Player One

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Summary

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.

Reviews

A work of genius
Independent on Sunday

About the author

Douglas Coupland

Douglas Coupland (pronounced KOHP-lend) (born 30 December 1961) is a Canadian writer, designer and visual artist. His first novel was the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture. Since then, Coupland has written twelve more novels, which have been published in most languages. He has written and performed for the Royal Shakespeare Company and is a columnist for the Financial Times. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, e-flux, Dis and Vice. In 2000, after a decade of generating web graphics, Coupland amplified his visual art production and has recently had two separate museum retrospectives: 'Everywhere Is Anywhere Is Anything Is Everything' at the Royal Vancouver Art Gallery, the Royal Ontario Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art; and 'Bit Rot' at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and Villa Stuck in Munich. In 2015 and 2016, Coupland was an artist-in-residence in the Paris Google Cultural Institute.

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