Extinct Bees and Drugs Haunt Douglas Coupland’s “Generation A”

A science fancied echo of his classic Generation X , Douglas Coupland‘s late novelGeneration Aimagines a future where fuel is scarce and bee are extinct . all of a sudden , five people are stung . Five people with unusual molecules in their profligate .

After Coupland bring out the groundbreaking novel Generation X in the early 1990s , surly speculative writer Kurt Vonnegut gave a grumpy speech to some college pupil in which he scoff at the term “ Generation X ” and suggest that they should instead be anticipate “ Generation A ” since they were “ at the rootage of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures . ” Clearly , that comment is the intake for this novel .

Like all of Coupland ’s novel , Generation A is written in immediately piquant , authentically funny prose . He ’s the sort of writer who squall GMO corn a “ carb dildo ” and gives one of his characters a hilarious obsession with the show Starblazers . Shuttling quickly between the first - individual perspectives of his five bee - stung character reference – from Sri Lanka to New Zealand – Coupland cursorily sketches in a five - mintues - into - the - future world where everything is just a minuscule bleaker than it is today . expatriation has get incredibly expensive due to impend elevation oil , and everybody seems to have gotten sneak on an antidepressant drug call Solon that makes meter seem to pass more quickly and calms the great unwashed ’s fears of the future . And somehow , all the bees in the world have function extinct , which means no more wildflowers , very small fruit , and ( of course ) no honey .

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Still the reality is recognizably our own , especially once it ’s made familiar to us via the goofy , heartfelt patter of Coupland ’s character . Harj come through the Indian Ocean tsunami ( but his family did n’t ) and now he work on in a Sri Lankan call center for Abercrombie & Fitch . In his trim time , he ’s produce a fake e - commerce site that sell “ renown way shade ” – audio files that bewitch what silence sound like in rooms that famous people live in . Zack create cock - and - nut - shaped harvest rotary in his own cornfields ; Julien is haunt with World of Warcraft ; Samantha is obsessed with various geotagging games online ( creating “ globe sandwiches ” by taking a picture of a small-arm of bread on the ground in New Zealand , while somebody across the ball in Spain takes a picture of another piece of kale on the earth ) ; and Diana is an evangelical Christian with Tourette ’s . And all of them have one matter in common : After they ’re stung by supposedly - extinct bee , they ’re scoop up up by a team of scientists and force to undergo weird tests in an underground deftness in Atlanta .

The apparatus for the novel is only rattling , and the subtext is intriguing from the start . Flowing beneath the Earth’s surface of this quirky eco - thriller is a meditation on the way metier consumption has become both an habituation and anatomy of redemption for our character – and , by extension , the whole human species . Locked into their quarantine cells in Atlanta , the main characters are n’t allow for to have any books , computer , or video . They ’re forced to contemplate how everlasting and freaky their lives would be without read and lock with the world through everything from euphony to World of Warcraft . What ’s particularly impudent is the way Coupland take no distinction between the addictive allure of reading and the distraction of the internet . All are , ultimately , ways of feeding our intellect with a combination of beauty and “ carb dildo ” drivel .

Once the bee - stung are released , they discover they ca n’t return to their old lives . Something about them has changed deeply , and they need to come together and talk about it . So they accept an invitation from Serge , one of the scientists who studied them , to visit a distant island together where he can examine them further – and they can get to cognise each other . It reverse out what Serge really wants them to do is tell tale . He hints cryptically that this is part of what he ’s researching , and that storytelling is pertain to why the bee take to prick them . We also begin to pull in that somehow this research is connect to the drug Solon .

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The entire 2d one-half of the novel is taken up with the stories that our graphic symbol tell teach other . Some are clearly based on their spirit experience ; others are parable about storytelling itself and the significance of human connexion . take on together , these tales start to form an constituent whole , a portrait of hoi polloi obsess with finding the words to excuse their experiences even while they are unable to regain other people to deal those experience with . It ’s a risky and weird right - turn for the novel to take , though not unexpected for Coupland . He ’s know for his joyful experiments with terminology and form .

While most of the stories were risible to show , I meander up feeling like this part of the novel was pretty uneven . There were simply too many stories , without any exposition between them , and we lost the thread of the compelling tale that Coupland had put up for us in the fascinating first half of the novel . Though the book has a great ending , Coupland merely gets derailed when the theatrical role tell stories or else of figuring out what connect them to each other and the bee . Arguably , storytelling is what connects them , and we get confidential information from very early in the book that there is a speck called an “ eon ” that is released into the bloodstream when humans experience tarradiddle . But many readers will grow frustrated with Coupland ’s way of exploring this idea .

Despite these problems , this is one of the rarefied science fable novels that will make you express joy out loud . Coupland ’s comic prose is simply terrific , but never in a way that feels cheap or mean . He ’s completely in love with his character , and their uncanny observations about the world are achingly true . Regardless of whether you adore or ignore the storytelling one-half of the novel , you ’ll be disport and divert . Especially if you ’ve liked Coupland ’s other novel , you wo n’t need to miss this one .

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