Some Remarks (2012)

A bit of a mixed bag. The FLAG chapter was far too technical to be interesting, although there were parts of it that I enjoyed. I liked the characterisation of life in a MACT and thought the essay on being a bad correspondent might just have effectively been titled 'Why I'm a good writer'. But there was an awful lot of geekiness. ( )

This collection of short pieces from a long form master is an entertaining grab bag of ideas, reports and fiction. I took a particular interest in the heart of the book, his long report on the FLAG project, since I was working in Malaysia when Nynex announced that the new cable would land there. Loved his discussions of genre, writing and the organizing structures of fiction. ( )

Like Gibson's recent anthology of articles, this was fun to read and occasionally insightful. Some of the essays I had seen before. I liked the one about walking desks, and the final one about innovation: "Today’s belief in ineluctable certainty is the true innovation-killer of our age." ( )

Intense. ( )

A fascinating collection of stuff. I was particularly interested in Stephenson's ideas about the state of SF as a genre and its relationship to other genres. The very long essay about laying underwater cables was utterly fascinating, and as always, Stephenson is adept at explaining very complicated things and making them very interesting. ( )