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Microserfs: A Novel Kindle Edition
| Douglas Coupland (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
| Customers reported quality issues in this eBook. This eBook has: Typos. The publisher has been notified to correct these issues. Quality issues reported |
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They are Microserfs—six code-crunching computer whizzes who spend upward of sixteen hours a day "coding" and eating "flat" foods (food which, like Kraft singles, can be passed underneath closed doors) as they fearfully scan company e-mail to learn whether the great Bill is going to "flame" one of them. But now there's a chance to become innovators instead of cogs in the gargantuan Microsoft machine. The intrepid Microserfs are striking out on their own—living together in a shared digital flophouse as they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarper Perennial
- Publication dateJune 21, 2011
- File size4490 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Review
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
Amazon.com Review
" ... just think about the way high-tech cultures purposefully protract out the adolescence of their employees well into their late 20s, if not their early 30s," muses one programmer. "I mean, all those Nerf toys and free beverages! And the way tech firms won't even call work 'the office,' but instead, 'the campus.' It's sick and evil."
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.About the Author
Douglas Coupland is the author of twelve novels, including Generation X and Microserfs, and several works of nonfiction, including Polaroids from the Dead. He lives and works in Vancouver, Canada.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.Product details
- ASIN : B004W2YZ0I
- Publisher : Harper Perennial (June 21, 2011)
- Publication date : June 21, 2011
- Language : English
- File size : 4490 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 386 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #479,239 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #837 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
- #2,869 in Contemporary American Fiction
- #3,347 in Genetic Engineering Science Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Since 1991 Coupland has written thirteen novels published in most languages. He has written and performed for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company and is a columnist for The Financial Times of London. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, e-flux, DIS and Vice. In 2000 Coupland amplified his visual art production and has recently had two separate museum retrospectives, Everything is Anything is Anywhere is Everywhere at the Vancouver Art Gallery, The Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and Bit Rot at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam, and Villa Stücke in Munich this fall. In 2015 and 2016 Coupland was artist in residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute. Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Officer of the Order of British Columbia and is a Chevlier de l'Order des Arts et des Lettres.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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At first it seems like Microserfs was written in 2011 with the hindsight of knowing where the events and technologies from 1993 to 1995 would lead in the future. But it was written in the time it describes. It's all the more impressive how prescient the absurd characters sometimes are.
The Kindle version was produced by OCR, feeding a physical copy of the book into a computer, leading to typos. This both distracts the reader and enhances the story, since the book is about just that kind of nonsense.
This is a must for those of us who deeply empathize with thematic elements in films such as Office Space or Trees Lounge. I actually was acquainted with a real housemates couple in Berkeley who could be characters in this novel, who in their "free time" romantically played computer games with each other and otherwise spent vast amounts of time behind a computer screen.
I remember the world before Atari and the internet. I recall anxious nuclear holocaust days prior to when "cyberspace" was a regular constituent in our mental vocabulary. Perhaps technology does in fact ennoble our human values and aspirations, or perhaps it is a means of convenient evasion from self-knowledge.
Coupland explores some of these concerns in this novel with real-life characters who could mirror those folks in tech cultures (Irvine, Silicon Valley, Seattle, and/or Portland)--a culture that is both oddly familiar yet cubicled in silence--nameless shadows who input code and ship products for our servile consumption.
Also I really love the references to "Bill." All in all, a fun read with some incredibly interesting insights into what the internet has become.
Whity, funny, yet emotionally honest and soul piercing at times, this book reveals the true nature of IT workers during the climb of the IT field. Written in 94 (i think), many of the lifestyles that Coupland wrote about then still hold true today. It showed me just how much of an IT slave I really am, but that freedom must first come from within, and that I am still a human being even though I work 60-70 hour work weeks. Is there a life outside of IT?
I think so! This book shows me the way and allows me to laugh at myself and the stupididty of my way of life. Thanks Doug...thanks for showing me there is more to life than computers.
kevin
That is a disappointment, paper is very cheap
Top reviews from other countries
One thing I particularly liked about the book was his take on family... Usually I don't think he paints a very sensitive picture of family relationships, instead this time he does and it gives a gentler, deeper novel because of it. Really enjoyable book and highly recommended.
This is a gentle, uplifting amusing tale.
Worth reading whenever you're down - Yes, you CAN reinvent yourself while remaining yourself!
But a great story, well written and genuinely funny. Really funny. Not those kind of small wry smile kind of laughs, but the ones out loud where you get embarrassed on the train kind of laughs.
You'll not regret reading this book.












