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.

Now available from House of Anansi 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.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND is a writer, visual artist and designer. He has published fourteen novels, three collections of short stories, and eight nonfiction books; has written and performed for England’s Royal Shakespeare Company; and is a columnist for the Financial Times and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. In 2015 and 2016 Coupland was artist in residence at the Paris Google Cultural Institute. In May 2018 his exhibition on ecology, Vortex, opened at the Vancouver Aquarium. Coupland is a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, an Officer of the Order of Canada, an Officer of the Order of British Columbia, a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence.

About the Author

Bryen Dunn is a freelance journalist based in Toronto with a focus on tourism, lifestyle, entertainment and community issues. He has written several travel articles and has an extensive portfolio of celebrity interviews with musicians, actors and other public personalities. He’s willing to take on any assignments of interest, attend parties with free booze, listen to rants, and travel the world in search of the great unknown. He’s eager to discover the new, remember the past, and look into the future.