polino
1.0 out of 5 starsA Parody of Computer Workers?

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Douglas Coupland was born 12-30-1962 on a Canadian NATO base in West Germany, then grew up and lives in Vancouver Canada. He wrote other books. Read more

Published 18 months ago by Acute Observer
1.0 out of 5 starsA Parody of Computer Workers?

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Douglas Coupland was born 12-30-1962 on a Canadian NATO base in West Germany, then grew up and lives in Vancouver Canada. He wrote other books. Read more

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dumd

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It is such a funny book, and it gives quite a good assessment of those days. The beginning of the Internet. No mobile phones yet , and of course the classic: chunky days. Read more

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