Content levels
Trigger warnings
Positive tags
Hero archetypes
Heroine archetypes
Protagonist archetypes
Themes
Synopsis
Coupland's 2010 Massey Lecture is 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.
Is Player One: What Is to Become of Us: A Novel in Five Hours appropriate for my child?
Suitable for most readers 16 and up.
Literary novel with philosophical themes exploring human identity and societal collapse during a global disaster. Contains mature existential content and moderate language but no graphic violence or sexual content.
What to know going in
This book has mild violence, no sexual content, and moderate language. Content notes include anxiety, depression, and existential crisis.
Who'll love this
Teens who enjoy thought-provoking stories about what it means to be human in the digital age will find this compelling.