Player One: What Is to Become of Us (CBC Massey Lecture)

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Player One: What Is to Become of Us (CBC Massey Lecture)

3.51 of 5 stars 3.51 · rating details · 2,316 ratings · 319 reviews

International bestselling author Douglas Coupland delivers a real-time, five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true hum...more

Paperback, 256 pages

Published October 1st 2010 by House of Anansi Press (first published 2010)

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Sep 16, 2012 Tfitoby rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit, sci-fi, favourites

What Is To Become Of Us?

Player One by Douglas Coupland

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Blurb: International bestselling author Douglas Coupland delivers a real-time, five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious...more

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Oct 10, 2010 Mon rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's hard to write about any of Coupland's novel because they are much more than mere plots and characters smudged together. This hits its peak in Player One, possibly the clearest manifestation of Couplandism: where do we go after Postmodernism. When was Generation X published? Let's Google that. 1991. Will the future generation remember a time when information required more physical labour? Look, I can't even get to my review without quoting Coupland, this is how much I love him. So it has bee...more It's hard to write about any of Coupland's novel because they are much more than mere plots and characters smudged together. This hits its peak in Player One, possibly the clearest manifestation of Couplandism: where do we go after Postmodernism. When was Generation X published? Let's Google that. 1991. Will the future generation remember a time when information required more physical labour? Look, I can't even get to my review without quoting Coupland, this is how much I love him. So it has been two decades since his first book, and the transition is striking. The premise is purer and more minimal, the characters well defined as he finally ditched using first person narratives (no offense Doug, but you really aren't a good enough writer for that yet). More importantly, this is a synthesis of all his previous attempts at clarifying his philosophy - it's a combination of Life After God's postmodern religion, Hey Nostradamus's terrorism, Shampoo Planet's denial of the past and Girlfriend in a Coma's So-now-let's-pretend-it's-the-future-what-the-hell-do-we-do. Intentional or not, a lot of material in this book, including character profiles and dialogues are recycled straight from his earlier works. I couldn't help feeling slightly ripped off for $13.50. But it's all very art school isn't it? Appropriation as part of postmodernism. It works much better when Coupland cleans up his half-finished rants and integrates them into a stew of social criticism. One thing, or perhaps the best thing of all, is that Coupland offers hope in his work. Not the obvious Bald-font-36-Helvetica in-your-face Obama sort of hope, but a subtle 'hey I know it's shitty now, and probably will be shitty because we're surrounded by shitty people, and you will most definitely fail, and be broken in the process. But that's ok. Why? Because you're here asking that question'. This really shouldn't be called a novel, it's a bunch of quotes and thoughts put together loosely bound by a post-apocalypse theme. Maybe he should just stop pretending and have a list of Tumblr-ish ideas and illustrations. What was I saying before that? I don't remember. Oh well. This is what the 'save' button is for isn't it.

P.S. I love Coupland. Unless he screwed it up royally (I'm not sure how he could go about that) I knew this is going to get 4/5 stars from me. Probably because he's such a product of art school yet he went on to satirise its exact nature. Now, you don't see Damien Hirst or Vito Acconci doing that do you?(less)

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Mar 06, 2013 Sam Quixote rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Massey Lectures are an annual event in Canada where noted scholars give week long lectures on political, social, cultural, or philosophical topics. Douglas Coupland's contributions to these lectures is, rather than a standard long essay, the novel "Player One". The novel is divided up into 5 "hours" where the novel happens in real time and during the lecture week Doug will read 1 "hour" a day. For the rest of us who aren't going to the Massey Lectures we have this book.

Four strangers strand...more The Massey Lectures are an annual event in Canada where noted scholars give week long lectures on political, social, cultural, or philosophical topics. Douglas Coupland's contributions to these lectures is, rather than a standard long essay, the novel "Player One". The novel is divided up into 5 "hours" where the novel happens in real time and during the lecture week Doug will read 1 "hour" a day. For the rest of us who aren't going to the Massey Lectures we have this book.

Four strangers stranded in a second rate airport lounge unexpectedly find themselves sheltering in it for their lives after Armageddon happens outside. The price of oil skyrockets bringing all transport to a screeching halt and all semblance of civilisation comes to an end. The four strangers are an alcoholic bartender, a single mother on an internet date, a disaffected preacher who stole $20,000 from his church fund, and a young woman with autism. Then there is the fifth character, the strange "Player One" who narrates the events from a distance. But what is going to happen to them? Will they survive this disaster? What about the rest of the human race, and the planet?

The novel will be quite familiar to those who've read Coupland before. There are a number of issues that his characters address that he's addressed in previous novels: humans and their impact on the planet, human culture, the meaning of life, religion, the afterlife, the Smiths, and identity. But given the context of this novel, this summary of Doug's career is what the Massey Lectures is about - the speaker's views on these big issues. In that sense the book is a success with the novel displaying a number of Doug's ideas as well as his storytelling ability and sense of humour.

But as a new novel...? It feels kind of contrived. Take the premise that Armageddon is brought about by overpriced oil. Would this happen? First of all, yes we are going to run out of oil but not for a while and we have the time and knowledge to develop alternate fuel sources. There won't be a breakdown of society in this hysterical fashion. Then there's the fact that despite a number of interesting incidents happening - one of which is a sniper on a rooftop - the novel never really held my attention. It's all about the characters chatting about these big issues and so there is a lot of lofty assertions made without the story ever really changing. So it's kind of dull to read as the story is mostly static. The characters are also never really that interesting. They sound more or less like any of Doug's characters from previous novels.

There's also 30 pages of Doug-isms, that is words or phrases Doug has coined and a definition to go with it, like the footnotes from "Generation X". They're not that clever (nothing to match the catchiness of "McJob" or "Gen X") and clustered together as they are at the back, it just feels a bit heavy-handed.

What is to become of us? Probably not the extremes posed in this book nor is our planet as doomed as Coupland would like to think. It's not a great book following the brilliant "Generation A" but it's not a bad read. Because Coupland throws in so many ideas and thoughts that there's always going to be something for everyone but it feels like a short story stretched to novel length and as such is a bit dull. Game Over. Continue? 9, 8, 7, 6.... (less)

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Dec 19, 2012 Patrick rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

One star for the shot.
One star for the appendix.
One star for Coupland's ability to glorify the sadness of humanity.
One star for God's opinion on evolution.
One star for sentences like, "personality is a slot machine, and the cherries, lemons, and bells are your SSRI system, your schizophrenic tendency, your left/right brain lobalization, your anxiety proclivity, your wiring glitches, your place on the autistic and OCD spectrums - and to these we must add the deep-level influences of the machi...more

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Mar 03, 2012 Silletta rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, narrativa-nordamericana

Il pensiero predominante del libro è stato: ma come diavolo siamo arrivati a questo punto? Da un inizio almeno all'apparenza promettente, ci si ritrova poi ad affrontare un tono pretenzioso e vagamente moraleggiante, camuffato dai discorsi dei personaggi sulle questioni ontologico-esistenziali. E avrei volentieri evitato di leggerli, visto anche che non pensavo proprio di trovarne, se non fosse che tolti quelli, da un certo momento in poi, non rimane altro.
Ma tant'è, il libro in sé si merita un...more

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Feb 15, 2012 Xox rated it 5 of 5 stars

The book is almost finished. So I better write this before I forgot how I feel about it.

First, the characters building.

He is a master of this. No pages of pages of description, just name and some background so that the reader could have enough input to formulate an image of a person.

It covers some pop culture, the self-help guru. The give me your money and go through the training to feel better. With only a few pages of appearance, it already established how a person could buy into this kind o...more

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Apr 10, 2013 Stephanie verzelen rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is when half-star ratings would come in handy - three feels too average, four feels like a bridge too far. All in all a fun, swift, semi-apocalyptic story about some people trapped in an airport bar together while the world outside is going crazy over an oil-crisis and chemical explosions and what have you. An incredibly quick read due to a limited but interesting mix of - well-developed - characters, a set setting and few crazy plot-developments but at the same time quite an interesting re...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Kent Winward rated it 5 of 5 stars

This novel is actually five lectures down for the Canadian Massey Lectures. It was originally broadcast as a five hour radio show with a separate hour each week. Coupland is at his finest when satirically critiquing culture.

Like Coupland, I'm a tail-end Baby Boomer or a seminal Gen X-er, so maybe it is an age thing that he resonates so well with me. The novel explores ideas that I think about on a quite constant basis -- sin, religion, economics, technology, neurology and the human condition in...more

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Nov 12, 2012 David S. rated it 4 of 5 stars

There is something disturbing about writers as intelligent as Douglas Coupland. Underneath the brilliant psychological dialogue, the haunting charismatic cast of underachievers, and the creative plot that is impossible to predict, lies writing that is so fresh and honest that it is scary truthful. Player One is that book, depicting the tale of five characters trapped in a cocktail lounge during a world changing event. The discussion topics: humanity vs. everything else and whether we are worth i...more

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Aug 04, 2012 Edmole rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Douglas Coupland is one of those artists, like Woody Allen or Kevin Smith, whose characters all speak in his voice. Now whether this technique/failing works for you very much depends on the voice. I love me some Woody Allen. Boy howdy, do I hate me some Kevin Smith.

Luckily, Coupland's dense, florid, fact-packed inner and outer dialogue does it for me big time. From page one where a MILF on a plane ruminates on whether the teenager taking sneaky snaps of her will be sharing them online as soon as...more

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Jun 02, 2012 Anita rated it 1 of 5 stars

Player one – what is to become of us? Is a novel in five hours by Douglas Coupland. It centres around four main characters who meet in an airport lounge bar and become trapped there when a oil crises erupts and the world descends into apocalyptical chaos.
Karen – a single mother who met a man online and has chosen the Toronto airport lounge bar to meet and vet her future mate. Rick – a down on his luck one time drunk is now the bar tender and spends his days sizing up his ever fleeting clients a...more Player one – what is to become of us? Is a novel in five hours by Douglas Coupland. It centres around four main characters who meet in an airport lounge bar and become trapped there when a oil crises erupts and the world descends into apocalyptical chaos.
Karen – a single mother who met a man online and has chosen the Toronto airport lounge bar to meet and vet her future mate. Rick – a down on his luck one time drunk is now the bar tender and spends his days sizing up his ever fleeting clients as he plies them with drinks and listens to their problems. During the first chapter of the novel he pledges what money he has to a self help guru who arrives briefly in the bar, takes a photo with Rick takes his money and leaves. Luke – a pastor with endless father issues, suffering a crisis of faith who has just stolen his church’s roof fixing fund and gone on the run. And Rachel stunningly attractive computer -whizz dressed in an exquisite channel dress and of a mental disposition (somewhere on the autism scale) that prohibits normal human behaviour. Incapable of human contact or interaction she has yet set out to find herself a lover, become pregnant thereby proving to her father that she is truly human. Seeing the world through emotionless clinical eyes she sizes up first Luke then Rick as the future father of her child.
There is also ‘Player one’ a disembodied voice that views and comments objectively on the characters actions past current and future.
Whilst the four sit in the lounge the price of oil skyrockets and they begin to hear explosions from outside, they run outside to Rick’s car to tune into the news on the radio and are shot at by a sniper from the roof of the lounge, which kills Karen’s internet date. The rest run back inside and barricade the doors, later sealing the room when a chemical rain starts to fall all around and tries to infiltrate the room. The foursome tries to take out the sniper, fail and he ends up demanding entry to their lounge to avoid the chemical fall out. He gets let in, tied to a chair and guarded by them. A short time later a teenage boy arrives blinded and burning by the chemicals in the air. Karen looks after him and recognises him from her flight when she caught him snapping pictures of her on his iphone.
The cast of characters trapped in the bar struggle widely with notions of faith, society, power, death, technology, mental illness, functions of the mind and many more issues that at times seem overly forced into the narrative. The novel has interesting points (namely Karen’s teenage daughters assertion that the world only remembers the people who invented new hair styles – Hitler, Einstein, Marilyn Monroe etc). I also get that the interesting narrative technique is supposed to give the reader a piece-by-piece complete if detached view of the whole. I enjoyed the character of Rachel especially when she relates to the others in ways she has been taught in her ‘normalcy training’ which inevitably get the expected response, proving I suppose that as unique as we believe we are, a socially inept girl can be taught a few simple tricks that will work on each and every one of our ‘unique’ selves.
On the whole however I did not enjoy this book, it is definitely readable and in places even quite humorous but I found the themes very easy, shallow ones which are then laboured over to the point of being forced, some of the conversations between the characters especially lacked the flow of realism. However I have recently read that the book is aimed at a younger audience and so perhaps that is why there is not much hidden beneath the surface. I reiterate that I found it eminently readable and so will not be put off reading anything further of Copland’s.
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Mar 31, 2012 Melissa rated it 1 of 5 stars

After reading only 8 pages of this book it began to become very obvious to me (as I assume it will to any Coupland fan) that there is a lot of content in this book which has been recycled from his previous novels.
For example: The 'rapture on a plane' section is paraphrased from The Gum Thief, and the yawning bird point is mentioned in that book too; Many, many ideas which were already used (more skilfully) in Eleanor Rigby (eg, Black stars during daylight, reaction to shopping for books about lo...more

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Mar 26, 2012 Alex rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've unintentionally gone on "author binges" this year, and the last week and a half has definitely been a Coupland binge. For whatever reason, "Generation A" caught my eye at the bookstore recently, and I was immediately consumed (if occasionally unable to suspend my disbelief :-p). I then had to go back and reread "Generation X," and I subsequently landed on "Player One."

The best part of an author binge is that you get to see the way an author grapples with the major themes of his or her life...more

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Jan 22, 2012 Tim Gingrich rated it 4 of 5 stars

The story starts simply enough: five individuals trapped for five hours in an airport hotel lounge, which coincidently corresponds to five chapters, which each neatly correspond to an hour in real time.

But no sooner does Douglas Coupland set up Player One’s orderly world than he relinquishes that simple world to chaos.

It comes in the form of a news ticker on the lounge’s television – and things go downhill at the speed of cable news: a bomb is detonated at the OPEC summit, crude oil skyrockets,...more The story starts simply enough: five individuals trapped for five hours in an airport hotel lounge, which coincidently corresponds to five chapters, which each neatly correspond to an hour in real time.

But no sooner does Douglas Coupland set up Player One’s orderly world than he relinquishes that simple world to chaos.

It comes in the form of a news ticker on the lounge’s television – and things go downhill at the speed of cable news: a bomb is detonated at the OPEC summit, crude oil skyrockets, a mushroom cloud, an unknown assailant…

Just a few hours ago, everything was so normal (a word on which Player One declares all out war). The single mom was waiting for her Internet hook-up, the bartender was looking forward to shaking the hand of a self-help guru, the renegade pastor was wondering how long it would take his flock to find the church fund missing, and the autistic knock-out blonde was Googling mice breeding.

All the while, the reader is visited by the voice of Player One. Player One is not bound by human limitations of time or space. He (or she?) jumps between tenses and perspectives, fast-forwards the story at will, and considers the drama unfolding in the airport hotel lounge with both uncommon insight and strange detachment, leading the reader to the inextricable conclusion that whoever or whatever It is knows the end of the story.

“Much of what normal people think of as art is simply the establishment of repetitive structures that become interesting when they are broken in some way,” one of the characters realizes.

Player One is a textbook example of how writers deal with big events by focusing on the little lives of the people caught inside (i.e. almost any war movie). The book quickly leaps from the limited worlds of its characters to an omnipresent narrative about the underpinnings of the universe, the purpose of life and the nature of time.

Player One is about what it really means to be human – no small task. What sets Player One apart from other stories with such lofty goals (2001: A Space Odyssey, Tree of Life) is that Coupland manages to bring it all back together into a neatly packaged Hollywood ending where the bad guys get what they deserve and the good guys live happily ever after (relatively speaking for an oil-depleted dystopia). That he does so may be anathema to some critics. It may also be Coupland’s own way of critiquing a race of beings who are conditioned, programed, destined or doomed to wrap their humanity, their very existence, around a story.
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Sep 02, 2011 Darrell Reimer rated it 2 of 5 stars

Alright, so I lied — or spoke too soon, at any rate. After Generation A I was determined to never again pick up another Douglas Coupland novel. But then the CBC announced Coupland as last year's Massey Lecturer; to clinch any potential listener disappointment, they immediately added that Coupland would be “lecturing” in a novel format. Well . . . I suppose that was indeed a “novel” approach to take, if only by CBC standards.

The Massey Lectures are a platform for a Canadian blowhard-at-large to s...more Alright, so I lied — or spoke too soon, at any rate. After Generation A I was determined to never again pick up another Douglas Coupland novel. But then the CBC announced Coupland as last year's Massey Lecturer; to clinch any potential listener disappointment, they immediately added that Coupland would be “lecturing” in a novel format. Well . . . I suppose that was indeed a “novel” approach to take, if only by CBC standards.

The Massey Lectures are a platform for a Canadian blowhard-at-large to summon his (and occasionally her) most pertinent insights gleaned from a respectable life's work. This frequently requires the person to resort to, in their case, extreme truncation, often producing the most accessible and thought-provoking work in their entire ouevre. Even when the personality invited is someone I've wearied of, I make it a point to tune in, or read the essays when the event is over. I'm always grateful for the experience.

As I was this time, too — although just barely. All of Coupland's foibles and weaknesses as a fiction writer are on full display. Some years back a former copy-editor of Coupland groused (anonymously, of course) that the job had been akin to shepherding a beginner's creative writing class. With that kvetch freshly resurrected in memory, and compelled by the recent internet fixation with marginalia, I picked up my pen and treated the book as a proof-text. The exercise produced pages like this and this, and a happier feeling for me as a reader.

Do I really need to comment on content? Coupland glosses over issues of identity, distraction, consumption and the capacity for empathy, the post-Protestant religious impulse, extinction and a few other fixations that keep nagging at him, but which he can't seem to give cogent voice to except through the mouths of superficially distinct characters engaged in an extreme form of group therapy. These “episodes” suggest a solipsist narrator of particularly high sensitivity, who is continually astonished by the intrusions other people make.

Does that sound to you like a bad thing? Then you probably should avoid this book. Otherwise, take it for what it's worth. Just remember: pens are required when reading Coupland.(less)

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May 25, 2011 Cori rated it 5 of 5 stars

Where were you the day oil hit $250 a barrel? Oh wait - it hasn't happened yet. Just in the mind of Douglas Coupland and shared in his latest book "Player One". In this book, the story centres around the unique experience of 4 people, each at an airport bar for a different reason and how they came together when facing what might have seemed like the end of the world the day the price of oil skyrocketed and things began to go terribly wrong.

Rick is the bartender in the lounge. A recovering alcoho...more

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Mar 09, 2011 Michele rated it 4 of 5 stars

As part of the Massey Lecture series, this novel is already an unusual kind of creature. But. In addition to being a lecture and a novel, there's also a trailer for the book! A TRAILER for a BOOK. I've never heard of that before. You can check it out on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4fAmO...

Of course because it's a lecture it's also a 'big ideas' kind of novel, but don't let that fool you. The ideas are presented in a fascinating way without being didactic. I read a lot of 'big idea'...more

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Mar 03, 2011 Ryan I rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. When Coupland wrote 'Generation X', he created and crazy-glued a label onto an entire generation that can't be ripped or torn off.

In 'Player One', Coupland goes further, teasing us with what lies ahead in the not-so-far-away future known as 'the New Normal.'

'Player One' is full of huge, prophetic ideas, but it's not a sprawling,eclectic mix of tales of an accelerated culture told by burnout slackers. This is minimalist theater played out in a dirtbag airport lounge, where four desperate, and ve...more

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Jan 20, 2011 Jean rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

Too bad books don't get remakes like films sometimes do. This book deserves one. The ideas, questions and characters in this novel are remarkable, confrontational and thought-provoking and the book is sprinkled with wit and good-to-know facts. Did you know that for every living person, there are only 19 dead people? But this book is like the Singapore sling Karen is drinking: too many ingredients for such a small container. 246 Pages is just not enough to offer more than a sketch of the issues a...more

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Dec 11, 2010 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, adult-fiction, apocalyptic-fiction

I wouldn't have believed it myself, but Douglas Coupland, one of my favorite writers in his heyday, makes a strong and moving return to form in "Player One". I first heard the ending of this, possibly the most stirring and poetic part, broadcast as the radio lecture one night while driving around, and went on a desperate search for the book at a Borders within the next few days when I found out the beautiful passages I was hearing were from my once-beloved Coupland!

The scenario of five strangers...more

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Nov 30, 2010 Mike rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audiobooks

This was a good one. I listened to the podcast of the live CBC Massey lectures, which was slightly abridged, and perhaps not for the better -- it sometimes felt like relevant materials was left out.

Anyway: The novel uses a seemingly apocalyptic scenario to address the question "What is it that makes us human?" I've kind of got a boner for that question, because I think it's important to our getting along peaceably on planet Earth, so my reaction to the novel was probably skewed in a positive dir...more

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Nov 13, 2010 Chad Post rated it 3 of 5 stars

Although for years I've avoided Douglas Coupland (though I'll admit to loving GENERATION X when it first came out, and finding LIFE AFTER GOD *profound* when I was in college--which is most likely an untrustworthy endorsement), I decided to pick this up because of this (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/opi...) interesting "Dictionary of the Near Future," and this (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/n...) "Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next Ten Years." Not to mention, I've been quasi-obsesse...more Although for years I've avoided Douglas Coupland (though I'll admit to loving GENERATION X when it first came out, and finding LIFE AFTER GOD *profound* when I was in college--which is most likely an untrustworthy endorsement), I decided to pick this up because of this (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/13/opi...) interesting "Dictionary of the Near Future," and this (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/n...) "Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next Ten Years." Not to mention, I've been quasi-obsessed recently with literary writers writing apocalyptic novels, and PLAYER ONE perfectly fits that trend.

The set-up for this novel sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: three people walk into a hotel bar--a woman on an Internet date, a priest who stole from his flock, and a girl with a severe case of asbergers--and then the world ends. The "It's the End of the World!" plot is really the weakest part of this novel, being both overly intrusive (the characters have to keep dealing with what's going on outside of the bar) and something Coupland is disinterested in (he just wants his characters to talk about what it means to be human) to the point that it feels both absurd and totally unnecessary. Although, this also suffers from the "dance movie" problem in which it's never mention just how fucking unlikely it is that four random people (or seven, depending on how you count things) all happen to be interested in discussing what makes us human, whether they believe in god, etc. Granted, this is a suspension of disbelief moment, but without a single foil, a single dude who thinks this sort of talk is ridiculous, always punctures my disbelief. (Not that I wouldn't love to get trapped in a hotel bar with such interesting people . . . Unfortunately, my last hotel bar experience included a bunch of boring-ass librarians who were playing "Go Fish" and a guy who pontificated--loudly--about cable/satellite laws.)

There are some nice moments in the book--such as Karen's first meeting with the guy she met online--but the most interesting part of the book is the "Future Legend," which is an expanded version of the "Dictionary of the Near Future" mentioned above. Coupland's interests here involve the idea that we're not all that individual, that ideas about time are a huge concern with our functioning, and that we're all fucking neurotic in one way or another. Some entries are just fun, such as "Bell's Law of Telephony: No matter what technology is used, your monthly phone bill magically remains about the same size," or "Rosenwald's Theorem: The belief that all the wrong people have self-esteem." Others are a bit longer and more interesting, like:

"Collapse Attraction: The situation in which people are usually at their most attractive and interesting shortly before a total personality collapse. While some of us are attracted to those who are vulnerable--because it makes us feel good by comparison, or it makes us feel good to be able to help, or to *think* we can help--it also turns out that if you are convinced that nobody could possibly like you, you often become less inhibited. Not caring give you a bulletproof aura of mystery and aloofness."

Anyway, this book is overall just OK. The "legend" is fun, but the accompanying story doesn't create a compelling enough tableau to see these terms/ideas play out . . .(less)

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Mar 14, 2013 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars

My first time reviewing a book online and here it goes: what a wonderful book filled with thought-provoking one liners and concepts. As other reviews have pointed out, this book isn't as concerned with plot as it is with introducing to readers Douglas Coupland's philosophy on the human condition.

I finished this novel in exactly one day and I had an absolute blast. The first half was amazing, filled with great monologues and perspectives on the human condition. The last 1/3 of the book (excludin...more

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Jan 13, 2013 C. D. rated it 4 of 5 stars

Douglas Coupland's impeccable style and understanding of the properties of human existence shine in his 2010 novel, Player One: What Is to Become of Us. Beginning rather cheerfully and humorously, things take a turn for the worse when unexpectedly, and unexplained, the price of crude oil sails to a bewildering price of $300+ per barrel. The tragedies begin to pile upon one another as people fight, loot, riot, and rebel in order to find not only gasoline, but general resources. Taking place almos...more

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Aug 24, 2012 Beverley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites, important-books, read-in-2012, intellectual, set-in-the-future

Player One was originally written as a series of week long one hour lectures, hence the novel is split up into five "hours" and is written in real time.

This is the first Coupland book I've read in years, I have a vague recollection of skimming through Generation X in my teens and dismissing it as pretentious intellectualism. It would be interesting to re-read it now and see what I think as I really enjoyed Player One and Coupland's unique style of writing.

When Coupland describes a character he g...more Player One was originally written as a series of week long one hour lectures, hence the novel is split up into five "hours" and is written in real time.

This is the first Coupland book I've read in years, I have a vague recollection of skimming through Generation X in my teens and dismissing it as pretentious intellectualism. It would be interesting to re-read it now and see what I think as I really enjoyed Player One and Coupland's unique style of writing.

When Coupland describes a character he gets to the nitty gritty, into their soul and thought process. The novel alternated between the point of view of a preacher turned thief, an ex-alcoholic bar tender, a beautiful autistic teenager and a 40 year old divorcee. Then throw into the mix a self help guru, an indiscriminate killer, a MILF hunter and an awkward internet hook up, and you have Player One's unlikely cast. Whilst each character has a distinct personality Coupland points out"we run out of things that make us an individual very quickly; all of us have more in common than we do not have in common". And he's right of course. In a world overpopulated with 6 billion people, how is it possible to be truly unique? Yet everyone wants to feel they are different, everyone wants to count, as Luke puts it "I want a Wikipedia page. I want Google hits. I don't want to just be a living organism that comes and goes and leaves no trace on the planet". So many of us can relate to this. Or at least I can. Yet in wanting fame, or infamy as the case may be, we become just like everyone else.

I could go into the intricacies of the plot but a Coupland novel is much more than this. It's food for thought. It's liberation. And most importantly it made me think about so many things I'd never normally consider. I feel a better person for reading Player One, like I learnt something intangible yet important. I will definitely be reading more from him. Whilst the characters are different they all speak with Coupland's voice and give you a unique glimpse into a future I hope we never have to witness.

The only thing I would say that errs on the negative side is that this is not a books you can read when you're sleepy and about to go to bed. It requires full concentration, if you daydream through a paragraph you will lose the thread entirely and need to re-read it. As i'm the kind of person who likes to read before I go to bed to relax this was hard going at times. Player One a relaxation book that i'd take to the park to chill out with, it's a thinking book that challenges you, and whilst I honestly do love this, after 250 pages I felt like i'd earned a well deserved rest!(less)

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Nov 08, 2010 Eric rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Douglas Coupland has this way of using his fiction to advance sociological and existential concepts in this utterly facile and casual way that always makes me wonder: is it that he's really, really smart and he's trying to dumb it down to make it accessible to me, the common reader, or is it that he really isn't all that bright? (I have the same question about the Matrix movies, if that helps you to understand - brilliant idea, dumbed down for the masses, or just really banal, obvious idea?) He'...more Douglas Coupland has this way of using his fiction to advance sociological and existential concepts in this utterly facile and casual way that always makes me wonder: is it that he's really, really smart and he's trying to dumb it down to make it accessible to me, the common reader, or is it that he really isn't all that bright? (I have the same question about the Matrix movies, if that helps you to understand - brilliant idea, dumbed down for the masses, or just really banal, obvious idea?) He's at it again here, and if Coupland's best novel, Hey Nostradamus!, comprised his thoughts on Columbine, then Player One: What Is to Become of Us (portentous, deep title - ooh! ahh!) is his rumination on 9/11, Peak Oil Apocalypse, loneliness, and God. There's other Deep Stuff in there, too, if that's too light for you. To summarize the plot, as told from the novel's five viewpoints (I guess, the book has serious POV issues): A small group of lonely people, each trying to escape his or her particular form of loneliness, become trapped in a hotel bar at the Toronto Int'l Airport during a cataclysmic Event. Hilarity and Expansion of Consciousness ensue. So aside from all the Deep Thoughts, it's basically a SyFy Channel adaptation of a Stephen King novella.

But like most of Coupland's work, it's pretty clear here that the cranial edema he has suffered since his first book, Generation X, made him an overnight genius and spokesman for a generation has not subsided. So there's LOTS of Deep Thoughts. Player One (which was originally conceived as a five-hour series of broadcasts for the CBC's Massey Lecture Series) even comes with its own handy glossary of neologisms based on the Heavy Concepts advanced in the body of the book, in case you didn't get it when he hammered you over the head with these Heavy Concepts the first couple times around.

So read it if it sounds like it's your cup of tea, or if you enjoy being condescended to. At 220 pages of large-font, 8th-grade level prose, it won't waste a lot of your time.(less)

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Sep 01, 2011 Sylvied rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: canadiana, spec-fiction

I enjoyed it. The characters were engaging and the lifestyles and interactions portrayed were insightful and gave an intersting picture of what life really is like in the early 21st century in the industrialized world. Lots of varying perspectives, geekiness, fanaticism, isolation and detachment and a healthy dose of paranoia. Early on one character reflects that they think the witness protection program is a massive cover-up, people are just killed by the government. It's a clever cover up thou...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Matthew Pennell rated it 4 of 5 stars

There’s nothing quite like a Douglas Coupland book. From the relentless pop-culture references to the hyper-communicative characters — even the dialogue-heavy prose possesses a distinctly Couplandesque rhythm.

Player One, the novelisation of his 2010 Massey Lectures, touches on many of the themes of his previous works; we have a global catastrophe and semi-end-of-the-world hysteria (Girlfriend in a Coma, Generation A); random shootings (Hey Nostradamus!); musings on identity and ‘starting over’ (...more

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Jan 21, 2012 Steev Hise rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels, fun, own-it, after-the-fall

This book reminds me of Generation X, Coupland's first novel, which I read when i came out just about exactly 20 years ago. Like Generation X, it's full of characters who most of the time don't do much but are full of profound thoughts. All the characters are similarly smart and introspective and philosophical, and their thoughts are super super interesting. In this, Coupland's writing is pretty unrealistic, as I don't believe very many people really are this way. But I think much of his fiction...more This book reminds me of Generation X, Coupland's first novel, which I read when i came out just about exactly 20 years ago. Like Generation X, it's full of characters who most of the time don't do much but are full of profound thoughts. All the characters are similarly smart and introspective and philosophical, and their thoughts are super super interesting. In this, Coupland's writing is pretty unrealistic, as I don't believe very many people really are this way. But I think much of his fiction is not meant to be realistic, but more of simply and excuse for him to expound on a variety of interesting ideas he has. This is pretty much how my fiction is as well, whenever I try to write fiction now, and that makes me realize that Generation X probably had a very large influence on my writing, as well as just my thinking and worldview in general.

It's a small book. It's not extremely ambitious, and it succeeds in what it sets out to do. Right on the cover it says "a novel in 5 hours", and that's precisely what it is, in terms of the story it tells (5 hours of several people in a cocktail lounge dealing with the chaos that happens when crude oil suddenly rises to 900 bucks a barrel) - although many of the concepts it covers are eternal. For that, it's impressive, and the small story is still just gripping enough to have made me keep reading it, very quickly.

The only really unfortunate thing about the book is that the last 30 pages are a strange sort of glossary, which is somewhat anti-climactic and and redundant. The glossary basically defines a lot of the ideas in the book, as a sort of geeky coined-phrase list, but most of the ideas were pretty thoroughly explored and explained in the novel itself. It makes me think that Coupland probably wanted to include these definitions in the text as little sidebars, just like in Generation X, and this would have certainly been better, but perhaps the design budget for this book was not enough to make that possible, so they slapped them on at the end.

Anyway, people who like to think about death, God, Peak Oil, the end of the world, love, autism, and/or the Internet will all probably find something to love in Player One.(less)

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Apr 20, 2011 Nicole (imluvinit) rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book would make a horrible movie. Mainly because of how fantastic the writing is! The character development, the expression on life...ah, it's fantastic. I would say this is a thinking book. If you need an escape---and I can understand that feeling --- this book wouldn't be for you at that moment. But if you want a book that will make you think about life, the after-life and the "fallen angel" in all of us. To summarize it's plot: it's a post-apocalyptic type theme with humor twisted in the...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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Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

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Quotes from Player One: What Is to...

“You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn't care. I guess that's what's scariest: not caring about the loss.” — 60 people liked it

“By the age of twenty, you know you're not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you're not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in- you wonder if you're ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy and successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate...

...I mean, why do people live so long? What could be the difference between death at fifty-five and death at sixty-five or seventy-five or eighty-five? Those extra years... what benefit could they possibly have? Why do we go on living even though nothing new happens, nothing new is learned, and nothing new is transmitted? At fifty-five, your story's pretty much over.” — 34 people liked it

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Player One: What Is to Become of Us (CBC Massey Lecture)

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