To all you "Microserfs" out there!
I don't read a lot of fiction. The reason is that most of the so-called classics that I have read, fail to keep my interest alive for very long. A prime example of this is Ayn Rand. I probably took many months to finish "The Fountainhead" and have tried in vain to read "Atlas Shrugged" for the last couple of weeks. Ms Rand's style is so long-winded, and although she does have some good philosophical lessons to expound, you could skip many pages and not really miss much. ("Anthem" is an exception. That is one of her works I really liked.) I've tried reading the finest works of Carson McCullers, Virginia Woolf and Tolkien unsuccessfully too (I hated LOTR). So now I read more non-fiction. The reader isn't required to read all the way through, and he still learns something no matter where the book stops being interesting. My point is that if I have to force myself to finish a book like it is homework, it stops being fun. Also stating the obvious, I do like to learn interesting things along the way... Someday I hope to be a contestant on Jeopardy!
Douglas Coupland's "Microserfs" was a very pleasant surprise, given that it is a piece of fiction. I haven't made too many good friends through my blog but Priyanka is one exception to that rule. While some of my failed attempts at reading good fiction came through her recommendations, "Microserfs" is one I will wholeheartedly recommend further. There is obviously a lot I can relate to in this particular work. The title characters are all techies working at Microsoft in the 1990s. They share the very same lives... the seemingly never-ending years of test-writing, bug-fixing, new products, stock options, career anxieties and so on... Coupland also makes a statement about impossible deadlines set by management. This probably rings true to many employees in the tech world. What was even more uncanny was the love for Lego, Star Trek and Jeopardy espoused by many of the characters in the story. I don't know a lot of geeks who care for all or even some of those.
I loved Douglas Coupland's style. Jeopardy! categories in bulleted lists!! For instance, the narrator Dan introduces himself like so:
"I am danielu@microsoft.com If my life was a game of Jeopardy! my seven dream categories would be:
- Tandy products
- Trash TV of the late 70s and 80s
- The history of Apple
- Career anxieties
- Tabloids
- Plant life of the Pacific Northwest
- Jell-O-1-2-3"
The story revolves around the lives of 6 occupants of a Redmond home, Microsoft employees. Dan, Abe, Todd, Susan, Bug, Michael and Dan's love-interest Karla. Most nerd archetypes are represented. Todd is the fitness freak, who only eats healthy and spends a lot of time sculpting a great body. Abe is a rich millionaire, who still maintains a normal techie lifestyle. Susan is the activist, organizing protest marches and the like. Michael, is the genius, who writes beautiful code, "the Mozart to all our Salieri's" as Dan describes him. Dan, the narrator, keeps writing random stuff trying to make sense out of his sub-conscious thoughts. On a more conscious level, the whole book is written like a journal kept on a computer, mostly one entry for every day of the work week. There are tonnes of interesting tidbits throughout the book. One of my favourites so far was about area codes:
""Did you know you can figure out how important your state was circa 1961 by adding up the code's three digits? Zero equals 10."
"No"
"It's because zeros used to take forever to go around the little rotary dial-while ones zipped along the quickest. The lowest possible code 212, went to the busiest place, New York City. Los Angeles got 213. Alaska got 907. See my point?" "
So far I have read the first 110 pages with few interruptions. Thanks Priyanka all the same, for an excellent recommendation. Fiction, afterall isn't all bad!
