VIDEO: Douglas Coupland on Massey Lectures

Last Updated: Monday, November 8, 2010 | 12:49 PM ET

CBC News

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Selected to deliver the 2010 Massey Lectures, bestselling Vancouver author Douglas Coupland chose the novel as his medium — the first time in the history of the venerable series it has been presented as a work of fiction.

According to Coupland, who has been unveiling his ominous five-part work Player One: What is to Become of Us across the country this fall, the novel format seemed the most natural way to distill and crystallize the ideas and concepts he has been grappling with for two decades.

The author recently spoke with CBC-TV's Nigel Hunt about how "the future" seems to be coming at us more quickly than we're able to process, about his feelings on adapting works for another medium and picking Twitter over Facebook.

Player One: What is to Become of Us? A Novel in Five Hours: The 2010 CBC Massey Lectures, by Douglas Coupland, will be broadcast on CBC Radio One's Ideas from Monday through Friday, at 9:05 p.m. The lectures will also be available online: to download as free podcasts until Sunday or via streaming until Nov. 21.

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