- Hardcover: 371 pages
- Publisher: Harpercollins (Jun 1995)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0060391480
- ISBN-13: 978-0060391485
- Product Dimensions: 21 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 650,843 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Microserfs: A Novel (P.S.)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
By the author of "Generation X". Set in Seattle's grunge rock clubs and coffee bars, this book focuses on the subculture of computer programmers at Microsoft who are frustrated by the mindless toil of churning out bits of programming. They are the microserfs bound by Bill Gates's high salaries.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Douglas Coupland first came to prominence as the author of Generation X (1995). He followed that with a sequence of ever-more daring and inventive novels, including Life After God, Girlfriend in a Coma and Hey Nostradamus! He lives in Vancouver.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
This morning, just after 11:00, Michael locked himself in his office and he won't come out. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
This morning, just after 11:00, Michael locked himself in his office and he won't come out. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition
This is one of Coupland's best books, if not the best. I keep returning to it. I'm not a computer geek and although the language contains a lot of expressions specific to the worlds of microsoft, apple etc, it doesn't really matter whether you understand every single thing he writes about. The characters are wonderful. It's such a positive, life-affirming, humane book. I absolutely love it. It's amazing.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
226 reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Kindle Edition badly in need of editing/proofreading.
8 July 2011
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
This would easily be a 4 star book for me and in paperback I'd give it that in a heartbeat but the Kindle edition is horrible. It seems like someone ran a hardcopy through a scanner and then OCR'ed it without proofreading it at all. There are letters missing, a few entire words missing and many, many instances of the wrong letter over and over (like a U instead of a V - there's an entire section where it says Silicon Ualley over and over) and places where the wrong word was picked up (ie - Interiority becomes Inferiority, somewhat appropriate in describing this edition).
I've read the book before and enjoyed it but the Kindle edition was a bit of a chore. It looks like the publisher didn't even proofread this book once before uploading it. A shame, really.
I've read the book before and enjoyed it but the Kindle edition was a bit of a chore. It looks like the publisher didn't even proofread this book once before uploading it. A shame, really.
50 of 57 people found the following review helpful
everything that is important about engineering culture
30 April 2000
Format:Paperback
After reading Tracy Kidder's acclaimed (by the New Yorker crowd) Soul of a New Machine, I thought to myself "here's a guy who spent 12 hours/day with engineers for an entire year and learned nothing about engineering, nothing about what matters to engineers, and nothing about the hearts and minds of engineers. After reading Microserfs, I thought "here's a guy who seems to have spent a week with engineers and effortlessly absorbed everything that is important about engineering culture, everything that matters about working at a big company, and everything that matters about working at a startup." Coupland's writing is better crafted here than in his earlier books, e.g., Generation X.
15 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Imaginative and enjoyable
18 Jan 2002
Format:Paperback
Being a spanish-speaking person and spanish-language reader, I don't have much opportunities to read American contemporary authors, unless they're writing computer systems technical books. So I must admit, my first glance at Microserfs was motivated by the curiosity of someone trying to describe how tech-obsessed, workaholic and project-slaved workers (as most people in my carreer) thought, felt and dreamed. I thought it would certainly be a challenge to build a plot with such characters. Copeland proved me wrong.
As I read this book, I got lest interested with the similarities to real geeks and more involved in the real metaphor of Microserfs: the search for personal realization in each of this genious but not so life-wise characters. This process, narrated with humor, tech & tv real-world metaphors, self-inspection and lots of deliciously imaginative - and fantastic- theories in the minds of each character, is what really drives the reader to love this book from beginning to end.
So I would recommend Microserfs twice: 1: to get a good understanding of geeks - which after reading this book will probably be no stranger to the reader than any average football fan, or any other obsessed kind, 2, to read a funny and imaginative novel while learning how this 21st century life is reshaping American's relationships and personal quests. The book's ending, fantastically crafted and at the same time full of new questions, is the best example of how this two ideas live together in Copeland's book.
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