Killing time with some techno-nerds

AS the cover blurb of “JPod” unabashedly proclaims, “Microserfs” author Douglas Coupland’s goal with his new book apparently is to update the earlier one “for the age of Google.” Coupland is the prolific Canadian whose bestselling fiction for the technoscenti makes frequent forays southward: “Microserfs” is set on Bill Gates’ “campus” near Seattle; the label-generating book “Generation X” takes place in Palm Springs and “Shampoo Planet” is mainly about Los Angeles. His trademark preoccupations include marijuana-growing baby boomers, all kinds of games and the logic of unchecked capitalism. His more recent work has arguably taken a turn (for better or worse) toward greater maturity. “JPod” represents a return to his zany roots, so some comparison with the 1996 quasi-classic “Microserfs” seems not only invited, but mandatory.

“Here’s my theory about meetings and life,” says “JPod” narrator Ethan Jarlewski (whose “Microserfs” ’90s alter ego is Daniel), “the three things you can’t fake are erections, competence and creativity.... One of the most common creativity-faking tactics is when someone puts their hands in the prayer position and conceals their mouth while they nod at you and say, ‘Hmmmmm. Interesting.’ ”

Ethan is a self-certified nerd on the payroll of a giant computer-game producer in Vancouver, Canada. He and his five ersatz-sibling coworkers (there are five housemates in “Microserfs”) create characters and action modules destined to be shot down by management. So these “Podders” are basically killing time as they constantly seek patterns or generalities that will give their lives, if not meaning, at least direction. The Podders note that their last names all end in J (thus the book’s title), that British accents guarantee faster promotion, and that “only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony.” Whoa! Can this last really be true? Does it mean that a plurality of Coupland fans take his tales at face value?

Because Ethan is a programmer -- and perhaps, as his girlfriend suspects, mildly autistic -- he collects lists: three-letter acronyms, the ingredients of Doritos, the effects of liquid nitrogen on various office items, etc. As in “Microserfs,” the list-loving Coupland has scattered them throughout “JPod” -- 15 pages of prime numbers, for example. These double as a game, with fellow Podder Evil Mark challenging the gang to find the single rogue number that is not a prime. One ends up skipping whole chapters worth of data. It’s like skipping Tolstoy’s history lectures to get on with the action in “War and Peace.”

Character-wise, life heats up outside work. Coupland specializes in memorable mothers and the cake-baking, dope-wholesaling, cradle-robbing mom he has come up with for Ethan is a doozy. Setting out to exhume a biker she accidentally electrocuted some months earlier (don’t ask), Carol reassures her son about the effects of decomposition: “Don’t be a sissy ... in any event, I packed a few bottles of Febreze to mask the odour. So just get in the car.” When Ethan answers, “Okay, okay already,” she tells him, “I knew you’d help me. You’ve always been the responsible son.”

Equally improbably lovable is Kam Fong, a ballroom-dancing 33-year-old smuggler of illegal labor. On meeting a “shipment,” Ethan blurts, “[W]hat or when was the last time these people ate -- a dead seagull off the coast of Guam?”

Kam is the friend-in-need from hell, a consummate arranger who kidnaps Ethan’s jerk of a boss, hooks him on heroin and packs him off to factory slavery near Shanghai. So there is also a story line, deadpan bizarre but never certifiably impossible, outside the Pod.

That “JPod” borrows from “Microserfs” is clear. (To recycle one’s own work is no crime. It’s a bit disturbing, however, to find a sustained riff on author and animal researcher Temple Grandin’s “hug machine,” with no mention of her as the true inventor.) But what’s new here?

For one thing, however hit or miss the lobbed content, Coupland’s writing style is vastly improved. And “JPod” turns out to be the perfect vehicle for his funny and poignant evocations of near-term nostalgia. (Remember Zima, the drink?) The postmodern intrusion of a character-manipulating Coupland character is disturbing in the wrong way, and the ending feels, well, manipulated. But there is brilliance at work in “JPod.” Not to mention more LOLs than you could shake a bong at. Mom must be so proud.

Kai Maristed is the author of the novels “Broken Ground,” “Out After Dark” and “Fall.”