Welcome to End Times, Player One

Mon, 09/12/2011 - 3:38pm by Caser

Douglas Coupland’s 2010 novel, Player One, is the kind of book that is more engaging in the questions that it asks than in the narrative itself. The story -- four strangers trapped in an airport lounge while an apocalyptic event transpires around them -- is becoming pedestrian, but the ideas the characters discuss here are far more interesting than other works in this genre. Those familiar with Coupland’s previous works, like Generation X and Microserfs, will recognize this as another fine zeitgeist piece where the characters look at life in this moment, then back at what it was, and into what it will become.

Some questions the novel poses: What happens when we stop seeing our lives as stories? Why is memory making so crucial to our humanness? Would we be able to survive without a sense of linear time? What are the consequences of living in frankentime, which is what time feels like when you realize you spend all your life on the Internet? Is singularity a real possibility and how close are we? Will globally linked computer systems form an overriding post human sentience? And will this new sentience relieve people of the need to be individuals?

Perhaps the best part of the entire book is the glossary at the end, where dozens of concepts that were only briefly alluded to in the novel are given identifiable terms, which in turn unlocks many of the questions above.