Coupland 's research turned up links to the themes of '' Life After God '' . " What surprised me about Microsoft is that no one has any conception of an afterlife . There is so little thought given to eternal issues that their very absence make them pointedly there . These people are so locked into the world , by default some sort of transcendence is located elsewhere , and obviously machines become the totem they imbue with sacred properties , wishes , hopes , goals , desires , dreams . That sounds like 1940s SF , but it 's become the world . " The book takes place first at Microsoft in Redmond , Washington ( near Seattle ) and then Silicon Valley ( near San Francisco ) . The time period is 1993 – 1995 , at a time when Microsoft has reached dominance in the software industry and emerged victorious from the " Look & Feel " lawsuit by Apple Inc. , a company that had at times seemed in danger of falling apart . The Northridge earthquake takes place during the story and has a profound effect on Ethan , who eventually constructs a replica highway interchange out of Lego pieces to honor the infrastructure destroyed by the earthquake
Northridge earthquake
1994 Northridge earthquake
Microserfs