Player One: What is to Become of Us

By Douglas Coupland

In his 2010 CBC Massey Lectures acclaimed novelist and visual artist Douglas Coupland explores the modern crises of time, human identity, society, religion and macroeconomics and the afterlife in the form of a novel, a 5-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.

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Release date: Sep 25, 2010
• ISBN: 9780887842801

Douglas Coupland

DOUGLAS COUPLAND is a writer, visual artist and designer. He has published fourteen novels, three collections of short stories, and eight nonfiction books; has written and performed for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company; and is a columnist for the Financial Times and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. In 2015 and 2016 Coupland was artist in residence at the Paris Google Cultural Institute. In May 2018 his exhibition on ecology, Vortex, opened at the Vancouver Aquarium. Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of British Columbia, a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence.

Reviews for Player One

[daftboy1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is set in an Airport lounge at the end of the World as we know it. There is Rachel a young autistic woman who breeds white mice Rick the Barman who is down on his luck and recovering alcoholic Karen a Single Mother who is looking for romance Luke a Pastor who stole all his Church Roof repair funds The Blind date Karen was meeting is shot and killed by a sniper called Bertis, a thick horrible smug envelopes the airport. Bertis enters the lounge the others with the help of a young man called Max hold him hostage. Rachel who is falling for Rick is also shot. This book is to help the reader think about the future and what sort of life we are living in the 21st century. (I read this during the 2020 Lockdown so some of it is relevant)

[yougotamber · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was an odd book and not one I expected of Coupland. His techy writing style is somewhat there but he delves into philosophy using geeky characters and references to help his reader relate. I was impressed by some of it, mostly in the beginning, but the story as a whole fell flat for me. I related well with the characters and the philosophies they shared but I felt the backbone story could have been more intriguing and stronger.

[crashmyparty · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Oh dear.I got absolutely nothing from this book. No enjoyment, no thrill, no sense of wonder was aroused throughout my reading of this book. It was nothing but an increasingly frustrating experience because guess what? 'Real time' is BORING. Nothing happens during 'real time' which is why most authors tend to skip over those bits.The story is set in an airport cocktail lounge over five hours where an unspecified global catastrophe is occurring because oil prices went up, for some unspecified reason. So people start going crazy and some people shoot each other and other people barricade themselves into hotels and/or cocktail lounges and there's some explosions. BOOM. Big chemical ones.And while this is happening there are four people in the cocktail lounge: Rick the bartender, Karen a single mother who flew out to a nowhere place to have an internet hookup, Luke a pastor who stole a bunch of money when he lost his faith and Rachel, a blonde beauty who doesn't understand the world around her. Add to that the 'mysterious' voice that calls itself 'Player One' - which is not so mysterious as it reveals itself in the first chapter or 'hour'.There is exploration of the deep seated issues the characters have - their issues with time, religion, their own identities and what comes next. But there just doesn't seem to be anything interesting about their discussions and their discoveries about themselves. I jusr didn'r see the point of it all. I feel like I've wasted my time with a very disappointing book.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Five people trapped in a seedy airport bar as the world reacts to a sudden, unexpected oil crisis. Douglas Coupland tells this story through the points of view of each of the characters. He also uses their reactions to the apocalypse to explore the meaning of time and what it means to be human. As usual, Mr. Coupland delivers a thought-provoking book that is more about ideas than about the characteers or the plot.

[voise15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Had read a number of mixed reviews before reading, but overall I engoyed the musings on time and story. Some engaging descriptions of autism and delusional religious zealotry. Excellent post-modern / politically correct glossary at end.

[rapago_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Picked up this one after reading a review somewhere I can't remember. It seemed like an interesting concept, but the reality of the book did not match my initial interest in it.I finished it because the reading was easy. The characters were not that interesting with the exception of Rachel who suffered from a neurological disorder that caused her to be unable to recognize faces, or personalities. This presented itself as an interesting source of conflict between the characters.I can't really recommend this book to anyone. The idea was neither particularly original or all that interesting.

[reluctantm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

You never really know what you're going to get with a Douglas Coupland novel. Generally he floats between engaging, pastiche, unfocused, and down-right annoying. PlayerOne, for the most past, is a good read, provided that you ignore standard ideas of characterization and plot and story (strange since the concept of [i]story[/i] is central to almost all of Coupland's books).There are two major issues however I have with this book. The first is how interchangeable and shallow all the characters are. There's only five characters and nothing really unique about any one. The reason for this is because the majority of their dialogue is along the lines of ``Well then Bob, let me expound on this philosophical idea in a way that no normal person would ever converse."The second are passages that are taken verbatim from Coupland's earlier works. For example, I spotted sentences from Generation X, Polaroids from the Dead, Microserfs, and Life After God. A few years ago I read an interview where Coupland said that he's justified in returning to the same ideas he's already discussed. I do agree (somewhat) and I know that Player One comes from a lecture series, but I am ready for Coupland to have something new rather than the rehashing of stuff that I've been reading since I was fourteen years old.The ideas that Coupland touches upon in this book do intertwine quite well. I enjoyed reading it. But I wonder if I'm getting near the end of my patience with Douglas Coupland.

[stephenbarkley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book started off very promising.I've read almost everything Coupland's written—certainly all his fiction. Like an band that's been around for a few decades, he's become a bit predictable. I keep reading him for the flashes of penetrating cultural insight he manages to describe so perfectly.Player One started off with a string of metaphors that only Coupland's mind can produce. Here's an example:"Warren — her highly anticipated date — is wearing the bland politician's smile of someone who knows that the bodies in the car trunk are, indeed, dead."Unfortunately, after the second chapter, the characters started to feel like all the other characters in Coupland's Novels. The moment that turned the book for me was when he used a long sentence from a previous work verbatim:"What separates humanity from everything else in this world — spaghetti, binder paper, deep-sea creatures, edelweiss, and Mount McKinley — is that humanity alone has the capacity, at any given moment, to commit all possible sins."It's a fantastic sentence ... the first time you read it. Coming from the mouth of a second character in an unrelated book is just a little sad.I'm not sure if Coupland will be able to extract himself from the role he's typecast himself in. Right now he's like REM and U2. A brilliant world-altering artist who needs to explore a new direction.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I find that Coupland's books are a miss and hit. This one is definitely a hit! Using a cast of five characters in a enclosed set (it would make a good play, actually), Coupland asks questions about human relationships, religion, ethics, society. While there are sketches of answers, it is really up to the reader to mature the thought: I found myself thinking about the book long after I closed its cover. The characters are fairly stereotypical but they have enough depth to make the conversations and plot interesting and unconventional. The glossary itself is worth reading carefully: Coupland likes to redefine the world through his lens!