My next ninja raid is Microserfs by Douglas Coupland.
What started off as a short story in Wired magazine became a full blown novel about the lives of a couple of techies in Microsoft in the early 1990s.
Let's do the school debate thing and quote from the dictionary to get the ball rolling - Serf (sûrf)
n. A member of the lowest feudal class, attached to the land owned by a lord and required to perform labor in return for certain legal or customary rights.
So these young computer geeks work ridiculously long hours for Bill in return for stocks, job stability and a chance to do what do they know best - coding & programming. They 'freed' themselves by joining a startup to have a bigger stake in an exciting project. The story is told in the form of journal entries by the main character Daniel, in which he and his coworkers undergo a journey of self discovery and reflect upon <this is going to sound cliché> life.
What I really like about Coupland is how he weaves all his insights and philosophical musings into his stories (I recommend the more recent JPod as well). An example of a conversation between 2 characters in Microserfs:-
If a memory isn't used enough, does it become irretrievable?
Well, aside from proton decay and cosmic rays eliminating connections, I think memories are always there. They just get...unfindable. Think of memory loss as a forest fire. It's natural. You shouldn't really be afraid. Think of the flowers that grow where the land had just been destroyed.
Which had me rubbing my chin thinking,' Gee...I never really thought about it like that.' After a while I had razor burn and had to stop all that rubbing.
In short, Microserfs is a great take on the computer geek subculture. It's funny, irreverent and at times...totally random. The ending took me by surprise too. A heartwarming twist to a geek-hipster story.
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