This novel, written and set in the mid-1990s, is about a group of Microsoft employees who quit, move to Silicon Valley, and start a company of their own. I first read (and loved) it in 1997, shortly after moving to Silicon Valley myself, so rereading it was strongly nostalgic of both the era and my younger self. This time around, I wondered how many of the now-familiar technical and cultural references were meaningless to me back then.

MICROSERFS is great as a depiction of 90s geek culture and as a portrait of an engaging group of friends. The story is presented as a series of journal entries, a format that is somewhat limiting and leads to the inclusion of various boring details during the lulls when nothing's happening in the narrator's life. In general, it's not a plot-heavy book -- that synopsis I gave in the first sentence is pretty much the story -- but I was happy just spending time with the characters. So despite the weaknesses in the narrative, I enjoyed the reread, and I remain a fan of the way this book captures a time and place.

It reads like a very long blog post -- so much so that I feel it couldn't be far removed from a very-detailed autobiography of a Microsoft employee who moved down to Silicon Valley to be part of a startup. I had just moved to Silicon Valley when I read this, and was astonished at how detailed the descriptions of local streets and freeway clovers were; even the description of Fry's in Palo Alto as an oasis of components was so accurate I found it less of a crafted novel and more like an ambling letter.

I have a lot of affection for the author. I found the early allusions to leet-speak quite amusing, as it was written much before this came into the mainstream.

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 (and tecnology in general) as extensions of our subconscious.

I especially loved the very humanistic ending.

And, for my friends who love Legos, I love the small yet important part that they played in the book.

Well done, Douglas Coupland. Reading this book for the 1st time in 2010 showed me how ahead of your time you were in 1993!

è un libro del '95, eppure dentro c'è già molto di quello che avrebbe segnato una certa parte della società nel decennio successivo (e credo anche in quello in corso), tanto nelle vicende e nei caratteri dei personaggi quanto in quegli elenchi di termini e frasi che dan butta giù nel file "subconscio" (che alla fine appaiono come un'estremizzazione del dizionario a margine delle pagine di "generazione x"). non ci fosse stato "generazione x" mi verrebbe da definirlo il libro migliore di coupland.
peccato che nell'edizione in mio possesso -la prima- ci siano una manciata di errori di traduzione decisamente fastidiosi...

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 place. fucker.

it might have been an OKAY book if it were a true story about a bunch of people i REALLY like but as a fictional account, um, yeah. dumb.

enough invective for now. apologies.

It was an eerie experience to read a book set in the tech world of the early 90s... on yellowed paper. 'Bill' (Gates) looms large although the group of Microsoft employees soon make the jump to a start up.

It was such a tender book, with two families... Dan the narrator and his parents (and the deceased brother Jed), and the family created by the friends - finding food flat enough to post under a door to a holed up friend, gently tolerating the physique-obsessed Todd as he wheels through umpteen political ideologies, the remarkable female bonding (the 'chunks' discussion and the calm response of the listening men make this a book which would be well read by young people today)

I was not entirely sure that the 'unusual' elements added a great deal - the words which are Dan documenting thoughts perhaps, but the pages of 'meaningless' characters didn't seem to although the way the story was chopped up and paced did work well.

For a book that came out in 1996 it is very prophetic at times!

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.

3.5

2006 wrote: A very interesting read that includes a late coming of age, communal living, quarter-life crisis and search of self. Follows the journals and ramblings of a mid- 1990's California code reader. Very intriguing and relateable main character and unique supporting characters, keeps the everyday on-goings of the story fresh. One is able to see how much a group of friendss can change in a small spanse of time, when motivated and working together. Also great ending Mr Coupland, great ending.

It makes you just look around and love your friends.

I read this while I worked at Microsoft, right after the dot.com "bubble" collapsed. It was interesting to read a story with such a positive attitude about start-ups and venture capital and striking out for terra incognita. Of course, the best part about the book is Coupland's handle on dialog and character, and his observations about pop culture. I recall one exchange in which one of the women criticizes the pink motif that Toys R Us uses in the girl's toy section.