They are an intelligent lot and within their conversations we find the sort of philosophy that is so familiar to a Coupland novel. There are a lot of discussions about the future of humanity, the future of technology, and what will happen to both as they become more and more entwined. Each character has hardship – Todd, Karla and Susan are estranged from their parents, Bug has been in the closet for years, Ethan is seriously ill – but they, for the most part, remain upbeat. They are perhaps not the people you would first want to speak to at a party, but they’re good fun and clearly enjoy one another’s company, saying that the money is just a nice bonus, as long as they can all work together and continue having a laugh.
The characters are all really quite lovely people, harmless and all seeking for some meaning in their lives, much like every Coupland character.
And then there’s a whole new world of issues to deal with. Before any of them know it, Michael has been shipped off and out, leaving everyone else to soldier on.īut then they all get messages from their absconded friend – he has started a new company in California and he wants them all to come and work for him. Realising that things are never going to get any better at Microsoft, they all (with the exception of Abe) pack their bags and head off to work on Michael’s new project with his business partner Ethan. Struggling to have lives alongside their jobs, Dan and friends are having issues, made worse by the fact that Dan’s father has just been laid off from his job, and Michael has been personally contacted by Bill. The novel is Dan’s journal, which he’s keeping to help him remember the things that are happening to him in his life, if only maybe to find some meaning. He has a good team around him – desperate-for-a-date Susan, multimillionaire Abe, all-impulse-and–no-consideration Todd, slighty-older-and-slightly-bitter Bug, intelligent-but-undervalued Karla and natural-coder Michael – with whom he also lives. However, he couldn’t run the company alone and there were (and still are) thousands of people beneath him, earning a miniscule fraction of what he brings home, and it is towards them that Douglas Coupland’s microscope turns in his fourth novel.ĭan Underwood is a bug checker for Microsoft, and his life revolves around his tireless, thankless job. One of the frontrunners at the time was, of course, Microsoft and its wise, kind, unreadable boss, Bill Gates.
“This morning, just after 11:00, Michael locked himself in his office and he won’t come out.”Įvery decade has its fads, foibles and figureheads, and in the nineties, it was all about the rise of computing and the sudden surge in the abilities of technology.
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