Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, into bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm. Today, I'm very excited. I have Neil Stevenson here. It's a collection of essays, but really what you want to do is to start reading his fiction.

Now, people have been scolding me that I've been doing science fiction on the show, and I think they're angry.

I mean, very few people are saying, yay, but I'm getting scalded.

And I think it's because I'm slow at it.

You know, like, is he just starting to read this stuff?

I mean, where has he been for all this time?

And I have to say that I apologize.

That when I read an essay in the book, Some Remarks, which is published

by William Morrow, about the laying of cable. And I came to a sentence that more or less said,

well, you know, someone who doesn't know what happens when he turns his computer on is as

silly as someone who doesn't know what happens when he turns on his television.

And I thought, oh, yeah, right, that's true.

I mean, how do those bits proceed through those wires?

How am I able to order a book in two seconds from England?

This essay will tell you all about it, but not only that, do it in the best imaginable

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