Douglas Coupland

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The first new work of fiction since 2013 from one of Canada's most successful, idiosyncratic and world-defining writers, Douglas Coupland. He's called it Binge because it's impossible to read just one. Imagine feeling 100% alive every moment of every minute of the day Maybe that's how animals live. Or trees, even. I sometimes stare at the plastic bag tree visible from my apartment window and marvel that both it and I are equally alive and that there's no sliding scale of life. You're either alive, or you're not. Or you're dead or you're not. Thirty years after Douglas Coupland broke the fiction mould and defined a generation with Generation X, he is back with Binge, 60 stories laced with his observational profundity about the way we live and his existential worry about how we should be living: the very things that have made him such an influential and bestselling writer. Not to mention that he can also be really funny. Here the narrators vary from story to story as Doug catches what he calls the voice of the people, inspired by the way we write about ourselves and our experiences in online forums. The characters, of course, are Doug's own: crackpots, cranks and sweetie-pies, dad dancers and perpetrators of carbecues. People in the grip of unconscionable urges; lonely people; dying people; silly people. If you love Doug's fiction, this collection is like rain on the desert.

Now available in a new edition with a cover designed by the author, Douglas Coupland's CBC Massey Lectures is an innovative exploration of the modern crises of our time. Five disparate people are trapped inside an airport cocktail lounge during a global disaster: Karen, a single mother waiting for her online date; Rick, a down-on-his-luck bartender; Luke, a pastor on the run; Rachel, a cool Hitchcockian blonde incapable of true human contact; and finally a mysterious voice known as Player One. Slowly, over the course of the five-hour story, each reveals the truth about themselves while the world as they know it comes to an end. Acclaimed novelist and visual artist Douglas Coupland probes human identity, society, religion, macroeconomics, and the afterlife in the inventive 2010 CBC Massey Lectures. Asking as many questions as it answers, Player One will leave readers with no doubt that we are in a new phase of existence as a species -- and that there is no turning back.

Generation X is Douglas Coupland's classic novel about the generation born from 1960 to 1978--a generation known until then simply as twenty somethings. Andy, Claire, and Dag, each in their twenties, have quit pointless jobs in their respective hometowns to find better meaning in life. Adrift in the California desert, the trio develops an ascetic regime of story-telling, boozing, and working McJobs--"low-pay, low-prestige, low-benefit, no-future jobs in the service industry." They create their own modern fables of love and death among the cosmetic surgery parlors and cocktail bars of Palm Springs as well as disturbingly funny tales of nuclear waste, historical overdosing, and mall culture. A dark snapshot of the trio's highly fortressed inner world quickly emerges--peeling back the layers on their fanatical individualism, pathological ambivalence about the future, and unsatisfied longing for permanence, love, and their own home. Andy, Dag, and Claire are underemployed, overeducated, intensely private, and unpredictable. They have nowhere to assuage their fears, and no culture to replace their anomie.

A thought-provoking, binge-worthy new collection of essays, stories, and musings from Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot explores the different ways in which twentieth-century notions of the future are being shredded, and it is a literary gem of the digital age. "Bit rot" is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose. As Douglas 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 is a fascinating meditation on the ways in which 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 established fanbase hungry for his observations about our world, and a revelation to new readers of his work. For almost three decades, his unique pattern recognition has powered his fiction, his phrase-making, and his visual art. Every page of Bit Rot is full of wit, surprise, and delight. Reading Bit Rot feels a lot like bingeing on Netflix... you can't stop with just one.

A definitive collection of photographs of the legendary and influential band New Order. New Order remains one of the most popular bands of the last half century. Founded in the dying years of punk and disco, and combining elements of post-punk, new wave, and electronic dance music, New Order was responsible for some of the biggest hits of the era and is one of few bands to have achieved mainstream success while retaining cult status. Having been the most trusted photographer of Joy Division in the 1970s, Kevin Cummins was uniquely placed to document the rise and fall of New Order, from their formation in 1980 to their split in 1993. From underground beginnings as the flagship group of Factory Records in Manchester to grandstand tours around Europe and America, Cummins captured the band in every light, from the intimacy of the studio to the frenetic energy of live performance. Collected here for the first time are more than a hundred photographs reflecting over a decade of New Order. Prefaced by a selection of rarely seen ephemera, conversations with the band members, and an introduction from Douglas Coupland, this is a stunning celebration of a band whose influence on music and fashion is still palpable today.

Designed by Irma Boom, this second volume in the Summit publication series gathers insights from the 2018 Verbier Art Summit in Switzerland, on the topic of art in the digital age, delivered by a wide range of curators, authors, artists and critics. The contributions--by Karen Archey, Ed Atkins, Lars Bang Larsen, Douglas Coupland, Olafur Eliasson, Pamela Rosenkranz, John Slyce, Dado Valentic, Paul F.M.J. Verschure, Jochen Volz and Anicka Yi--address such questions as the preservation of time-based media in museums; the concept of "biofiction"; "loss and the digital"; the body and technology; Amazon; the intersection of science and art; and virtual reality.

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. you can't stop with just one. â??Bit rotâ?? is a term used in digital archiving to describe the way digital files can spontaneously and quickly decompose.

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].

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].

The twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Douglas Coupland's classic.

Fresh out of the freewheeling sixties, the seventies was a decade of immense change for Vancouver--a time of protest, political upheaval, economic boom, and cultural evolution. Through it all, the Vancouver Sun's award-winning photographers chronicled the city's metamorphosis. Shooting more than 4,500 photo assignments each year, they covered news, politics, business and industry, sports, entertainment, food, and fashion, without missing a beat. These images capture pivotal moments in this dynamic city's history, including the Gastown Riot, the founding of Greenpeace, the wide-eyed innocence of five-year-old Justin Trudeau, and the amazing film career of Chief Dan George. Vancouver in the Seventies presents 149 exclusive photos from the Vancouver Sun's extensive collection along with fascinating essays by long-time Sun news research librarian Kate Bird and former Sun journalist Shelley Fralic, coupled with a foreword from renowned Vancouver author Douglas Coupland. Together, these words and images form an unforgettable celebration of the decade in which Vancouver came into its own.

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.

Raymond Gunt likes to think of himself as a pretty decent guy--he believes in helping his fellow man and all that other good stuff. Sure, he can be foulmouthed, occasionally misogynistic, and just generally rub people the wrong way--through no fault of his own So with all the positive energy he's creating, it's a little perplexing to consider the recent downward spiral his life has taken.... An unemployed B-unit cameraman, Gunt accepts his ex-wife's offer to shoot a Survivor-style reality show on an obscure island in the Pacific. Somehow, Gunt suffers multiple comas and unjust imprisonment, and is forced to reenact the "Angry Dance" from the movie Billy Elliott, among other tribulations and humiliations. Could the universe be trying to tell him something?

A highly provocative, mindbending, beautifully designed, and visionary look at the landscape of our rapidly evolving digital era. 50 years after Marshall McLuhan's ground breaking book on the influence of technology on culture in The Medium is the Massage, Basar, Coupland and 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 offer five characteristics of the Extreme Present (see below); 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. 30+ artists contributions: With contributions from Farah Al Qasimi, Ed Atkins, Alessandro Bavo, Gabriele Basilico, Josh Bitelli, James Bridle, Cao Fei, Alex Mackin Dolan, Thomas Dozol, Constant Dullaart, Cecile B Evans, Rami Farook, Hans-Peter Feldmann, GCC, K-Hole, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Eloise Hawser, Camille Henrot, Hu Fang, K-Hole, Koo Jeong-A, Katja Novitskova, Lara Ogel, Trevor Paglen, Yuri Patterson, Jon Rafman, Bunny Rogers, Bogosi Sekhukhuni, Taryn Simon, Hito Steyerl, Michael Stipe, Rosemarie Trockel, Amalia Ulman, David Weir, Trevor Yeung.

We also meet Raymond's upwardly failing sidekick, Neal, as well as Raymond's ex-wife, Fiona, herself â??an atomic bomb of painâ??. Even though he really puts the â??antiâ?? in anti-hero, you may find Raymond Gunt an oddly likeable character.

The third book to be released as part of the Writers in Residence series is written by Canadian cultural literary giant Douglas Coupland. Coupland takes readers on a web surfing-inspired ride through Alcatel-Lucent: one of the largest global telecommunications companies in the world. Coupland, with Magnum photographer Olivia Arthur, reports from inside Alcatel s faceless corporate offices and wire-laden science labs, writing in his inimitably playful and insightful way about the wider cultural implications of the Internet and the affect Alcatel s information technology has on each of our lives and the way we live. A non-fiction spin of Microserfs meets J-Pod, here comes Coupland s wildly funny meditation on the Internet, its future and our possible future within it, in ways we would only hope for and expect from Douglas Coupland."