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Microserfs

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 · rating details · 13,172 ratings · 565 reviews

Narrated in the form of a Powerbook entry by Dan Underwood, a computer programmer for Microsoft, this state-of-the-art novel about life in the '90s follows the adventures of six code-crunching computer whizzes. Known as "microserfs, " they spend upward of 16 hours a day "coding" (writing software) as they eat "flat" foods (such as Kraft singles, which can be passed underne...more

Paperback, 384 pages

Published May 30th 1996 by Harper Perennial (first published June 1995)

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Jun 08, 2011 Joel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Joel by: Legomania

Shelves: favorites, personal-collection, 30-day-book-challenge

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'...more 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.(less)

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Jun 14, 2008 Punk rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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: program...more

13 likes · like · see review

Feb 21, 2008 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

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....more

7 likes · like · see review

Aug 27, 2011 Jayme rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: humor, epistolary, canada, 2011, 20th-century, vancouver, america

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 nerdi...more

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Jan 27, 2009 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more 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.(less)

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Sep 08, 2011 Jackie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: recommendation-grab-bag

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 idi...more

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Oct 11, 2008 Shinynickel rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 m...more

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Feb 01, 2008 Adrienne rated it 2 of 5 stars

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...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

6/16/2005 - 8/10

Microserfs is about a recent college grad and his life experience while working at Microsoft in the programming world. It's interesting (related field for me) and well written. The writing style is like a journal with lots of interesting little observations and asides. It got a little too serious and less light-hearted as it went on, and the end was kind of blah.

Some quotes:

'I sandpapered the roof of my mouth with three bowls of Cap'n Crunch - had raw gobbets of mouth-beef dangl...more

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Nov 03, 2012 Nicky Dierx rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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...more

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Sep 01, 2011 manuti rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Otro libro para la lista, me ha costado leerlo por dos cosas, últimamente no tengo tiempo ni muchas ganas de leer, y la otra es que no había manera de encontrarlo. De hecho, ha desaparecido de Internet, al menos en español, prácticamente no hay imágenes de la portada ni nada de información editorial. Es triste que un libro que cuenta los orígenes de la "Autopista de la información" haya desaparecido de esta forma. En su momento no lo leí, y me quedé con ganas, sin embargo me alegro. Me ha result...more

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Jun 29, 2011 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: my-top-10-books, my-very-favourite-authors

Douglas Coupland is one of my favourite authors in the world. His first novel was Generation X, which is actually where that phrase comes from, and in all his books he's got a really unique take on the world. It's not hard to find beauty in nature, which is what a lot of (most?) novelists fall back on when they want to find beauty in the world. Coupland, a Canadian suburban boy, is a product of his time and place, and he seeks to find beauty in the un-idealised world that most of us (or, I shoul...more Douglas Coupland is one of my favourite authors in the world. His first novel was Generation X, which is actually where that phrase comes from, and in all his books he's got a really unique take on the world. It's not hard to find beauty in nature, which is what a lot of (most?) novelists fall back on when they want to find beauty in the world. Coupland, a Canadian suburban boy, is a product of his time and place, and he seeks to find beauty in the un-idealised world that most of us (or, I should say, most of his readers) actually live in. Is there beauty to be found in neon McDonald's signs, or styrofoam packing peanuts, or Facebook, or microwave pizza boxes? Coupland thinks there is, and he tries as hard as he can to describe it. It's a strange way of looking at the world, but it's refreshing that somebody's out there trying. He's also funny as hell, which helps.

Microserfs is, in my opinion, his masterpiece. For once I feel qualified to have that opinion, because I've read (nearly) everything he's ever done. It's about a bunch of computer programmers working for Microsoft in the early nineties who end up junking the cult of Bill Gates and head down to the Silicon Valley to start their own company. What I love about the book is not the paper-thin plot, though, it's the way that each of these geeks has to settle the same spiritual question: how can I be me, yet still get along in the world.

Everybody, I don't care who they are, has some kind of disconnect between how they see themselves and how they behave in society. From telling your friend you love her new haircut when it actually sucks, to pretending you like your job, to pretending you like your partner, there's a subtle discord at the heart of everybody's life. We all have to compromise who we are to take our place as part of a broader society. I think it's a human thing: it's what lets us have society at all.

So all of the main characters in Microserfs---Dan and Karla and Todd and Susan and Bug Barbecue(!)---are massive geeks. Star Trek trivia litters their conversation. They eat Skittles for dinner, while coding for no overtime pay. And, at the beginning of the book, they all worship Bill Gates. But this leaves them as outsiders in the world, and every one of them is desperately lonely and desperate for meaning. Even as they're writing the computer programs that will rule the world, they're living their lives on the fringes. The drama of the book comes from their attempts to change their status-quo.

The ways they go about trying to integrate themselves into society start out pretty superficial (changing hairstyles/going to the gym/etc.) but turn into a very contemporary spiritual quest. It's a beautiful book about coming to terms with who you are, and hey, that's not something I've ever found easy myself, so it's a perfect fit.

I can imagine some people being put off by the techno-speak that litters the book, but I'm not a computer geek by any stretch of the imagination and it never bothered me. It's also a hilariously spot-on depiction of a very specific time and place, a time and place that is just on the borderland of my memory --- sample sentences: "Fax was like the email of the eighties," and "Speaking of the information superhighway, we have all given each other official permission to administer a beating to whoever uses that accursed term. We're so sick of it!" and "Bug accidentally used the term information superhighway, and so we were able to administer a beating." Did I mention yet that it's also funny as hell? Because it is.

Highly, highly recommended.(less)

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Jun 10, 2011 Kater Cheek rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book is lauded as the zeitgeist manifesto of Generation X, and to some extent, that's true. It takes place in the mid-nineties, in Redmond, WA and Silicon Valley, and if you lived through that time (and especially if you were in your early twenties in that time) Microserfs will hit your nostalgia button.

Dan Underwood is a microserf, that is, he's a tester/coder at Microsoft, where employees are expected to work 12, 24, or 36 hour shifts coding and subsist entirely on processed foods bought...more This book is lauded as the zeitgeist manifesto of Generation X, and to some extent, that's true. It takes place in the mid-nineties, in Redmond, WA and Silicon Valley, and if you lived through that time (and especially if you were in your early twenties in that time) Microserfs will hit your nostalgia button.

Dan Underwood is a microserf, that is, he's a tester/coder at Microsoft, where employees are expected to work 12, 24, or 36 hour shifts coding and subsist entirely on processed foods bought in bulk from Price-Costco, as it used to be called. And he does, along with his friends/housemates, but somewhere along the way they start to worry that they don't have lives. So they move to Silicon Valley, to work for a new startup called Oop!

The work is what defines them (they don't like to date or interact with anyone who isn't a techie) but even more than the work itself, they're defined by the group cohesion that the work fosters. At its core, this book is really about the interrelationships of the group of people who become friends while working on the same project at Microsoft, and maintain that friendship even through a move across the country, financial hardships, unfortunate bouts with communism, and health issues.

As with many novels, Microserfs' strength is also its weakness. All of the characters have rich interior lives, and they banter back and forth about philosophical questions, nuances of character, and what it means to be living in the nineties. Reading this, I felt like I was a member of a really tight knit group of friends who shared an inordinate number of inside jokes. I really liked the characters, and almost regretted not being a microserf myself when I had the chance, until I remember what long hours, no sunlight and a diet of entirely processed food does to your body.

Sometimes these observations were interesting, and occasionally even amusing or profound. For example, when a character thanks the other for the fax he sent, and remarks, "Faxes are like email from 1987." Other times, the observations were the kind that make a lot of sense and seem great until you wake up/sober up/come down off your high. Ie. "Abe is against the lack of gun-ho-ishness in pure research. He says Interval is an intellectual Watership Down." Um, how is a theoretical research firm like a novel about rabbits? I get the writing desk/raven riddle, but that one left me stumped.

The other aspect of this novel that I disliked were the pages with random, stream-of-consciousness type text in a plethora of fonts interspaced throughout the novel. I'd be reading along and there'd be this page with text that made about as much sense as those poetry fridge magnets. There'd be random thoughts interspaced with product names, all in varying large bold fonts. Other times, there'd be one or two pages with a single word, like "money" typed across both pages. Maybe Coupland was trying to make some profound statement about non-linear thought, but they came across to me like he was trying too hard. I detest pretention, especially when people confuse incomprehensiblity with profundity. At best, I found these pages a waste of ink and paper.

I did like the characters, and while it dragged out very slow in the last third of the novel, it had a plot that ended satisfactorily. I recommend this novel for Gen X ers, and people who want to understand them.(less)

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Apr 20, 2011 Jacobmartin rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 1990s, american-fiction, american-literature, geek-philosophy, gen-x, contemporary-fiction, depressing-but-important, historical-perspective, no-library-for-old-men, running-in-the-90s, sci-fi

Oh wow, I didn't expect to like this one nearly as much as I did.

Essentially Microserfs is what you get if you fuse 1990s tech industry speculation with a bunch of angsty nerds who see everything around them as sci-fi turning into reality. And it's somehow not egregious. Sure, it's so 1990s it hurts, but when putting nerd history into perspective this is probably - and only after my first read mind you - up there with Neuromancer in a more realistic form.

Microserfs is believable, not once did an...more

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Jan 21, 2011 Shawn Kupfer rated it 5 of 5 stars

You know how, every once in a while, you’re assigned a book to read for class? It’s pretty rare you actually enjoy it. It’s even rarer when that assignment introduces you to one of your favorite authors ever. But that’s what happened to me.

My freshman English class at Florida State was an odd one. The instructor thought this thing called the “Internet” was the future, and we should be spending our time learning HTML rather than reading books by dead guys who didn’t have much to say about the mod...more You know how, every once in a while, you’re assigned a book to read for class? It’s pretty rare you actually enjoy it. It’s even rarer when that assignment introduces you to one of your favorite authors ever. But that’s what happened to me.

My freshman English class at Florida State was an odd one. The instructor thought this thing called the “Internet” was the future, and we should be spending our time learning HTML rather than reading books by dead guys who didn’t have much to say about the modern human condition. But there was this guy Doug Coupland, the guy who’d written “Generation X” — he seemed to know what was coming. He knew how humans and machines were going to have to work together in the future. We could read books by him.

I’m glad I got randomly stuck in the class that I did, because it introduced me to “Microserfs,” and, better yet, to the writing of Douglas Coupland. Coupland didn’t train as a writer — he trained as an artist, and made his living as a futurist before writing books. This one, about a group of low-level Microsoft employees in 1994 who split off to form their own startup, could’ve easily just been an amusing story about some nerdy guys starting their own company. In less capable hands, that is.

Coupland gives us something different here — sure, he tells the story of the startup. He talks about the technology and where it’s going. But most importantly, he talks about the people in his book — how they interact with each other, how they interact with machines, and how the two are related and disparate at the same time.

I have absolutely no problem saying this: Douglas Coupland is the most important writer of the last half-century. Even if he is Canadian. The man is scary-brilliant, and all of his work delves so deeply and accurately into the humanity and culture we find ourselves in every day it’s startling. This review could have easily been about any of his books — “Microserfs” was just the first I read, so that’s the one I’m going with. So read “Microserfs,” then read its spiritual sequel “jPod,” then pick up anything you can find with Doug Coupland’s name on it and read that, too. Then watch the CBC-produced “jPod” TV series. And, after you’ve done all that, join me in frothing at the mouth to see what this singular genius does next.(less)

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Nov 08, 2010 Suzanne Stackle rated it 1 of 5 stars

Being I have not read this book since it was published in 1995. And it being a novel heavily based on technology and it's industry of the mid-nineties, the book is dated. Email use is actually explained and the internet is referred to "The Information Superhighway". (Not really the "Self-Promoting Surface Streets" it turned out to be.)

With all that said, I am finding it difficult to actually think about this book as a novel. It seemed more like an immersion in commerce/industry and it's affects...more

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Sep 18, 2010 Larry rated it 4 of 5 stars

The problem with rating a number of books by a brilliant author - you begin comparing them to one another, rather than to all books that you have ever read. For me, Coupland's greatest book (of the four I have read) is JPod. Microserfs was a predecessor, dealing with the same culture, but written years earlier. OK, it's probably brilliant too, but it's no JPod.

Without having been part of the nerd-computer-programmer culture,I suspect he really nailed it in this portrayal of young Microsoft emplo...more

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Apr 26, 2010 Michael Scott rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, thought

Microserfs tells the story of a group of software developers who transition from the giant corporation Microsoft (in Redmond, WA) to a start-up company Oop! (Silicon Valley, CA). Having read JPod, I was expecting a loose story with no moral implications, garbled geek-speak, and perhaps some funny (for the tech-savvy) anecdotes. Instead, starting from the premise that socially dysfunctional individuals can form a working unit ("get a life"), Douglas Coupland builds THE novel about end-20th centur...more

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May 15, 2009 Aaron rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: dark-comedy, psychology, nerds, favorites

Near perfect in form, presentation and emotional drain. A handful of similarly quirky but unqiue characters handle similarly quirky but unique situations through a variety of historical, current and futuristic technologies, all while building a LEGO simulator that will put their new gaming company on the map. Great portrayl of Bill Gates and the Microsoft culture, as well as the campuses and lifestyles of a variety of other tech companies of the time. Fairly unique in presentation, often incorpo...more

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Aug 23, 2011 Crystal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really enjoyed this book. I first picked it up because the author Douglas Coupland did a nice film on Canadianism called "Souvenirs of Canada" and I thought I'd check out something he has written.

The book is about a group of people (men and women) that work for Microsoft in the early 1990's. The story is told through the perspective of Dan, who is one of these workers and the book is set up like his journal. As such, the writing style is a bit relaxed and random. Some themes include the meanin...more

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Mar 04, 2013 Allan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favourites, third-year-uni

Quasi-bildungsroman, diary-based account of a twenty-something tester at Microsoft who, upon finding himself unhappy with the lifestyle a long-term job structured like an extension of university afforded him, migrates to silicon valley with his posse of no-hoper friends, to work at a software startup. As he and his friends emotionally mature, he realises it was possible, even at Microsoft, to maintain a self-respecting lifestyle; he realises the previous issues were never due, even in part, to w

...more

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Jun 24, 2009 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Douglas Coupland takes on geek culture in this novel, once again seemingly linking directly into my brain and crafting a story written specifically for me and my ilk. (A visit to Nintendo of America's HQ? A character who has read Narnia 87 times? Sweet!)

Presented in the form of a bunch of Powerbook diaries written by the main character Daniel, Microserfs documents the transition of him and his friends from lowly Microsoft erm... serfs... to coders and developers at an exciting multimedia start-u...more

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Aug 13, 2008 Bec rated it 3 of 5 stars

I haven't read any Douglas Coupland in a long time. But I still remember how it felt to read Generation X long ago as a teenager. It was a very different experience reading this book, written in 1994, in 2008 now that the internet is an entirely different beast that permeates our daily activities. I enjoyed it, but it really dated itself. It was a fun exercise in reading it to see how far whe've come with technology.

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Mar 24, 2012 P. Aaron Potter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: geek

I probably shouldn't rate this book as highly as I have, out of respect for those who didn't actually live through it.

For those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s, though, and who were of that small fraction of the population who were in on the ground floor of the digital revolution, as it transformed from lawless frontier to settled territory, Coupland's book was like a flag waving for a country which we hadn't quite known we were citizens of. These days, of course, absolutely everyone is onl...more

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Feb 07, 2012 Ian McGowan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Can't believe it's taken so long to read this book - it should be required reading for every geek. The book starts in Seattle at Microsoft, but quickly moves to Palo Alto and the Silicon Valley startup scene. The story follows a rag-tag assortment of geeks of every stripe, side-stepping the usual stereotypes. It's true that geeks are nerdy about the same things (computers! anime! pop-culture!), but Coupland captures the individuality of the hackers and even the supporting roles have their own st...more

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Mar 04, 2011 Dooug rated it 2 of 5 stars

This book didn't do it for me. Maybe it is because I wasn't a computer geek back in those days and can't relate. It had it's moments of humor and geek culture. It didn't feel like the book was coming from an actually computer geek, it seemed like a mainstream outsider's view at the geek life. Some aspects of their startup company and game program struck me as bogus. The journal style of the book got old, and unbelievable as it became more conversational. The subconscious pages dwindled at the en...more

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Sep 25, 2010 RandomAnthony rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 wh...more 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.

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Feb 20, 2011 Jonathan Fretheim rated it 4 of 5 stars

Re-reading this years later was worthwhile for me after having worked for a giant cult-of-personality-driven tech company and lived in Silicon Valley. As with most of the Coupland books I've read:

...it really seemed like one of those foreign movies that you rent and return half-wound because they're too contrived to be believed, and then real life happens, and you wonder if the Europeans understood everything all along.

Another note: is "fishwich" a Canadianism? Coupland (as always) is dead-on ab...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Molly rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved reading this book, set in the mid 1990s just before the internet highway exploded into mainstream America's workplaces and living rooms.

I loved the voice of the main charactar, Daniel, who seemed like somebody I could have known in college or in grad school. I loved his description of the minutiae of the life of people who work 80 plus hours per week coding software and what their little diversions to keep sane said about them as people.

I loved the philosophical explorations of computers...more

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Jan 19, 2011 Halden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Microserfs is an example of Douglas Coupland doing what he does best, slice of life narrative and excellent dialogue. The story follows the life of Dan, a Microsoft code monkey, and his fellow geeks as they venture into the world outside Microsoft and join to create a software “start up” (the story is set in the 90s when this was still a viable option). We are bombarded with the rigours of geek life, long days of coding, feeling ostracised, trying to get laid etc…

Coupland does a great job of con...more

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About Douglas Coupland

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 sever...more

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“...and when you meet someone and fall in love, and they fall in love with you, you ask them "Will you take my heart-- stains and all?" and they say "I will," and they ask you the same question and you say, "I will," too.” — 72 people liked it

“I saw doves and I thought they were rocks, but they were asleep. My breath made them stir, and they rocks took flight, the earth exploding... and my only thought was that I wanted you to see them, too.” — 37 people liked it

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