Microserfs

by Douglas Coupland

Microserfs is not about Microsoft--it's about programmers who are searching for lives. A hilarious but frighteningly real look at geek life in the '90's, Coupland's book manifests a peculiar sense of how technology affects the human race and how it will continue to affect all of us. Microserfs is the hilarious journal of Dan, an ex-Microsoft programmer who, with his coder comrades, is on a quest to find purpose in life. This isn't just fodder for techies. The thoughts and fears of the not-so-stereotypical characters are easy for any of us to relate to, and their witty conversations and quirky view of the world make this a surprisingly thought-provoking book.

" ... 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."

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Contemporary, Canada, Novels, Literature, Technology

371 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Douglas Coupland is Canadian, born on a Canadian Air Force base near Baden-Baden, Germany, on December 30, 1961. In 1965 his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, where he continues to live and work. Coupland has studied art and design in Vancouver, Canada, Milan, Italy and Sapporo, Japan. His first novel, Generation X, was published in March of 1991. Since then he has published nine novels and several non-fiction books in 35 languages and most countries on earth. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, England, and in 2001 resumed his practice as a visual artist, with exhibitions in spaces in North America, Europe and Asia. 2006 marks the premiere of the feature film Everything's Gone Green, his first story written specifically for the screen and not adapted from any previous work. A TV series (13 one-hour episodes) based on his novel, jPod premieres on the CBC in January, 2008.

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Retrieved 07:55, May 15, 2008, from http://www.coupland.com/coupland_bio....

Reviews

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just chose this as my favorite book in the 30 Days Book Challenge on Facebook, so I might as well review it, even though "favorite book" is a nebulous distinction at best and "what's your favorite book?" is a stupid fucking question and I am afraid this might be a sentimental favorite more than anything else.

So yeah, I read this when I was 14 or 15. I bought it because it had a neat mirror cover with a Lego man. I didn't know Douglas Coupland was the voice of a generation, and anyway, it wasn't even MY generation. I was a dorky high school kid, but not dorky in any way much connected to computer programming, so there was no reason for me fall for a book about a bunch of cynical Microsoft employees living in pre-tech boom Silicon Valley.

But I loved it. I read and re-read it through high school and college. It is a super-dated '90s time capsule now, but it felt entirely new and fresh to me back then, and in many ways, it predicted how technology and the internet would explode all over our lives by the end of that decade. It's also basically like reading someone's LiveJournal or blog -- the book takes the form of a digital journal kept by the narrator -- which wasn't something you could just do back then. It isn't just the diary entries that tell the story, it's the everything else: run-downs of dream Jeopardy! categories for all of the characters, musings on pop culture minutia like the sociological messages communicated by various cereal mascots [Cap'n Crunch -- Reasons this cereal is decadent: a) Colonialist exploiter pursues naive Crunchberry cultures to plunder. b) Drunkenness, torture and debauchery implicit in long ocean cruises.] Lots of lists. Lots of navel-gazing.

It was what I imagined being an adult would be like: working at a job you felt ambivalent about with a bunch of people who became your closest friends, sharing inside jokes and slowly gathering the wisdom that comes with age. I was too introverted in college and made the mistake of living alone, and I would read this and yearn for that kind of connection and camaraderie. Sappy, I know.

I haven't read it since at least 2005, right after I picked up a paperback to replace the hardcover copy that I had read into tatters (the only book I have ever done that for). I have fond memories of the characters, I remember the whole plot, I still reference sections randomly (most often this part about how different parts of your body store emotional pain). I kind of never want to read it again. I might hate it: I certainly haven't read a Coupland book since that was a quarter as endearing (and I read a lot of them before I realized I was chasing the dragon). It is self-conscious and twee and post-modern and has a bunch of different fonts and, like, entire pages filled with a single word or random nonsense or ones and zeroes or no vowels, followed by all vowels. It is big and sloppy and emotional and I don't know if I am still big and sloppy and emotional enough to love it liked I used to.

Sure, favorite book. Why not.

Facebook 30 Day Book Challenge Day 1: Favorite book.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in 1993, we ALL talked like Coupland, especially with the geeks that lived in a sealed office next to ours, and came out to service our computers. Their supervisor was named Pierre.

Pierre was a paunchy, funny, gone-a-bit-to-seed guy who, last seen after he moved to his bosses' organization after the relocation of logistics, developed a bad hernia from lifting desktop units for overhaul, before his much needed retirement.

Computers were weighty in that stone age.

Anyway, I so much loved Coupland's style in Gen X, that I got this one, read it, and gave it to a friend during the period of my first signs of office burn out in 1994.

I was working half days, and would frequent our neighbourhood mall before making the bus connection to the office. I bought this, there.

The Old Guard, like my own supervisor, avoided computers. My supervisor - like nearby Jack, a former LCol as he was - delegated most of their computer work to staff.

I was the overburdened staff my supervisor picked.

He couldn't even type. As if I had the time!

***

But we young bucks loved our gadgets!

Those were the happy days when workers were still human before automation was robo-totalized.

For us Coupland was an advance scout in that Brave New World of Microserfs -

And a darned Funny One at that.

But he SAW our future so clearly:

For now we are all, working or retired, only worn-out little microserfs…

Whose computers are Winning out as we Frazzled Humans DECLINE!

***

And what about my wacky ex-nerd buddy Pierre?

Well, I can only picture him in his bucolic retirement home, feet up on an ottoman and comfy pillow beneath his back, listening to his Beethoven and thinking with a chuckle of his difficult evangelizing at Delegate ‘n Disappear of our senior officers -

Who were more apt to joke around over lunchtime suds at the RCAF Mess -

Than get with the program and learn how their computers worked!

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of five colleague-friends working at Microsoft in the l1990s, five struggling and directionless people, who live in the insular world of digital tech. Told in the short snappy digital diary entries of one of the group Daniel. This book feels like it was Douglas Coupland's idea of capturing the lives and times of a group of people that already spent a decade in tech; but note that it is set in the pre Windows 95 climate. A typically well researched and innovative read but it felt quite tech heavy even for someone like me that works in the digital arena. Just 5 out of 12 Two Stars for this fictional look at pop culture.

2024 read

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

Edited to include more flat foods at the request of an obsessive nerdy friend.

Highly amusing little book of coders all aged 32, mentally if not in years, being obsessed with programming and living their messy student-type lives shaped by this consuming passion.

The idea of flat foods that can be slipped under a door for their more Asperger's type friend who cannot leave his room until all the code is written is funny.
Kraft cheese slices
Fruit leather
Melted icecream (does this count?)
Melba toast
Saltines
Cucumber slices
Pastrami slices
Pizza triangles
Pumpernickel bread
Ok bored now... I'm sure there are a lot more that would be quite sustaining for any obsessive AS coder!

[Punk · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fiction. A little slice of the mid-nineties, Microsoft, and Silicon Valley.

This was was my first Coupland book and it wasn't what I was expecting. Apparently I was prepared for shallow postmodernism or something smugly impressed by its own cynicism. I don't know where I got that idea, but this is an optimistic book, full of human moments, love and friendship, and the things that drive us to succeed. I was surprised at how sweet it could be at times.

It's also got plenty of computer talk: programming, Microsoft vs Apple, the Cult of Bill. Also LEGO! It did get a bit showy at times. I didn't care enough to decipher the two pages of binary, or pick through the page without vowels, but the book is framed as a series of journal entries, and it works on that kind of self-indulgent level. The sometimes short, choppy entries reminded me a lot of Kurt Vonnegut's writing style; Coupland's narrator even has the same habit of ending sections with a single exclamation.

Microsoft!

Five stars for making me feel like I was back in 1993, and for not turning this group of geeks into a joke. This is, as corny as it sounds, a story with heart, as well as hardware.

[Karl H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was reading Microserfs, a novel about coders in the 1990’s, when I suddenly had a great idea. What if I used technology to write down my thoughts and totally zany random observations while I was reading the book? Then I could post my e-thoughts onto a Goodreads review board and get all of the likes and +1’s. This struck me as very one point oh, so here it is.

Random thought: Replace IBM with Microsoft, Microsoft with Apple, and Bill for Steve and you’ve got Microserfs for the 2000s.

If Microserfs was a Jeopardy board the categories would be:
-Pop culture references from the 90’s
-Technology firms in the 90’s
-Animals vs. Human Beings: What’s the difference?
-Annoying Formatting that tries to be “clever”
-THE FUTURE
-Play Doh and Legos
-The word “post-modern”
-Mind Body Dualism

Douglas Coupland probably did some research but it’s clear he’s not much of a nerd. I am not a coder, but even I know that if a product is not ready seven days before it ships, our hero probably would not be wandering around talking to people or preparing to take vacation time. He would be sitting in his cubicle for 14 hour shifts, trying desperately to make the deadline. Realism!

This is a random list of words that makes up my computer’s subconscious. Pretend they’re all formatted funny for no reason:
-Manifesto Novices' Chase
-Handyside v United Kingdom
-Trimix
-Randall Dougherty
-The Basel Convention


Here’s a passage that makes no sense: “Abe is against the pure gung-ho-ishness of pure research. He says that Interval [a technology firm] reminds him of an intellectual Watership Down.” I read that book cover-to-cover and I still have no idea what this reference means.

As I was coding on my Pentium 286, totally e-flaming all my net superhighway buddies, I realized that every one of the characters in this novel were getting significant others and getting in shape- they were getting a life. Dan was getting a life. Todd was getting a life. Susan was getting a life. Even Abe was getting a life. I didn’t care about any of them. It was just like an episode of Melrose Place. But then this startlingly banal observation was suddenly interrupted by an even more banal instant mail I got from my web e-mail servers. “What makes life worth living?” I was asked. Only one answer. Exclamation points at the end of paragraphs, of course!

Here is a list of all the italicized words on one, just one, page of this book:
-Remember (this counts as half, because for some reason the middle is italicized and the ends are not)
-reels
-just
-he’s
-his
-dating
-not
-truly
-me
-harder

I talked with Doug on the phone today. He said “This format is a great way to disguise the fact that nothing interesting is happening in this book.” I agreed. He said “In the future, we need to be one point oh. The future is like play-doh and our consciousness will be transferred into machines. I like buying stuff from Japan.” I sent him a wicked flame saying people don’t ever talk like this, and even if they did I would not want to hear them. I said to him that it kind of reminded me of Don Delillo. People were just standing around spouting philosophy one liners divorced of any context or meaning at each other. I told him I guess sometimes you get good stuff but most of the time it's a bunch of references and gibberish about machines, bodies, getting a life, and postmodernism. He broke down crying. Shiatsu massages!

[Jayme · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reasons why I love both this book and Douglas Coupland:

1. "I sandpapered the roof of my mouth with three bowls of Cap'n Crunch--had raw gobbets of mouth-beef dangling onto my tongue all day." (Who hasn't had that happen to them? And yet, nobody could have said it awesomer.)

2. I learned 1410 *C = the melting point of silicon.

3. This book is totally the original Big Bang Theory.

4. Dated references to things like Doom and Myst.

5. I enjoy reading nerdy lists of things, like which school is the nerdiest (answer: Caltech) or what cereal is the most decadent (answer: NOT Count Chocula, he's pro bringing down the ruling class).

6. I enjoy reading references to places I've been, like the Westin Bayshore, because I know exactly what it looks like!

7. There's a two-page discussion of tampons and a reference to Summer's Eve (p. 286 for the curious).


And here's one more list for the road. If this book were featured on jeopardy its categories would be:

Nerdery
Apple vs. Microsoft
Books With No Conflict
Sappy but Cute Moments
Cliches and Stereotypes
Page Filler
Dated 90's Pop Culture

[Bryan--The Bee’s Knees · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book is of its time, there is a high nostalgia factor here, at least for me, especially as I was nearly the same age as the author when he was writing in 1995. The story of several software developers in the middle 90s who form a kind of surrogate family and look for meaning in their lives is far from the experiences with which I was familiar, but the milieu is the same. And by that I mean the culture of the time rather than the place. What makes this different from, say, a film like Reality Bites (1994) is the ever-present questioning among these young code-writers of the changing relationship between humanity and technology. In that regard, and in his faithfulness to the reality of the period, Douglas Coupland, in a hundred years, may look like Emile Zola does to us now.

This is a very optimistic book, which also seems--looking back on it--to fit with the time. It isn't as if there weren't plenty of scary things still in existence during the period of 1993-2001, but in general there was a different feel to life than there is today. Or, again, so it seems to me. But I'm not in my twenties anymore either--things would probably look different to me now if I was 25.

Anyway...very enjoyable--the short snippet paragraph style may not be to everyone's taste, but it makes for a deceptively breezy read. If young adults had trouble deciding what their life meant in 1995, I can only imagine the trouble they're having nowadays. Whippersnappers.

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is one of my all-time favorites, a bildungsroman of the techie world set between its two 1990s axes: Microsoft and Silicon Valley. My friends hear me make quips from this book far too often, perhaps my favorite being "Microsoft hired 3000 people last year and you know not all of them were gems."

The quick summary is: boy goes to work for Microsoft, boy leaves Microsoft for startup in Silicon Valley, and lives and learns as he and his friends -- his coworkers -- struggle to ship product. But it's not about the technology, and it's not about the business.

The technical aspects of the plot (such as it is) were laughable then and even more ridiculous now, but the dreams and aspirations and the surreality of life in both places -- and ages, as the characters grope through their 20's and growing up -- come through clearly. The book is an odd mixture of straightforward events, weird vignettes, and stream of consciousness observation of the totems and symbols of this weird, weird world, and somehow it works.

I can't tell you if this is really a good book, though, because I spent time at Microsoft in the early 1990's and I was a 20-something then and I moved to Silicon Valley in the late 1990's and this book just got it -- it understood what it meant to be in this weird culture and this weird place and this weird age where anything could happen if you just worked hard enough and you let your health go to hell and you got to be in on one-point-oh (1.0). It might be less a novel of growth for our times than a historical artifact, capturing that experience that was the 90s, or it might just be the novel that somehow captured my life.

All I know is that I keep reading it again and again and I still think it's good.

[Ken Ryu · Rating 3 out of 5]

Uggh! As I type this review from my HP laptop on a hazy Sunday afternoon in Campbell, CA, I am reminded of 80s comedian Dennis Miller. You remember SNL cast member Dennis Miller? He's the snarky, pop-culture referencing smart ass that is funny in small doses, but grows tiresome quickly. With a pompous, look-at-all-the-esoteric-details-I-can-spew-out-in-rapid-fire-bursts pseudo-hip/intellectual flair, Miller consumes all the oxygen in a room and returns minutia and a few chuckles.

Coupland's band of geeks in "Microserf" are riding the first wave of the Internet boom circa 1993. They leave the safety of their Microsoft gigs and head south for the challenge of launching a Silicon Valley multimedia game startup. The migration is mostly a plot device from which Coupland can deliver a contrast between the Microsoft and Silicon Valley cultures. The sentimental story, and way overly sentimental story at that, is a loose fabric from which Coupland can tell a few nerd jokes and conduct an anthropological study of geek cultures in the two epicenters. Coupland fills the pages with inconsequential locale and technology references in order to time-stamp his findings. More than 25 years later, this time-capsule is opened and the items founds are painstakingly cataloged and documented. The time-capsule finder is bored with the 1993 references, whether to music, programming language, Silicon Valley restaurants and programming languages. So much of the content is inconsequential and uninteresting.

The book is told from the 1st person point-of-view of one of the geek programmers. It is in journal format. His entries are filled with dialog of conversations that are not credible, pranks that aren't funny, geek culture that isn't interesting, and technology references that aren't necessary. "As I Powerbook this entry..." is a favorite starting point for a journal entry. It's hard to tell if Coupland is mocking the geek narrator, truly thinks that is natural geek-language or simply wants to keep track of the technology being used at the particular time-period. In any event, the references get in the way of any natural rhythm and makes for cringy, annoying scenes.

The characters are ridiculous caricatures. The band of nerds encompasses a half-dozen or so geek archetypes from which Coupland can catalog and classify. Insert laugh-track here as he describes the Spock-like mating rituals of the "Michael" character. Relationships are one-dimensional and romanticized. The scenes are either banal or ridiculous.

I moved to Sunnyvale in 1993. Many of the stores, restaurants and technology references are accurate. That being said, all the local references and technology mentions does not produce excitement and nostalgia. Instead, Coupland's needless mentions prove extraneous and pedantic all these years later. There are some laughs and even prescient predictions of technology and business trends. Wrapped in this delivery package of unrealistic sentimentality and nerd-culture riffing, the effort falls short. It is more annoying than enlightening. Coupland is not a dumb guy, nor for that matter is Miller. They are quite talented in their own way. The trouble is that they try too hard to showcase their knowledge and wit. We feel trapped in an unprompted, one-sided dialog onslaught and pray for a pause in the inane chatter so we can escape to safer and more consequential grounds.

Those are my thoughts as I finalize this review on my HP Windows 10 laptop from my preferred Google Chrome browser on this Amazon-owned Goodreads review site, which I will now post with a click of my wireless, optical Logitech mouse on this 26th day of the year 2020.

[Joe Drogos · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was in high school, I read Generation X and Life After God and was thrilled by these tales of wry, vibrant, lost characters who fought for real meaning when their culture caused them to shrug at tragedy and love and weep over reruns and advertising campaigns (I was a pretty lonely teenager, obviously.) When Microserfs came out, I remember picking it up at the bookstore a few times (maybe this was '95 or '96?) and thinking, "Oh, it's this story about the 'information-superhighway' with all these "inventive" gimmicks (like two pages of binary code) and characters who live for email and chat rooms and Who Gives a Fuck?" At the time, my family didn't have a computer, I didn't have an email account, and it seemed like Coupland had fallen face-first into an orgy of trend-humping. It seemed like these characters were actually embracing commodification, their own digitization, their own reduction to binary code. Reading it now as less of a Luddite (admittedly, with a job creating websites), it seems not only prescient (one of the characters notes he receives 60 emails a day, they drink Starbucks, et al. al. al.), but also prophetic-- it doesn't just know the technological future, it speaks on behalf of us in the face of the technological future. The book is about characters struggling with their own identity in face of the inevitable digital deluge. In some ways, they detest their own lego-ization, they fear the duality that seems to divide their minds and their bodies, they struggle with what a prism identity is becoming, and fight to assert their true selves in tandem with technology. And, when I read this 370-page book all the way through last night, and I was fascinated-- not just with looking for dated references to Apple's demise, or to "flame emails"-- but for they way the characters constantly struggle not only to make sense of the eternal verities, but also tremble in the face of an overwhelming technological force that they fear will make those verities inherently irrelevant. Microserfs is an argument that certain truths are always truths, no matter what trends are being fucked that day. It's an outstanding book.

[RandomAnthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

Douglas Coupland’s Microserfs reads like a time capsule crossed with a nerds-only Breakfast Club. Focused on the California geek population who powered the late eighties/early nineties technology boom, the novel focuses so much on time and place that it could arguably be classified as historical. The CD-ROM and early internet references seem, like an AOL disc or heavy monitor, both quaint and annoying. Coupland transcends the period piece nature of Microserfs about 60% of the time, especially when he focuses less on era-only details and more on the way people interact with technology in concert with the way they interact with other human beings.

Dan, the narrator, works at Microsoft with a stock ragtag set of programmers that, if the book were filmed, would consist of actors you had seen before but you weren’t sure where. When the smartest of the group hits on the idea of creating a CD-ROM with on-screen Lego-like capabilities the group collectively leave the womb of Gates’ company and leap into the venture capital funded 1.0 world of internet, um, I’m sorry, CD-ROM start-ups. Coupland’s staccato delivery, propelled by short, blogesque paragraphs, works well within the frenetic nature and outsider quality Dan and his colleagues embody. The characters are significantly meta; they know they’re geeks, they’re unsure of what they want, and they talk a lot about the pros and cons of nerd-dom. They bond over Star Trek references and analyze the fact they all buy their clothes at The Gap. The creative and financial risks and rewards of the classic “one big idea that could make us all rich” leads the friends, especially Dan to address their strengths, shortcomings, and whatever it was that carried them, for better or for worse, to programming.

Coupland has mined this territory before. He’s comfortable (as in The Gum Thief) framing anonymous corporate settings as canvases that, in their bland structure, both impede identity development and provide the opportunity for one to step back and respond to the lack of stimuli. Dan’s hobbledehoy disposition is laced with strength and insecurity. He stitches his love of computers with the acquisition of his first real girlfriend and come to terms with the childhood death of an older brother. Does that make for an exciting book? No. But Microserfs contains some compassionate passages, especially when the nerds speak honestly, Breakfast Club style, both through email (which was probably still novel then) and face to face, or when Dan’s mother uses technology (don’t want to spoil it) to communicate from a far away place.

I don’t love Coupland but I count on him for breezy, thoughtful novels when I’m in the mood for something between light and heavy. Microserfs lives up to that expectation but doesn’t attempt to rise beyond the characters’ pursuit of quiet self-acceptance in the anonymous Silicon Valley. As I was reading I thought of getting lost, near Seattle, in what seemed like an endless landscape of strip malls and Olive Gardens. The sterile, clinical environment does not preclude a desire for identity. Dan and his colleagues would understand that desire as they ventured from their innominate apartments into the suburban night, probably stopping at a 7-11, grabbing something to eat, and talking about where to go next.

[Oscar Calva · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even though he's not relevant anymore and hasn't been for a long time, I´m done for good with Coupland: second book read, second one I really disliked. This book has been sitting in my bookshelf for too long, and since it has always been sort of a cult-book about the tech-industry, and since I needed some light reading not too deep, I decided to give it a try.

Douglas Coupland is a talented writer, he knows how to write a book, no doubt about it; why he decided to use his talents to write these lame novels is beyond my understanding.

As with Generation X, this book is really much about nothing; in Generation X it was all about a bunch of shallow anecdotic stories of a group of clichéd twentysomethings living together in the early nineties, which is supposed to be a somewhat satirical portrait of the GenX youth of the times. In Microserfs it is all about a bunch of shallow anecdotic stories of a group of clichéd "code monkey" twentysomethings living together in the mid nineties, which is supposed to be a somewhat satirical portrait of the high-tech culture in the pre-bubble days.

The story is very outdated, and the characters and humour sometimes are somewhat geeky, but those are not the sins of the book. There's nothing wrong with geeky inside jokes and stereotypes --as Gordon Gecko might say "geek is good"--, but the humour on this book and the dialogues/stories/situations of the characters are not geeky, they're plainly dumb and stupid.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

For Microserfs, I am straddling these two reader-type extremes: those who know nothing about geektech culture, and those who 100% techie, geeky nerds. I am in between. I feel this is the right place to be, because the book evoked lots of "Yeah...it really IS that way, isn't it?" and "Oh those geeks!" Yet I'm not so into the culture that I feel it was misrepresented.

I can't ever seem to attempt to write an approximation of some sort of "objective" review (lulz) so I'll just leave you with my idiosyncratic impressions: 1) I felt computer programmers in Silicon Valley in the 90's were really like how they were portrayed in the novel, and that made me happy and a little bit jealous that I was born in 1988, because the culture was presented so well. Almost like an ethnography. 2) Character Michael's short monologues were my favorite part, but looking back they were just simple summaries of theories I'm reading about all the time. I guess I liked ID-ing with someone so much. My other favorite moments were catching obscure references, though I know I didn't understand about 66 percent of them. 3) It may just be that I read this in San Diego, but this is what I would define as my perfect beach book. Juuuust the right about of thinking required.

I also met a 30ish security guard who had just worked ComicCon, who showed me his 3-foot animatronic Lego robot, pictures of the garage he lives in (at his parents'), drawings of his comic/future videogame storyboard, etc. etc. etc. and I mentioned this book and he FLIPPED OUT. I had just started the book, so our conversation was a total emotional and contextual amplifier for my Microserfs experience. I'd pay for that kind of thing to happen during every book I'm reading.

[Nicky Dierx · Rating 1 out of 5]

I kind of hated this book. It was dull. It was dull beyond anything I can put into words. I can see somewhere in the mess of randomness that makes up the protagonists journal entries where you'd find seeds of the supposed generation x cultural manifesto this thing is touted as. But since I'm not from that generation perhaps it's lost on me. I'm also not sure why it's still considered such a classic, given that everything in it is a dated time capsule almost entirely irrelevant to the world today. I have read one other of Coupland's works and was equally disappointed. I can't even remember what it was called. That's kind of sad when you think about it. As a Canadian I've read all the reviews of his work that say he has his finger almost always on the pulse of our nations cultural heartbeat. If that's true we really are a land of the living dead because he sure as hell never seems to find mine.

Also, I glanced at some of the other reviews before writing mine. It seems everyone is grasping onto the Captain Crunch scene as the one really well written half paragraph in the whole damn book. One half paragraph does not a classic make. Especially since it references a breakfast cereal which is all but discontinued in many places. Who hasn't had that cut up mouth feeling from a bowl of Captain Crunch? Loads of people, for whom it was not part of their morning childhood routine, that's who.

[Adrienne · Rating 2 out of 5]

umm... this book was disappointing. it is boring and boring and boring. i read it 'cause i wanted something light after all the heaviness of am homes.

there's a scene that i can't resist pointing out where somehow someone sends the main characters all an email about how every multiple of six minus one is a prime number and they all had to waste work time proving or disproving it. but. yeah. it is dumb. it takes about 2 seconds to disprove because it never should have been mentioned in the first place. fucker.

it might have been an OKAY book if it were a true story about a bunch of people i REALLY like but as a fictional account, um, yeah. dumb.

enough invective for now. apologies.

[Denis · Rating 3 out of 5]

My wife read Coupland's 2004 novel, "Eleanor Rigby" and found it to be pretty good. I learnt that he is both an author and a "post-modern" artist. I often see Douglas Coupland books in the scifi section of the bookstore. 1995's "Microserfs" was about coders working for Micrsoft in the 1990's. My son is currently a coder working for Microsoft. I thought, perhaps this might give some insight of his world. This is not scifi, but rather, techfi. Though I've never worked in an office cubical, am not a gamer and rather low-tech (not a cellphone carrier), I enjoyed this much more than I thought I would.

[Amy Bailey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was left with the feeling that nothing actually happened until the last ten pages of this book, and I never connected with any of these characters.

[René · Rating 5 out of 5]

A novel in journal form about a group of Microsoft employees who leave the company to found a Silicon valley startup.

Douglas Coupland is what I think of as a zeitgeist writer. He captures the spirit of the times we live in by setting his novels in those places that history will look back upon as trend-setting, avant-garde cultures. Silicon Valley in the 1990’s is a prime candidate, if not the clear winner. Though it hasn’t lost any of its luster, Silicon Valley doesn’t hold the same power over mediatic senses now as it did then, simply because it’s now been around for a while.

Reading about the 1990’s nerd culture is a nostalgic trip. If you were there at the time, and happened to find yourself in a field not too distant from technology and (here’s a 90’s term for you) multimedia, you find yourself nodding your head frequently while reading this, sometimes laughing out loud.

The characters are a hodge-podge of geekism from the era. There’s a bodybuilder geek (two of them, actually), a suave marketing geek, a recovering anorexic, an ageing previous-generation IBM software guy, a hermit-like visionary, a geek mother, a closeted gay geek, a Canadian rough-and-tumble geek, and of course the narrator, a run-of-the-mill generic geek whose importance in the story is to be relatable, therefore not too extremely geeky.

These characters find themselves living together in the Valley and forging their group into an extended family, discovering themselves and the world outside of Microsoft communally. The narrator is the quintessential flaneur in that he seems to be the kind of person who everybody confess themselves to, and as such becomes the eyes and ears of the reader as the author does a far-ranging show and tell of life in the 1990’s, tech and corporate culture, Seattle, San Fransisco and the Silicon Valley, Las Vegas, technology, relationships, mass media, gender, etc. It slides and hops from one thing to the next, through brief anecdotes and heavy interpretation from the narrator or another character delivering analysis in thoughtful a partes.

The result is a lightly-toned, yet intricately weaved, information-heavy traversal of an economically ebullient period of history. It’s about technology, but it’s mostly about people and how they relate to it, how they tie it in with their past and their sociological makeup. The characters come to life fast and believably, and their diversity makes their commonality even more appreciable.

Often touching, always (alarmingly) smart.

Oh and, without giving anything away, I add that the ending blew me away. Nerds are people, too.

[Valentín Muro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just dropped the book on the table and I'm thinking of rereading many of its parts. It's amazing how much one can learn from a work of fiction so cleverly crafted and so loyal to the culture it intends to explore. What Coupland achieved is a truly fascinating take on why the Valley ignites so much obsession, even decades before HBO's Silicon Valley came along.

The way Dan and his friends are portrayed is worryingly relatable to many of us who in any level deal with technology and its culture. The whole 'having a life' trope ends being exquisite. And in the end, I cried. That's always something to celebrate.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such fun... I especially loved the idea of someone locking himself in his office and only eating flat foods that can be inserted under the door. I think of this book every time I open a slice of American cheese!

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this goofy and meandering book from start to finish. The narrator, Dan, is a much less insufferable version of the narrator from Tao Lin's Shoplifting from American Apparel, and the tone feels exactly like if my friend Michelle Alexander were a techie instead of a giant fantasy nerd. Def recommend.

[Ainhoa · Rating 5 out of 5]

inesperada lectura favorita en años 💘💘💘

[Kdm · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a book that came out in 1996 it is very prophetic at times!

[Louise · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Microserfs for the first time right now is a strange feeling. Parts of it are so distinctly 90s dot-com culture that I feel like I'm watching people through a time warp. It's as if I had gone into a time machine and emerged 20 years in the past.

But despite the progress we've made in technology, the ups and downs of Microsoft and Apple, and the age of the internet, some things never really do change. One of these things are geeks. The characters in Microserfs are multi-dimensional, introspective, and most of all, anyone who's worked in the tech industry will recognize their archetypes. The Ethan character reminded me so much of someone I used to work with that I wondered if it really was based on him.

Coupland is good at bringing humor to a lot of strange situations that arise in the tech world, but what surprised me about this book was that it wasn't just a complete comedy. Most of the book is an accurate portrayal of culture of Silicon Valley during the 90s, but it goes much deeper than that. There are heartfelt discussions about what it means to relate to another person and what it means to be human.

I had a few problems with the last quarter of the book, but most of it is just personal preference. The Bar-Code/Michael thing resolved itself too nicely. If the situation had happened in the real world, I think the 40 year old man in diapers scenario would be more likely.

It's hard to fit this book into a specific category. It's a humorous book about the tech culture, but what I think it ultimately is is a coming-of-age story of a group of geeky friends. I'm going to recommend this to all my programmer friends.

[Shinynickel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read several books in a row that made me cry, and this was one of them.

God knows why - it's not like Coupland is attempting to write a great tragedy. I think I just really liked the characters, liked the way they interacted and how much they cared about each other. The book does a great job capturing the Silicon Valley nerd culture in the 90s, how it seemed to exist suspended in its own bubble world. It's science fictional without being science fiction - showing the way lives can come to be mediated by technology, the way it changes (for worse and for better) the way people find connections with one another. It can be hysterical at one moment and very sad the next.

I like the way Coupland writes.

Addendum: I was going to leave it at that, after trying and failing to describe exactly the effect the book had on me, then I went and read some other reviews of it, and David's hit it right on for me: "I think Coupland's work... recognizes a landscape dominated by disposable culture, and neither revels in it or reviles it, but instead takes a straight Buddhist approach, accepting it as spiritual matter because it is there, the way the mountains or rivers are there; Coupland is on the spearhead of writers grappling with spirituality in late-stage capitalism, as the Plastic Age turns mercilessly into the Electronic Age."

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland
Nine out of 10


Microserfs is included on The Guardian 1,000 Books Everyone Must Read list - https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... - that I find very interesting for most of the books I have read recently come from it and have been entertaining, captivating, rewarding and worthwhile.

Douglas Coupland is an excellent, modern, imaginative, amusing – in fact, looking to see where the book is placed on the aforementioned list, I thought it could be in the comedy section, but found it under the State of the nation label, which it deserves.
Microserfs deals with one of the most – if not the most – important issues faced by millennials and all the rest of the world, in our journey towards Singularity, the way we deal with technology, the tech giants FANGs and their Chinese rivals, the BATs, seeing as the novel is about the relationship employees have with these new colossus, satirized and evident in the title- Serfs of Microsoft.

Going beyond this title, the figure of Bill Gates, only called Bill in the book, does not strike the reader as the mean, villainous character who is oppressing the multitudes that work for him – although this was first published in a short story format and this reader writes about an abridged version of the novel by the way – and the contrast between the generous, benign multibillion donor that tries to solve problems like malaria and disease in the world is not so blatant.
Daniel is the narrator who works for “Bill” as one of the Microserfs and he is a nerd, an employee that has to climb on the ladder, is much younger than the average age at the company – which is at the time of the plot of about 31 – and he is very entertaining with his jocularity that mocks the fact that for instance they can no longer mention death, for while once there where only very young on campus, a vice president has had cancer and died recently.

The main character – and so many other geeks like him – is mainly concerned with the “product”, being hired to test the software and identify bugs and breaks, a sort of preliminary stage, but with a lot of potential – Abe, one of the members of the initial team, would point out the brilliant perspectives offered by the company that has been listed only very recently as the biggest independent firm in the world, only to be surpassed by Apple and amazon later.

When Michael, a talented, entrepreneurial, brave, creative, intrepid programmer launches what is called today a “startup”, a new technology company, he invites all the members of his Microsoft team to join him and benefit from a higher pay package – one is surprised to hear figures which are as low as twenty five thousand dollars for…a whole year, when today that is not enough for a month, in Silicon Valley, but we have to think about inflation and more importantly, the rocketing costs in the region – The Economist has had an article in which they argued that more companies will use other regions, given the prohibitive, stratospheric prices in that paradisiacal – in the past – technological dreamland.
All the team joins him, with the exception of Abe, more conscious than the rest of the benefits of working for the Feudal Landlord as serfs and the perils of launching into the unknown, however promising the new code written by Michael could be and the attraction of working with Susan, Todd, bug Barbecue, Karla – people who share a passion for writing code, but with different personalities, sexual orientation and tastes.

Daniel starts a relationship with Karla, which experiences the inevitable ups and downs – he forgets the one month anniversary once, then they have other disagreements, but this is one sunny side in the life of the hero, who has some other, bigger problems connected with his parents – in the first place, his father, who has worked for IBM – a company with a rather negative image it seems, at the time when this story takes place – and is losing his job at the age of fifty and is offered a bizarre position by Michael, who shares a hobby with the older man, involving toy trains.
Bug Barbecue has a nickname based on his occupation at Microsoft, and he lives in the same “geek house” like the others, where he has an outré worshipping altar for Elle Macpherson, with sufficient photos and paraphernalia to make the supermodel freak if she were ever to see it, but later in the narrative, the same man gathers the group to say he had been “inning it for too long and he now has to out it, for he is…gay, contrary to what that religious construction would have said.

Susan seems to be one other peculiar character, in that she seems to be very determined, perhaps exaggerating a certain aggressiveness to hide weaknesses and a feeling of uncertainty, only to find a vocation when she launches a feminist group destined for women code writers – members of this community would have to have a vagina and a number of shared beliefs and traits – and she is invited on CNN and becomes a celebrity.
While hearing the abridged audio version of this novel. I was wondering how much inspiration the creators of Silicon Valley could have had from Microserfs, because even after just a few episodes seen, it looks like the community in there shares many traits with the group that worked as serfs and then launched into the wilderness in Microserfs.

The book is excellent and contains many interesting facts, political commentary, references to Apple, Nintendo and others, including the revelation that humanity has reached the point where the books, information available has surpassed the total brain capacity of mankind, one vital step towards what the nerds know better and call Singularity.

[L. Farmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love it.

[Rubberboots · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - I had enjoyed a previous book by Coupland and dove into this one with anticipation but quickly realized that nope, not the same. This one is the story of a programmer, his entourage, and their day-to-day lives at Microsoft in the '90s. Some funny and nostalgic moments in the pages I read but after a while it just got tedious. So many books, so little time. Sorry Dougie.

[Svalbard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Douglas Coupland è stato il mio scrittore di riferimento per un periodo durato qualche anno a cavallo del 2000. Avevo scoperto quasi per caso “Fidanzata in coma” e mi aveva entusiasmato: per la situazione paradossale e vagamente distopica (un mondo narrato da un ragazzo morto di leucemia, in cui tutti da un certo momento in poi cominciano ad addormentarsi e morire, tranne i suoi amici che curiosamente scampano a questo bizzarro destino per poi trovarsi soli e abbandonati a loro stessi), e per l’incredibile capacità di definire mondi, situazioni e stati d’animo con pochissime parole; in sostanza, di radiografare la contemporaneità con pochi uguali (per me, che considero i libri intoccabili, è stato l’unico caso in cui ho fatto delle - leggere, eh - sottolineature a matita, tanto mi parevano piene di verità e di sintesi certe sue frasi). Solo dopo ho letto il suo primo libro e più grande successo, “Generazione X”, diventato anche un modo di dire che ha di poco preceduto la definizione di “Millennials”; si raccontava anche lì di un gruppetto di amici che voltavano le spalle al mondo pretestuosamente felice e produttivo per andarsene a vivere nel deserto californiano facendo lavoretti di sussistenza e passando il tempo raccontandosi storie. Non può che venire alla mente un celebre precedente della letteratura italiana del tardo Medio Evo, molto citato, pochissimo letto.

Ho letto poi anche le sue pubblicazioni successive, e poco per volta il mio entusiasmo per Coupland ha perso colpi. Intendiamoci, è bravissimo e rimane sempre un vulcano di idee, ma a parte “La sacra famiglia” i libri successivi hanno cominciato a soffrire di una certa ripetitività e mancanza di struttura, un po’ come se la sovrabbondanza di idee (spesso tutt’altro che stupide e comunque scritte benissimo) sopravanzasse la necessità di una trama e di un adeguato intreccio narrativo. Per dire, in “Hey nostradamus!” si fa un mischione i cui si parla di stragi scolastiche, manipolazione dei fatti e persecuzione dei non allineati da parte di fondamentalisti cattolici, conflitti familiari, animaletti immaginari, finte medium che parlano coi morti e mafia russa. Troppe cose per farle stare tutte in un unico libro.

Sapevo dell’esistenza di “Microservi”, il suo terzo libro pubblicato in America nel 1995, e mi incuriosiva assai per l’ambito tecnologico, ma mi ha sempre sorpreso il fatto che, come molti altri (compresi quelli precedentemente citati) nonostante Coupland sia un autore indubbiamente di successo e di fama, Feltrinelli non l’abbia mai ristampato, a differenza dei libri di *** (inserire nome di autrice sudamericana a caso). Come al solito, le fide bancarelle che non bisogna mai perdere di vista mi sono venute in soccorso, e così finalmente, dopo svariati decenni, ho potuto leggerlo.

Ancora una volta sono rimasto allibito della straordinaria capacità di Coupland di isolare con precisione chirurgica scampoli di realtà mettendoli sotto il microscopio delle sue parole. Stavolta la realtà è quella di un mondo che ancora esiste e che ha pesantemente influenzato e continua a influenzare le nostre vite, quello della rivoluzione informatica e dei suoi artefici. I protagonisti, come abituale per questo autore, sono un gruppetto di amici “young adults”, in questo caso informatici che lavorano per la Microsoft a Redmond facendo stressante e noioso debugging, da cui si licenziano per trasferirsi nella Silicon Valley e lanciare una startup per la modellizzazione object-oriented.

Per cominciare, bisogna cogliere una strana dissonanza temporale, almeno vista da qui. Il libro fu scritto nel 1995 e ambientato nel due anni prima, mentre da noi tutta la retorica sulle startup, i laboratori nei garage e i geek ragazzini che con le loro idee diventano miliardari è cominciata solo verso la fine del decennio. Oltre tutto, quelli erano anni in cui probabilmente c’era già molto ma ancora pochissimo rispetto a ciò che si sarebbe visto nei decenni successivi. I computer giravano sotto DOS, le prime versioni di Windows non erano un sistema operativo ma solo un’interfaccia grafica, Internet c’era già ma era una robetta per addetti ai lavori che serviva al massimo a spedire e-mail, trasferire file e discutere sui gruppi di Usenet. Anche Apple c’era e su tante cose era pure più avanti di Windows, ma si era persa Steve Jobs per strada e paradossalmente era a rischio di fallimento non avendo ancora evidentemente scoperto il target dei fighettoni che si vogliono distinguere. Il web, se c’era, era puramente sperimentale, ne usufruivano giusto il CERN e altri quattro gatti. Un grafica che andava oltre le schermate di testo c’era già ma avveniva in contesti che non erano quelli del PC, per il quale non era ancora chiaro che futuro avrebbe potuto avere sia negli uffici che nelle case private. I telefonini erano pochi, carissimi e, incredibile, servivano solo per telefonare; i social, gli smartphone e le app erano qualcosa che probabilmente non esisteva nemmeno nella mente di Steve Jobs, tanto che le chiacchiere sulle tanto glorificate “autostrade elettroniche” creavano nel gruppetto di “geeks” di cui qui si parla vere e proprie crisi di esasperazione.

(Tra l’altro fu proprio a fine 1993 che io comprai il mio primo computer pagandolo tipo un paio di stipendi - sostituito 5 anni dopo quando ormai poteva essere usato solo come fermaporta, considerate che non aveva nemmeno il lettore di CD-rom - ma il mio intento era, come fu, di usarlo per elaborare testi e pochissimo altro. Quindi sorprende che certi modi di vivere, e soprattutto certi disagi esistenziali, fossero presenti con tanto anticipo rispetto a quella che, almeno per noi, appare l’epoca dei fatti; o almeno Coupland ha avuto uno sguardo ferocemente profetico).

Un altro aspetto interessante del libro è la differenza della, diciamo, cultura aziendale delle varie situazioni lavorative descritte. Alla Microsoft ci si aspetta o si induce una dedizione totale al lavoro e un’adorazione incondizionata per zio Bill fertilizzata a colpi di stock options sulle azioni societarie, tanto che qualsiasi concetto di tempo libero e di attività extralavorative viene guardato con sospetto; è da questo mondo e da questa cultura che il protagonista e i suoi amici fuggono a gambe levate . Alla Apple, vissuta solo “di striscio”, bisogna invece essere creativi e divertirsi. La IBM rappresenta la cultura aziendale “old style”, quella del posto fisso, del lavoro routinario e della sicurezza economica, ma che è pronta comunque a buttare in mezzo a una strada il padre di Daniel, io narrante del racconto, quando non gli serve più (e che ti aspettavi? Siamo negli USA, non esistono prepensionamenti né cassa integrazione). Forse è proprio questo poco più che cinquantenne personaggio uno dei meglio riusciti: prima cade in un baratro di depressione in cui riesce solo a dedicarsi ai suoi amati trenini elettrici, poi, con la complicità degli amici del figlio, aiuta a mettere in piedi la sede aziendale della startup, poi cerca di reingegnerizzarsi come programmatore facendo un corso da cui fugge in quanto i suoi compagni, studenti diciannovenni, lo guardano con vaghi sospetti di “giovanefilia” (non proprio pedofilia, ma insomma…)

Ma è ovviamente la cultura californiana della Silicon Valley quella che viene dissezionata con più attenzione. Il rapporto con il lavoro, che ci si aspetta essere non lo strumento che ti permette di vivere, ma la vita stessa, e che ti deve rendere felice in quanto per vivere fai le cose che ti piacciono; la consapevolezza di essere dei geni, i più intelligenti e i capofila della società, quelli che hanno le idee “unopuntozero” che diventeranno le radici del futuro, e soprattutto il rapporto con i soldi. Il denaro non è un bene in sé o un simbolo di successo, ma è visto piuttosto come la dimostrazione tangibile della propria intelliigenza, al punto di arrivare a non godere nemmeno più degli oggetti che con il denaro ci si può comprare ma a considerarli una specie di dovere, un tributo da pagare per dimostrare che la propria intelligenza ha meritato remunerazione, e quindi essere degni di stare in un certo ambiente. Un caso esemplificativo è quello della Ferrari, che, così dichiara uno dei personaggi, ogni “unopuntozero” deve comprarsi obbligatoriamente non appena arrivato a una certa soglia di ricchezza e successo, pur non vedendo l’ora di venderla per comprarsi una macchina più comoda e utilizzabile, magari giapponese. L’idea di tirare i remi in barca e godersi il dolce far niente con i milioni guadagnati è del tutto esclusa: il denaro deve essere prontamente reinvestito in altre imprese ed altre idee. (Detto tra noi non ho mai avuto troppa simpatia per le persone che diventano ricche con la loro intelligenza; in qualche modo ho come la percezione che questa ricchezza la sottraggono a chi è meno intelligente di loro. Preferisco le persone ricche di famiglia, la cui ricchezza l’hanno ereditata e non l’hanno sottratta a nessuno - magari le colpe sono in capo ai loro genitori o nonni, ma le colpe dei padri non ricadono più sui figli almeno dalla fine dell’Antico Testamento). Ovviamente non sfuggono altri aspetti della cultura californiana come quello del fitness e della forma fisica. I personaggi sono sempre in dubbio se autodefinirsi “nerd”, “geek” o “techie” in un’epoca in cui queste parole definivano impallinati tecnologici del tutto privi di abilità sociali. Oggi si è visto che essere “nerd” eccetera garantisce un successo sociale ben maggiore che essere un campione universitario di foot-ball, come sostiene David S. Platt in “Perché il software fa schifo”, tanto che dare nel nerd (sinonimo di grande passione/competenza non solo più tecnologica) a una persona non è più un’offesa ma un complimento, soprattutto se rivolto a una donna per la quale non significa più sottintendere qualsiasi mancanza di bellezza fisica o cura di sé.

La storia, forse troppo prolissa e contrappuntata da pagine di “parolibero” che sembrano scritte da Marinetti se fosse vissuto alla fine del millennio nella Silicon Valley, tace sull’aspettativa creata fin dall’inizio della storia (la startup farà il botto?) ma, come altri libri dello stesso autore, esalta l’amicizia e la solidarietà tra persone.

Si potrebbe dire, ironicamente, che questo libro ha un seguito, anche se non è stato Coupland a scriverlo. Si tratta di “Io odio internet” di Jarett Kobek, scritto un paio di decenni dopo e ambientato negli stessi posti, in un mondo che è diventato molto più simile a quello inn cui viviamo; libro che purtroppo non sono riuscito a trovare il tempo di recensire a causa della sua complessa struttura a contrappunto. Molte delle cose che Daniel e i suoi amici non immaginavano, o immaginavano come sogni impossibili, si sono realizzate. Non sono più Microsoft e Apple a farla da padrone, ma Google e Facebook. La comunicazione e la dimensione “social”, spesso usate più per distruggere che per costruire, sono divenute molto più importanti di tutto quello che gli sottosta, tecnologia compresa. Le startup vengono create non per realizzare idee “unopuntozero” ma con l’intento premeditato di spillare soldi agli investitori. La produzione diffusa di contenuti comporta che i medesimi siano pagati molto meno, o non pagati del tutto. La ricchezza e la speculazione hanno devastato tutta la situazione immobiliare della baia di San Francisco rendendo praticamente inabitabile un areale immenso a chi non ha stipendi principeschi o rendite di posizione.. Qualsiasi cosa si faccia o si voglia fare, si devono sempre fare i conti con la Cina. Che il sogno si sia fatto incubo?