Microserfs
A Novel
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4,6 • Оценок: 24
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- 8,99 $
От издателя
They are Microserfs—six code-crunching computer whizzes who spend upward of sixteen hours a day "coding" and eating "flat" foods (food which, like Kraft singles, can be passed underneath closed doors) as they fearfully scan company e-mail to learn whether the great Bill is going to "flame" one of them. But now there's a chance to become innovators instead of cogs in the gargantuan Microsoft machine. The intrepid Microserfs are striking out on their own—living together in a shared digital flophouse as they desperately try to cultivate well-rounded lives and find love amid the dislocated, subhuman whir and buzz of their computer-driven world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With his nose to the zeitgeist, the author of Generation X again examines the angst of the white-collar, under-30 set in this entertaining tale of computer techies who escape the serfdom of Bill Gates's Microsoft to found their own multimedia company. The story is told through the online journal of Danielu@microsoft.com, an affable, insomniac, 26-year-old aspiring code writer. Together with his girlfriend Karla, a mousy shiatsu expert with a penchant for Star Trekky aphorisms, and a tight clique of maladjusted, nose-to-the-grindstone housemates, he relocates to a Lego-adorned office in Palo Alto, Calif., to develop a product called Object Oriented Programming (Oop!), a form of virtual Lego. Much of the story concerns the the Oop! staff's efforts to raise capital and ``have a life'' amid 18-hour work days. Dan's journal, like much prose on the Internet, abounds in typos, encrypted text, emoticons-:) for happy and :( for sad-and random snippets of information, a format that suits Copland's disjointed, soundbite-heavy fiction. Yet the randomness and nonlinearity of cyberspace hobble narrative. Amid endless digital chitchat and pop-philosophy, this novel's more serious ruminations about the physical and social alienation of life on the Information Superhighway never achieve any real complexity.
Отзывы покупателей
Coupland is truly a master of modern writing
"Microserfs" is by far one of my favorite novels to read and re-read. Much in the vain of his previous novel ("Generation X"), Coupland takes the reader on a journey of self-worth, self evaluation, and self discovery.
As the story opens, the characters are very two-dimensional and confined to their own microcosm of work and life. As the story progresses, the characters evolve their own fully realized personas and really make the reader evaluate their own lives as they watch the emotional roller coasters of those on the pages they are reading. Truly this story is a parallel of the novel "Flatland" by Edwin A. Abbott in the way the characters grow and mature on the pages throughout the book. It opens the mind and the soul in an emotional growth experience every time I open the cover of this book.