An eclectic mix of essays, short fiction, and articles, including one quite long piece about the business of laying cable around the globe for telegraph, telephone, and data transmissions (published in Wired magazine). My favorite bits were the author's musings on how the traditional genre categories have merged a bit: almost all movies now include a romance and almost all serialized TV dramas have crime or mystery at their center. And for a while there were hardly any westerns. Yet the Sci-Fi genre persists (thankfully). And why? What is it about science fiction that has such lasting appeal? It's because sci-fi tends to include, in addition to a good story and interesting characters, a clever idea or innovation.