Part of the network of fibre-optic cables that encircles the world
David Fleetham/Alamy
I have spent too much time lately thinking about the network of fibre-optic cables that encircles the world. That’s because these fibres are the subject of my new piece (see “How buried cables are revealing Earth’s interior in incredible detail”), which explores how geoscientists are using them to map Earth’s interior. Naturally, when I learned that Colum McCann’s novel Twist is about this very network, I had to read it.
The novel follows a journalist on assignment to write about what happens when the cables that…
