#microserfs

[litsnaps]

[philosophybitmaps]

[fullmusicbardsquared]

Microserfs sometimes has entries filled with random words that pop into Dan (the viewpoint/storyteller character)'s head. they are meant to represent his view of what an unconscious 90s computer would think about + his own mind. here are some of my favorites below the cut.

[raymosmookels]

Douglas Coupland, Microserfs, 1995

Another one to file under "warnings from the past that we ignored"

[godinfected003]

[avatar-state-kate]

When you don’t dislike a book enough to stop reading it but you’re maybe always thinking about starting a different one

[tri-ciclo]

“But then a bumblebee bumbled above us and it stole our attention the way flying things can.” ― Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

[sleepnoises]

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow counter-recs or reread inspo for my own reference

• you by austin grossman

• close to the machine by ellen ullman

• a visit from the goon squad by jennifer egan

• microserfs by douglas coupland!!!!

[kyotocosmology]

Books about game design but not really but really

Collecting my suggestions & others' from a twitter thread (remember those?)

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino Pilgrim in the Microworld, David Sudnow Breathing Machines, Leigh Alexander Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman An Inventory of Losses, Judith Schalansky Visit to a Small Planet, Elinor Fuchs (https://web.mit.edu/jscheib/Public/foundations_06/ef_smallplanet.pdf) Noises Off, Michael Freyn Influence, Robert Cialdini Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges Wonderbook, Jeff VanderMeer Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov The Westing Game, Ellen Raskin Motel of the Mysteries, David Macaulay Ghost Stories for Darwin, Banu Subramaniam (esp. “Singing the Morning Glory Blues”) Batman: The Animated Series Writer’s Bible (https://dcanimated.com/WF/batman/btas/backstage/wbible/) Dictionary of the Khazars, Milorad Pavić The Passion, Jeannette Winterson Rainbows End, Vernon Vinge Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing., Robert Paul Smith A Telling of the Tales, William J. Brooke Finishing The Hat & Look, I Made A Hat, Stephen Sondheim Finite and Infinite Games, James P. Cause Exercises in Style, Raymond Queneau The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman Life: A User's Manual, Georges Perec The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood, James Gleick 7 1/2 Lessons About The Brain, Lisa Feldman Barrett

additions: Microserfs, Douglas Coupland The Eyes of the Skin, Juhani Pallasmaa House of Leaves, Mark Z. Danielewski Piranesi, Susanna Clarke

[garglyswoof]

Tagged by @jinxedwood and @austennerdita2533 for my fave books, I'm going with the wordy jinxedwood version bc yes, friends, you know me by now. I am what one calls a verbose bitch.

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER and this list may not be accurate but it's accurate tonight.

East of Eden - John Steinbeck The humanity of this book is what got to me. I couldn't imagine reading another book when I finished this one, I felt bereft and that odd sense of loss that comes at the conclusion of a story with characters you deeply love. Not to mention that the Kathy angle made sections feel straight out of a modern day thriller.

H is for Hawk - Helen MacDonald.. to intertwine a memoir of grief and loss with a th white biography and a large measure of birding knowledge is quite the feat. But that sounds too pat an answer. I'll quote my goodreads review for this: This book felt like me sharing something that lurks so deep inside my heart, so carefully protected, so strewn with feelings like vines and bits of moss that shake off as I hold it out. It felt like sharing that something and absolutely, 100%, knowing that the recipient understood, with every fiber of their being.

Survival in Auschwitz - Primo Levi. Please, this isnt just what you think it is. It is that and more. Levi's words will leave you spellbound and aching and hopeful and everything in between.

Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury. As with most of my favorites, this is sublime writing that makes me long for a time i am too young to have experienced. Utterly gorgeous.

Provinces of Night - William Gay. This was my first William Gay novel and I am slowly making through them all. Southern Gothic with such elegant prose. I want to write like him. A negative review called Gay's work "novels with poems scattered about weak plots" and frankly? that's what i love? so good job you sold me

Microserfs - Douglas Coupland The author of my 20s. His stuff opened me up to fiction about real people with real feelings thinking the things you do in your head. The unbearable loneliness of the human condition and the wondrousness that is friendship. I am not a rereader but ive read this book at least five times. I have no idea if it has aged well, i do not care.

The Chronicles of Amber - Roger Zelazny. Something about this urban? fantasy grabbed me in a chokehold and never let go. I first read this at the beach, paging through dog-eared paperbacks a friend urged me to read. I barely left the deck that week. The traveling into Amber, the walking of the Pattern - these things will never leave me.

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry Look yes it's a western but it's The Western for a reason. Characters that seep into your bones. The image of lightning dancing across a steer's horns remains as vivid as when i read the book 3+ years ago.

Station Eleven - Emily St. John Mandel Something about how this post-pandemic story is paced, something about the stakes of it and how they will differ from any other post-apocalyptic book you've ever read, stuck with me. There was a simple beauty here that I never want to let go of.

Honorable mentions Les Mis, War and Peace, To be Taught if Fortunate, and i feel like i need a separate list for fave fun books? like romance and paranormal romance and ya that i love but dont come close to the above's impact

tagging @purplesigebert im curious! @ninzied cmon wax poetic with me about books @carry-the-sky i almost put the things they carried on here bc you made me read it but i can only do 9 @it-may-be-dull-but-im-determined i just feel like you'd have some cool thoughts and books to share

ok im tagged out

[majorbaby]

top 5 books!

just going to go with fiction: the god of small things by arundhati roy 100 years of solitude by gabriel garcia marquez microserfs by douglas coupland kafka on the shore by haruki murakami the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy by douglas adams

[fullmusicbardsquared]

you know the ambiguous mental problem is bad when you want to read microserfs again

[maplesynth]

do you have any stories (original, fanfic, or published work) you've been thinking about lately?

these aren't recent but there's three that live rent-free in my head:

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson: the least favourite out of the three but i hold it in a special place in my circuits because it got recommended to me in the weirdest place possible, chatting with a seller on ebay who turned out to have worked on the vintage software i was looking to buy (he was selling a boxed copy of it). it ends on an allegory for ejaculation. other than that it's a pretty riveting story about hard computer sci-fi (intertwined with historically inaccurate excerpts from the protagonist's ancestor's influence over the second world war).

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland: this one is really dear to me. it tells a fictional tale of a group of people who leave Microsoft to spin up a start-up to build a virtual object-oriented playground that gets compared to Lego, pushing for what they believe to be an utopia for what computers can be and do. the story revolves a lot more on the people building it though, and it's extremely intimate in that way.

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder: non-fiction. tells the story of the actual real people who built the actual real Data General Eclipse MV/8000. if you liked AMC's Halt and Catch Fire there's a lot in it that likely served as inspiration for that show (and likewise if you enjoy this book you'll probably enjoy that show).

of course there's always Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy too but i figured that was too cliche

[agentstovring]

💛Smoshblr December Asks Day 23💙

What are your top 3 favourite books (/comics/manga/poems/etc...) and/or top 3 you would recommend to others?

Oh, here we go, we're in my house now! (Obligatory "I could never choose just three" disclaimer here)

Microserfs by Douglas Coupland - I love the way Coupland writes, and this is my favorite of his fiction novels. It follows a group of programmers who leave their safe jobs at Microsoft to risk at all for their own start-up. It's funny, sweet, and very nerdy. (Other gems by this author: Generation X; JPOD; The Gum Thief)

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller - I'm obsessed with the story of Achilles and Patrocles, and this retelling still far exceeded my expectations. It's beautiful, epic, and impossibly tender. It's the first and only book that's ever made me audibly sob.

Nimona by ND Stevenson - Stevenson started Nimona right here on tumblr, when they were an art student! The comic follows Nimona who wishes to become a villain's henchman, and Ballister Blackheart, the "villain" in question. This comic is full of heart, it's hilarious, and I'm forever in love with Stevenson's art style.

And now, I hope you're warmed up, because I'm about to rec you. (I'm sorry, that's very sexual; forget that part.)

I put recommendations under the cut, please check them out!

ALSO, if you like quizzes, I have a uquiz where I recommend you books based on your answers! You can find it here; and my ask is open if you wanna talk about your result :)

Thank you for asking!

I obviously recommend my three favorites listed in this ask, but I also recognize that they're not for everyone, so here are three others:

If you like comic books and feminist history, I recommend "Brazen: Rebel Ladies Who Rocked the World" by Pénélope Bagieu A collection of short comics about iconic women who have left their mark on the world throughout history. Gorgeous art style, factual history, and a lot of humor. (Translated into over a dozen languages, in case English is not your favorite; I read it in Danish myself)

If you like classics, but not the 'fancy ladies talking about marriage while needlepointing' kind of classic, I recommend "The Three Musketeers" by Alexandre Dumas You're probably at least somewhat familiar, but just in case: The young d'Artagnan goes to Paris to become a musketeer, joining forces with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis in their efforts to take down the corrupt Cardinal Richelieu. The writing style is surprisingly modern, making it more readable than many classics of the time; and it's dramatic, swashbuckler-y, and fun.

If you think horror and comedy go hand in hand, I recommend "John Dies at the End" by Jason Pargin/David Wong John and Dave are slackers all but sleepwalking through life in their small town; until they do a mysterious drug at a house party and gain the ability to see the supernatural. Turns out their sleepy town is chockful of horrific creatures, and now that John and Dave can see them, they're putting up a fight. It's a genuinely funny read, but it also scares the shit out of me. And it's a series! There are 4 books in total, so far; in my opinion, each one is scarier than the one before.

[adz]

Hi... so, I've been wondering, what are your favorite books/authors? Or books you wish more people would read? Your writing rocks.

aw thanks!! i read voraciously for like 20 years but slowed down in college, and now i've got this massive stack of stuff i want to read... so i am probably not the best person to go to for contemporary book recs. when I was 18 i wouldve had a bunch of suggestions for you, and now i'm like... how many years can i go back lol T-T

I did recently finish William Gibson's "Burning Chrome," a collection of short stories, and absolutely loved it. the science fiction genre is replete with visionaries but not so much with artists, and Gibson is rare in that his writing has a beautiful literary quality - his metaphors are so tangible and carefully crafted that they place you on the ground in whatever world he's created instead of merely describing it. as someone who finds it easier to fall into technical description in my writing, i find his work inspirational.

as far as books I wish more people would read... i don't want to recommend anything lengthy that i read when i was younger, because i think our brains have been altered to make things like that a slog now. Sebald's "Rings of Saturn" is maybe my favorite novel. early Coupland is really fun (Microserfs is my fave) but his work is so of-the-moment that it reads like a time capsule; a quality i enjoy but others won't.

i like comics by @michaeldeforge, @patrickkyle, @connorwillumsen, and @samaldencomics. Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" is readable and energizing. i like "Hard To Be A God," I like some of Lydia Davis's microfiction stories. i think writers should read less hemingway, eggers, franzen, ellis, murakami, & PKD and more le guin, faulkner, nabokov, guibert, porpentine, carson

[letmeliedown]

i remember being so charmed by the part in microserfs where michael decides to only eat flat foods that can be slipped under a door so he can work more efficiently. i think it was supposed to show how he is single-mindedly passionate to his own detriment or whatever, but what i got from it was "restrictive eating around a weird little theme is fucking cool" because i was 12 and only reading coupland for the autism