Douglas Coupland – författare

Datanörden Daniel Underwood och hans kollegor tillbringar minst sexton timmar om dygnet med att skriva och leta fel i mjukvarukod. De söker igenom företagets mejl för att se vad den store Bill Gates kan tänkas tycka och tänka om dem.Men gänget vill bli något mer än bara kuggar i Microsofts stora maskineri. De lämnar datorimperiets arbetsbostäder i Redmont, Washington, och flyttar till Silicon Valley för att arbeta med ett Minecraftliknande projekt. Där försöker de desperat skapa fullvärdiga liv och hitta kärleken - mitt i vinandet och surrandet från den förvrängda, datordrivna värld de lever i.I översättning av Peder Carlsson.Omslagsbilden föreställer Douglas Couplands åtta meter höga skulptur av en pixlad späckhuggare - Digital Orca (2009) - i Couplands hemstad Vancouver i Kanada.DOUGLAS COUPLAND [född 1961] är en kanadensisk författare och konstnär. Han debuterade 1991 med den omedelbart kultförklarade Generation X. Senare har han gett ut bland annat Microslavar [Microserfs, 1995], Girlfriend in a Coma [1998] och jPod [2006].

Romanen som definierade den ironiska generationenAndy, Dag och Claire har inte tillräckliga resurser för kostnaderna i det samhälle de fötts i. De är i tjugoårsåldern, uppvuxna med skilsmässa, Watergate och kärnkraftsolyckan på Three Mile Island. Präglade av åttiotalsfenomen - yuppies, lågkonjunktur, crack och Ronald Reagan - representerar de den nya generationen: Generation X.Men de vägrar ställa upp som målgrupp för smarta marknadsförare, har sagt upp sig från sina meningslösa och otacksamma jobb och dragit i väg till Kaliforniens öken. Där dricker de, försörjer sig på ströjobb, och berättar humoristiska och oroande sagor för varandra om en värld av popkultur, gamla TV-serier och svensk slit-och-släng-design.Fram växer lysande porträtt av fanatiskt oberoende individer, patologiskt ambivalenta inför framtiden och fulla av otillfredsställd längtan efter någonting bestående.I översättning av Johan Frick.Omslagsbilden visar Douglas Couplands skulptur Optimism vs. Pessimism (2014).DOUGLAS COUPLAND [född 1961] är en kanadensisk författare och konstnär. Han debuterade 1991 med den omedelbart kultförklarade Generation X. Senare har han gett ut bland annat Microslavar [Microserfs, 1995], Girlfriend in a Coma [1998] och jPod [2006].

A real-time five-hour story set in an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster. Five disparate people are trapped inside: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, the down-on-his-luck airport lounge bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcock blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end.In the tradition of Kurt Vonnegut and J.G. Ballard, Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion and the afterlife. The book asks as many questions as it answers and readers will leave the story with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species - and that there is no turning back.

Girls, memory, parenting, millennial fear – all served Coupland-style.Karen, an attractive, popular student, goes into a coma one night in 1979. Whilst in it, she gives birth to a healthy baby daughter; once out of it, a mere eighteen years later, she finds herself, Rip van Winkle-like, a middle-aged mother whose friends have all gone through all the normal marital, social and political traumas and back again…This tragicomedy shows Coupland in his most mature form yet, writing with all his customary powers of acute observation, but turning his attention away from the surface of modern life to the dynamics of modern relationships, but doing so with all the sly wit and weird accuracy we expect of the soothsaying author of Generation X, Shampoo Planet, Life After God, Microserfs and Polaroids from the Dead.

In Bit Rot, Douglas Coupland explores the different ways in which twentieth-century notions of the future are being shredded, and creates a gem of the digital age. Reading the stories and essays in Bit Rot is like bingeing on Netflix . . . you can't stop with just one.‘Bit rot’ is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose. As Coupland writes, ‘bit rot also describes the way my brain has been feeling since 2000, as I shed older and weaker neurons and connections and enhance new and unexpected ones’. Bit Rot the book explores the ways humanity tries to make sense of our shifting consciousness. Coupland, just like the Internet, mixes forms to achieve his ends. Short fiction is interspersed with essays on all aspects of modern life. The result is addictively satisfying for Coupland’s legion of fans hungry for his observations about our world. For almost three decades, his unique pattern recognition has powered his fiction, and his phrase-making. Every page of Bit Rot is full of wit, surprise and delight.

On the eve of the next Space Shuttle mission, a divided family comes together…Warm, witty and wise, ‘All Families Are Psychotic’ is Coupland at the very top of his form.In a cheap motel an hour from Cape Canaveral, Janet Drummond takes her medication, and does a rapid tally of the whereabouts of her children. Wade has spent the night in jail; suicidal Bryan is due to arrive at any moment with his vowel-free girlfriend, Shw; and then there is Sarah, ‘a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash’ – here in Orlando to be the star of Friday’s shuttle mission. With Janet’s ex-husband and his trophy wife also in town, Janet spends a moment contemplating her family, and where it all went wrong. Or did it?Perfect for fans of Halle Butler, Iain Reid and Rachel Cusk.

The story of one family piecing itself back together after a tragic highschool shooting, Hey Nostradamus! is Douglas Coupland’s most soulful, piercing and searching novel yet.Pregnant and secretly married, Cheryl Anway scribbles her last will and testament – and erie premonition – on a school binder shortly before a rampaging trio of misfit classmates gun her down in a high school cafeteria. Overrun with paranoia, teenage angst and religious zeal in the ensuing massacre's wake, this sleepy Vancouver neighbourhood declares its saints, brands its demons and finally moves on.But for a handful of people still reeling from that horrific day, life remains perpetually derailed. Four dramatically different characters tell their stories in their own words: Cheryl, who calmly narrates her own death; Jason, the boy no one knew was her husband, still marooned ten years later by his loss; Heather, the woman trying to love the shattered Jason; and Jason's father Reg, a cruelly religious man no one suspects is still worth loving. Each wrestles with God, self-defeat and a crippling inability to hold on to those they love.Coupland's most surprising and soulful novel yet, rich with his trademark cultural acuity and dark humour, Hey Nostradamus! ties themes of alienation, violence and misguided faith into a fateful and unforgettable knot from which four people must untangle their lives.

Following the hugely acclaimed bestseller Hey Nostradamus! comes a major new novel from Douglas Coupland: the wonderfully warm, funny, life-affirming story of Liz Dunn, a woman who has spent her whole life alone and lonely – until now… This is a brilliant work of commercial literary fiction from an author who just gets better and better.'My name is Liz Dunn. The Liz Dunns of this world take classes in croissant baking, and would rather chew on soccer balls than deny their children muesli. They own one sex toy, plus one cowboy fantasy that accompanies its use… Look at me: I am a traitor to my name: I'm not cheerful; I'm drab. I'm crabby and friendless. And lonely.'Liz Dunn is 42 years old, and lonely. Her house is like 'a spinster's cell block', and she may or may not snore – there's never been anybody to tell her. Then one day in 1997, with the comet Hale Bopp burning bright in the blue-black sky, Liz receives an urgent phone call asking her to visit a young man in hospital. All at once, the loneliness that has come to define her is ripped away by this funny, smart, handsome young stranger, Jeremy. Her son.Eleanor Rigby is a tale of loneliness and hope that introduces Douglas Coupland's finest character yet. Illuminated by a wonderfully gentle, searching wisdom, it sees Coupland ascend to a new level of peace and grace in his ever-more-extraordinary career.

In the near future bees are extinct - until five unconnected individuals, in different parts of the world, are stung. Immediately snatched up by ominous figures in hazmat suits, interrogated searately in neutral Ikea-like chambers, and then released as 15-minute-celebrities into a world driven almost entirely by the internet, these five unforgettable people endure a barrage of unusual and highly 21st-century circumstances. A charismatic scientist with dubious motives eventually brings the quintet together, and their shared experience unites them in a way they could never have imagined.Generation A mirrors the structure of 1991's Generation X as it champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defences we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world. Like much of Coupland's writing, it occupies the perplexing hinterland between optimism about the future and everyday, apocalyptic paranoia, and is his most ambitious and entertaining novel to date.

A razor-sharp portrait of a morally bankrupt and gleefully wicked modern man, Worst. Person. Ever. is Douglas Coupland's gloriously filthy, side-splittingly funny and unforgettable novel.Meet Raymond Gunt. A decent chap who tries to do the right thing. Or, to put it another way, the worst person ever: a foul-mouthed, misanthropic cameraman, trailing creditors, ex-wives and unhappy homeless people in his wake. Men dislike him, women flee from him. Worst. Person. Ever. is a deeply unworthy book about a dreadful human being with absolutely no redeeming social value. Gunt, in the words of the author, "is a living, walking, talking, hot steaming pile of pure id." He's a B-unit cameraman who enters an amusing downward failure spiral that takes him from London to Los Angeles and then on to an obscure island in the Pacific where a major American TV network is shooting a Survivor-style reality show. Along the way, Gunt suffers multiple comas and unjust imprisonment, is forced to re-enact the ‘Angry Dance’ from the movie Billy Elliot and finds himself at the centre of a nuclear war. We also meet Raymond's upwardly failing sidekick, Neal, as well as Raymond's ex-wife, Fiona, herself ‘an atomic bomb of pain’.Even though he really puts the ‘anti’ in anti-hero, you may find Raymond Gunt an oddly likeable character.

Planet Earth needs a self-help book, and this is itThe future is happening to us far faster than we thought it would and this book explains whyFifty years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture The Medium is the Massage, Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist extend the analysis to today, touring the world that's redefined by the Internet, decoding and explaining what they call the 'extreme present'.The Age of Earthquakes is a quick-fire paperback, harnessing the images, language and perceptions of our unfurling digital lives. The authors invent a glossary of new words to describe how we are truly feeling today; and 'mindsource' images and illustrations from over 30 contemporary artists. Wayne Daly's striking graphic design imports the surreal, juxtaposed, mashed mannerisms of screen to page. It's like a culturally prescient, all-knowing email to the reader: possibly the best email they will ever read.Welcome to The Age of Earthquakes, a paper portrait of Now, where the Internet hasn't just changed the structure of our brains these past few years, it's also changing the structure of the planet. This is a new history of the world that fits perfectly in your back pocket.

Andy, Dag and Claire have been handed a society beyond their means. Twentysomethings, brought up with divorce, Watergate and Three Mile Island, and scarred by the 80s fallout of yuppies, recession, crack and Ronald Reagan, they represent the new generation - Generation X.Fiercely suspicious of being lumped together as an advertiser's target market, they have quit dreary careers and cut themselves adrift in the California desert. Unsure of their futures, they immerse themselves in a regime of heavy drinking and working in no future McJobs in the service industry.Underemployed, overeducated and intensely private and unpredicatable, they have nowhere to direct their anger, no one to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie. So they tell stories: disturbingly funny tales that reveal their barricaded inner world. A world populated with dead TV shows, 'Elvis moments' and semi-disposible Swedish furniture.

From the acclaimed author of Hey Nostradamus! comes a wonderful comic novel with ‘more one-liners than a decade of Woody Allen films’ (Guardian), about the scramble for love and success in a brave new world…Bill is wise.Bill is kind.Bill is benevolent.Bill, Be My Friend… Please!At computer giant Microsoft, Dan, Susan, Abe, Todd and Bug are struggling to get a life. The job may be super cool, the pay may be astronomical, but they're heading nowhere, and however hard they work, however many shares they earn, they're never going to be as rich as Bill. And besides, with all the hours they're putting in, their best relationships are on e-mail. Something's got to give…

Ethan and his five co-workers are marooned in JPod, a no-escape architectural limbo on the fringes of a massive game-design company. There they wage battle against the demands of boneheaded marketing staff who torture them with idiotic changes to already idiotic games. Meanwhile, Ethan's personal life is being invaded by marijuana grow-ops, people-smuggling, ballroom dancing, global piracy and the rise of China. Everybody in both worlds seems to inhabit a moral grey zone, and nobody is exempt, not even his seemingly strait-laced parents or Coupland himself.

Roger is a middle-aged and divorced 'aisles associate' at a Staples outlet. His co-worker Bethany is facing fifty more years of shelving Post-it notes. Then Bethany discovers Roger's notebook and finds that he's writing diary entries pretending to be her - and weirdly, he's getting it right. Bethany and Roger strike up a secret correspondence, and as it unfolds so too do the characters of Roger's work-in-progress, Glove Pond, a Cheever-era novella gone horribly, horribly wrong.