Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing

By Neal Stephenson

#1 New York Times bestselling author Neal Stephenson is, quite simply, one of the best and most respected writers alive. He’s taken sf to places it’s never been (Snow Crash, Anathem). He’s reinvented the historical novel (The Baroque Cycle), the international thriller (Reamde), and both at the same time (Cryptonomicon).

Now he treats his legion of fans to Some Remarks, an enthralling collection of essays—Stephenson’s first nonfiction work since his long essay on technology, In the Beginning…Was the Command Line, more than a decade ago—as well as new and previously published short writings both fiction and non.

Some Remarks is a magnificent showcase of a brilliantly inventive mind and talent, as he discourses on everything from Sir Isaac Newton to Star Wars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Aug 7, 2012
• ISBN: 9780062133618

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Termination Shock, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell, The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. (with Nicole Galland), Seveneves, Reamde, Anathem, The System of the World, The Confusion, Quicksilver, Cryptonomicon, The Diamond Age, Snow Crash, Zodiac, and the groundbreaking nonfiction work In the Beginning . . .Was the Command Line. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Reviews for Some Remarks

[wordsampersand · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is Stephenson at his best and worst.

"Mother Earth, Mother Board"--a mammoth essay he wrote for Wired in the '90s about ocean-spanning data connections--takes up the bulk of this collection, and it is worth the price of entry. It's a fascinating piece that is, for the most part, a breezy read despite its focus on dorky tech stuff. (And, it's interesting as a tech time capsule of sorts.)

There are some other standouts as well, like his Slate interview and the forward he wrote for a David Foster Wallace book reprint. Also amazing: the throwaway, one-sentence early draft of a Middle Earth story he really worked on. It's joyously goofy.

The rest is all over the place, especially the two short stories here.

[emresevinc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What would your reaction be if you have seen Riemann zeta function on page 10 of a novel? Mine was along the lines of "we've got some interesting sci-fi author here, let's go on!". Or something close to that, as far as I can remember my first encounter with Neal Stepheson more than twelve years ago that started with Cryptonomicon and continued with titles such as Snow Crash (Bantam Spectra Book) and Anathem.Stephenson never failed to satisfy and he has always delivered more than I expected as a curious reader. His latest book, "Some Remarks: Essays and Other Writing", a compilation of his short, and some not so short, essays and stories, is full of little surprises and a lot of depth. For the reader, it is quite a remarkable experience to see how Stephenson's style has developed throughout the years, the author of Anathem has notable differences compared to the author Cryptonomicon.As with any other Stephenson book, it is not easy to recommend this book to many people because even among Stephenson fans, I believe there are some differences: some like his more action packed techno thrillers, whereas some find the juicy stuff in his books where he does not refrain to step into the darker and heavier areas of metaphysics and quantum mechanics. Luckily, this compilation of essays and short stories has enough diversity to satisfy any kind of Stephenson fan. As for the `outsiders', I would suggest the very short essay titled "Time Magazine Article About Anathem". In less than 4 pages, Stephenson accomplishes his feat by portraying the very core idea of one of his major works by using a striking analogy and then very gently forcing the reader to think about the consequences of some disturbing trends.If you consider yourself a nerd, a geek, or someone with insatiable curiosity towards technology, modern world and how it came to be, philosophy, Newton, Leibniz, history, pop culture and why some writers who think the only way to exist is to have a source of income by lecturing at the universities cannot understand other writers who sell enough books to make a decent living, then I bet a bottle of champagne that you'll have a lot of good time reading this book.

[gwendydd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[phrim · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some Remarks is a collection of mostly nonfiction essays by popular SF writer Neal Stephenson. The essays all feature his trademark style of making the mundane appear absolutely ridiculous, and are definitely fun reading. However, many of the essays seem dated, as a large part of them are from the 90's and deal with technology. For example, I now know more than I ever wanted to about laying undersea cable lines in the mid-90's, thanks to an essay entitled "Mother Earth, Mother Board" that absolutely dominated the book. While a modern take is often missing, Stephenson's witty analysis of the history of technology is worth a read to those interested.

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Geeking out or Vegging out. That Is The Question: Some Remarks by Neal Stephenson"


Published August 7th 2012.

I’ve been reading Neal Stephenson for a long time, and I’ve been planning on re-reading him. Now that I’ve just read his very first collection of essays, this need is even greater. The man “touches” a soft spot in me… Not all of the essays are top notch, but the ones who are, oh my.

“Mother Earth, Mother Board” is one of those superlative essays that I remember reading in Wired (with the pictures; I still have that issue of Wired floating around somewhere). I never understood why “Mother Earth, Mother Board” wasn't published as a separate entity. Unfortunately in this collection we get no pictures whatsoever. The pictures would have added so much to the book. It’s a wonderful essay about the history of submarine cable that spans the full spectrum of Stephenson’s intellectual scope. It’s an artiste piece, and one that still resonates 19 years after being published in Wired. I still remember wanting to be a submarine cable guy of the depths or a hacker tourist when I read it for the first time. Now, almost 20 years later, too bad I didn’t embark on that particular career…

The rest of this review on my blog.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

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.

[rlsalvati · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I've read most of the articles over the years, but it was nice to revisit. My very favorite is Under-Constable Proudfoot.

[nmele_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

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.

[themulhern · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A collection of essays and things, which should be reviewed individually.* Arsebestos -- light weight, but the topic of walking while working is also covered in Reamde, more humorously.* A slashdot interview - some very good remarks about the distinction between Beowulf writers and Dante writers.* An essay about Leibniz's metaphysics - lively, but the actual metaphysics is not that interesting to me, probably because it is metaphysics* An essay about the movie 300 --- not compelling. But my feeling about the movie is that it would have been a good movie if 60 minutes and all the dialog had been cut, so I'm not the best audience.* An essay about star wars and geeking out vs. vegging out. I argue that they're not quite as distinguishable from each other as Stephenson thinks.* An essay about science fiction as a genre...assertions that crime is now _the_ genre of TV and romance of movies and that SF is partly, just where characters act intelligently. This makes Sherlock Holmes SF, because he uses technology and smarts to rescue people.* The Spew - short story about total loss of privacy on the internet. Bit's of William Gibson's hotel tiers thrown in.* In the kingdom of Mao Bell - probably so dated as to be useless* The first sentence of a murdery mystery set in "The Shire" of "The Hobbit"* Mother Earth, Mother Board

[michael_lilly-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

These essays ramble, repeat, and did not hold my interest. I read only about half of the book. I am a big fan of his novels and will stick with them.

[paul_s-289480 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A reprint of random interview, blog posts, articles and other miscellanea without any particular theme that I can discern. I enjoyed the article about laying undersea cables. Remember when Wired was good?

[lyndatrue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Many times, if I've read something on the Kindle that I'll want to keep, I search for a used copy (or even purchase a new one), because paper is forever. Sorry, Amazon, but we know that my paper books will outlast my Kindle.I was fortunate to find this London edition in a local bookstore, marked down, even though the book is physically new. eBooks are good for things you only read once. Stephenson is a read more than once kind of writer.