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Sydney Morning Herald
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
When the internet cut out, Colum McCann boarded a ship – and found his next novel
Colum McCann is sitting in the study of his New York apartment, looking very relaxed, wearing one of his trademark scarves, waving his hands around as he speaks. 'I know it looks like Ted Kaczynski's cabin,' he says of the room, cluttered with books and posters and important bits of paper. Kaczynski, the Unabomber, used his cabin to plot acts of terrorism. McCann uses his to fashion his award-winning novels, notably the bestsellers Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin. Apropos of nothing, he shows me a scar on his head: he's just had temporal surgery for headaches, fortunately, nothing nasty was found. We're delving into the marvel of how we can see and speak to each other across half the world. 'My voice goes into the computer,' he says, 'then into a little black box at the bottom of my apartment, and then it shoots down to 60 Hudson Street, then either to Long Island or New Jersey, then to Alexandria in Egypt, and then …' He digs out a huge map of Australia. 'To Perth. Or maybe Oxford Falls in Sydney, or Maroochydore?' Anyway, his voice and face get to Melbourne and me via a series of cables about as wide as a garden hose, crossing the bottom of the sea. At the heart of the cables are glass tubes the width of an eyelash, carrying light. 'I find it startling and a little bit scary,' he says. 'Well, it's beautiful. Our voices and images are being translated into billions of pulses of light with a 0.0006-second delay.' These miraculous little glass tubes are the inspiration behind his latest novel, Twist, which began when he read a news report about a cable repair ship, the Leon Thevenin, operating out of Cape Town. Several African countries lost their internet service for six weeks, and the ship was sent out to resolve the problem. 'All of that began to gather in my head and knock on my brain cells: what is going on here?' A novelist's curiosity led him to go out on the Leon Thevenin himself for a few days, on local missions. He met a diverse crew: South Africans, Zimbabweans, people from all over the world. Some were highly trained in technology and mathematics, some worked the engine room, some would operate the surprisingly primitive tool for a boat far out over deep water: a grappling hook trawling the bottom for a break in the cable, the needle in the haystack. The crew called him the Book Guy: 'They wanted to ask me as many questions as I wanted to ask them.' The book contains some heart-stopping descriptions of free diving, so vivid and detailed I'm sure he must have tried it himself. 'I was possibly the worst free diver they've ever come across,' he says. 'They go down to huge depths, 100 metres. I got down to one metre. A lot of writing is like that. You go in and try to understand the passion and try to be honest, and then run it by the best experts.' Gradually, his research revealed sinister findings. The African break was caused by a mighty flood in the Congo River, which pushed mountains of debris far out to sea. But there's also potential for military sabotage. At the time we are speaking, Chinese warships have been circling Australia. The Chinese government said they were doing scientific work, but such a voyage could also be scouting for cables to cut. McCann says this is already happening with Russian vessels in the Baltic and around the coast of Ireland. An admiral in the British navy told him, 'I guarantee you that the next major war will begin underwater.' All this alarming background could lead to a sizzling spy thriller about international sabotage. 'I could have made a lot of money!' McCann laughs. 'Maybe I will write the James Bond version one day. But I just don't believe in it.' Instead, he has created suspenseful literary fiction where the breaking and healing in the hearts and minds of his characters is at least as important as what's going on underwater. His narrator, Anthony Fennell, is an Irish novelist, like McCann, who goes out on a cable repair ship which is aiming to fix a break far out at sea. Unlike McCann, Anthony is a broken soul, suffering from professional and personal failure. I was possibly the worst free diver they've ever come across. He becomes obsessed with the enigmatic master of the mission, John Conway, who in turn is troubled by cracks in his marriage. Anthony and Conway recall Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby in one of a series of allusions to literary predecessors (including Heart of Darkness, T. S. Eliot's Prufrock, the film Apocalypse Now and Don DeLillo). 'Nick Carraway is a narrator who is broken,' McCann says. 'He's trying to figure out a mysterious man and trying to figure out himself as well, and in the end we don't know the full story. 'I like that. The times seem obsessed with certainty. Everyone is so certain. And increasingly people want to make it simple, pretend there's no mystery.' So in Twist, 'there are a lot of big ideas but I didn't want to make it violins and trumpets coming up … I wanted it all embedded in a small, deeply simple story'. Loading In a long career, Dublin-born McCann has written eight novels, three story collections and two non-fiction works. His writing has been translated into 40 languages and has won many international awards. He's written fiction about real people and events: Rudolf Nureyev, the Roma, two friends across the Israel-Palestine divide who both lost daughters in the Middle East conflict, aviators, black slavery, a tightrope walk between the World Trade Centre towers, the Irish Troubles and people tunnelling under New York. What does all this have in common? 'I don't know, and I don't know if I even want to know, it might bring on a paralysis,' he says. 'But I do feel there's a sense of movement from one place to the next, very specific places where work occurs. And I like exploring things, trying to figure out what's going on, to carve a personal story out of them, rather than get didactic, political, moralistic.' Next he's off to Australia, a country he hasn't visited for 26 years; he has happy memories of the first visit: 'There was a peculiar strong Irish character; I felt at home.' Then on to Germany for the world premiere of Charlotte Bray's opera based on American Mother, the non-fiction story he wrote with Diane Foley about the ISIS beheading of her son Jim; he wrote the libretto. 'I'll be getting my tuxedo ready. With a scarf over it.' Colum McCann will be at the UNSW Centre for Ideas on May 6. He is also a guest of the Byron Writer's Festival (May 7), Newcastle Writers Festival (May 8), Canberra Writers Festival (May 9) and Melbourne Writers Festival (May 10). The Age is a festival partner. Twist is out now.
The Age
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
When the internet cut out, Colum McCann boarded a ship – and found his next novel
Colum McCann is sitting in the study of his New York apartment, looking very relaxed, wearing one of his trademark scarves, waving his hands around as he speaks. 'I know it looks like Ted Kaczynski's cabin,' he says of the room, cluttered with books and posters and important bits of paper. Kaczynski, the Unabomber, used his cabin to plot acts of terrorism. McCann uses his to fashion his award-winning novels, notably the bestsellers Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin. Apropos of nothing, he shows me a scar on his head: he's just had temporal surgery for headaches, fortunately, nothing nasty was found. We're delving into the marvel of how we can see and speak to each other across half the world. 'My voice goes into the computer,' he says, 'then into a little black box at the bottom of my apartment, and then it shoots down to 60 Hudson Street, then either to Long Island or New Jersey, then to Alexandria in Egypt, and then …' He digs out a huge map of Australia. 'To Perth. Or maybe Oxford Falls in Sydney, or Maroochydore?' Anyway, his voice and face get to Melbourne and me via a series of cables about as wide as a garden hose, crossing the bottom of the sea. At the heart of the cables are glass tubes the width of an eyelash, carrying light. 'I find it startling and a little bit scary,' he says. 'Well, it's beautiful. Our voices and images are being translated into billions of pulses of light with a 0.0006-second delay.' These miraculous little glass tubes are the inspiration behind his latest novel, Twist, which began when he read a news report about a cable repair ship, the Leon Thevenin, operating out of Cape Town. Several African countries lost their internet service for six weeks, and the ship was sent out to resolve the problem. 'All of that began to gather in my head and knock on my brain cells: what is going on here?' A novelist's curiosity led him to go out on the Leon Thevenin himself for a few days, on local missions. He met a diverse crew: South Africans, Zimbabweans, people from all over the world. Some were highly trained in technology and mathematics, some worked the engine room, some would operate the surprisingly primitive tool for a boat far out over deep water: a grappling hook trawling the bottom for a break in the cable, the needle in the haystack. The crew called him the Book Guy: 'They wanted to ask me as many questions as I wanted to ask them.' The book contains some heart-stopping descriptions of free diving, so vivid and detailed I'm sure he must have tried it himself. 'I was possibly the worst free diver they've ever come across,' he says. 'They go down to huge depths, 100 metres. I got down to one metre. A lot of writing is like that. You go in and try to understand the passion and try to be honest, and then run it by the best experts.' Gradually, his research revealed sinister findings. The African break was caused by a mighty flood in the Congo River, which pushed mountains of debris far out to sea. But there's also potential for military sabotage. At the time we are speaking, Chinese warships have been circling Australia. The Chinese government said they were doing scientific work, but such a voyage could also be scouting for cables to cut. McCann says this is already happening with Russian vessels in the Baltic and around the coast of Ireland. An admiral in the British navy told him, 'I guarantee you that the next major war will begin underwater.' All this alarming background could lead to a sizzling spy thriller about international sabotage. 'I could have made a lot of money!' McCann laughs. 'Maybe I will write the James Bond version one day. But I just don't believe in it.' Instead, he has created suspenseful literary fiction where the breaking and healing in the hearts and minds of his characters is at least as important as what's going on underwater. His narrator, Anthony Fennell, is an Irish novelist, like McCann, who goes out on a cable repair ship which is aiming to fix a break far out at sea. Unlike McCann, Anthony is a broken soul, suffering from professional and personal failure. I was possibly the worst free diver they've ever come across. He becomes obsessed with the enigmatic master of the mission, John Conway, who in turn is troubled by cracks in his marriage. Anthony and Conway recall Nick Carraway and Jay Gatsby in one of a series of allusions to literary predecessors (including Heart of Darkness, T. S. Eliot's Prufrock, the film Apocalypse Now and Don DeLillo). 'Nick Carraway is a narrator who is broken,' McCann says. 'He's trying to figure out a mysterious man and trying to figure out himself as well, and in the end we don't know the full story. 'I like that. The times seem obsessed with certainty. Everyone is so certain. And increasingly people want to make it simple, pretend there's no mystery.' So in Twist, 'there are a lot of big ideas but I didn't want to make it violins and trumpets coming up … I wanted it all embedded in a small, deeply simple story'. Loading In a long career, Dublin-born McCann has written eight novels, three story collections and two non-fiction works. His writing has been translated into 40 languages and has won many international awards. He's written fiction about real people and events: Rudolf Nureyev, the Roma, two friends across the Israel-Palestine divide who both lost daughters in the Middle East conflict, aviators, black slavery, a tightrope walk between the World Trade Centre towers, the Irish Troubles and people tunnelling under New York. What does all this have in common? 'I don't know, and I don't know if I even want to know, it might bring on a paralysis,' he says. 'But I do feel there's a sense of movement from one place to the next, very specific places where work occurs. And I like exploring things, trying to figure out what's going on, to carve a personal story out of them, rather than get didactic, political, moralistic.' Next he's off to Australia, a country he hasn't visited for 26 years; he has happy memories of the first visit: 'There was a peculiar strong Irish character; I felt at home.' Then on to Germany for the world premiere of Charlotte Bray's opera based on American Mother, the non-fiction story he wrote with Diane Foley about the ISIS beheading of her son Jim; he wrote the libretto. 'I'll be getting my tuxedo ready. With a scarf over it.' Colum McCann will be at the UNSW Centre for Ideas on May 6. He is also a guest of the Byron Writer's Festival (May 7), Newcastle Writers Festival (May 8), Canberra Writers Festival (May 9) and Melbourne Writers Festival (May 10). The Age is a festival partner. Twist is out now.
Yahoo
28-03-2025
- Yahoo
Contributor: It's no metaphor — undersea cables hold together our precarious modern life
In the early days of the pandemic, I began pondering the idea of healing. I stumbled upon a story about a cable repair vessel, the Leon Thevenin, which had attended to a cable break off the west coast of Africa. The cable, which had broken deep at sea, had caused an alarming and potentially fatal slowdown in internet connections in western and southern Africa. The break seemed like a reasonable metaphor for our fractured times: The cable had snapped during an oceanic landslide precipitated by huge floods in the Congo River. It took the ship more than a month to find the rupture and complete the repair. The idea of a cable carrying all our data under the sea appeared to me, at the time, to be a touch anachronistic in this, our digital age. After all, everything on my computer seemed to live in the cloud. Advertisements suggested that my phone shot its information upward, celestially, then bounced it back down to earth. My night sky was peppered with moving satellites. Even my printer was wireless. However, I was soon to learn that most of our information actually does move along the cold wet floors of our silent seas, and that the cables were far more vulnerable than I could have imagined. In fact, I — a virtual Luddite — was able, over the course of three years of research, to imagine a reasonable plan that could take down a good chunk of the world's internet. It is estimated that more than 95% of the world's intercontinental information travels through underwater cables that are no bigger than the pipes at the back of your toilet. Within those cables there are tiny strands of fiber optic material, the width of an eyelash. The 500-plus working data cables in the world carry not only our emails and phone calls but also the majority of the world's financial transactions, estimated to be worth $10 trillion a day. Of course, they also carry all our petty desires and inanities, the emojis, the porn, the TikToks, the data smog. They are, essentially, our technological umbilical cords. The Elon Musks of the world might want us to believe that Starlink is the true wave of the future, but satellites are slower and considerably more expensive, and most experts say that we will be using underwater cable systems for at least the next three decades. Yet, the cables, like all of us, must break sometimes. Fishing trawlers can snag a wire. Dropped anchors from cruise ships can exact damage. An underwater earthquake or a landslide can snap the cable deep in the abyssal zone. Or, as has happened increasingly in the last year, they can be sabotaged by state actors and terrorists bent on disrupting the political, social and financial rhythms of an already turbulent world. Historically, cables in Taiwan, Vietnam and Egypt have all been vulnerable to breakage and sabotage. Last year, the Houthi rebels in Yemen were accused of cutting three cables underneath the Red Sea. This January, the British defense secretary, John Healey, accused Russian ships of spying on the location of undersea communication and utility cables that connect Britain to the rest of the world. Chinese and Russian carriers have been accused of dragging anchor over fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea, causing damage in Finland, Estonia, Germany and other NATO territories. All of this has, in essence, precipitated a Coldwater War. In 2023 the former Russian president and close Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev said that there were no longer any constraints 'to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies.' Cables — often several of them bunched together — come into our shores via landing stations. These are essentially coastline buildings, in suburban areas. They appear like low-slung windowless bungalows. The landing stations generally have minimal security. Even in the New York area, the landing stations are protected by little more than a camera and sometimes a chain-link fence. During the pandemic, I was able to access a Long Island landing station and stand directly above the manhole cover where the cables came from across the Atlantic. With a crowbar I could have reached down and touched them, felt the pulse of the world's information traveling through my fingertips. But sabotage on a small level is never going to disrupt our vast information flow. One of the beauties of the internet is that it is self-healing, meaning that information, when blocked, just travels in a new direction. But a coordinated series of attacks on the landing stations, combined with some low-level sabotage at sea (an ingenious diver can fairly easily manage to cut a cable), augmented by some deep-sea sabotage (the severing of cables using ropes and cutting grapnels lowered from boats), could, in fact, bring the world economies to a screeching halt. The idea of a global takedown may seem a little far-fetched to some, and the world is more at risk from fishing trawlers dropping anchor, but then again we didn't anticipate airliners flying into skyscrapers back in the early part of the century. The next major 9/11 could possibly happen underwater, with a series of attacks that are simultaneously local and global. A few strategically placed boats, a handful of divers and a couple of on-land sabotage teams could send the world into a vicious tailspin. The deep-sea sabotage is most worrying because it can take a repair boat several weeks to find a break and initiate a fix. The continent of Africa, for instance, relies on a small number of major cable systems running along its east and west coasts. If the cables are simultaneously severed, the whole continent could go down. And a breakdown can affect just about everywhere: If Africa or the Baltic Sea or the Philippines were to become isolated, the repercussions would be felt all over the globe. Information can lead to liberation. But the control of it can also become a new form of colonization. Once upon a time, we had ships. Now we have fragile tubes. This is especially frightening in a world where no one nation seems to want to be the police anymore. The International Cable Protection Committee is an effective lobby, but it's more a forum than a legislative organization. The task of repair nearly always falls to private businesses. The cables are owned by network operators (SubCom, Alcatel, Nippon Electric Co.), but increasingly content providers (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta) are putting their money in cables to ensure the interconnection of their data centers. We are connected, and wired to one another, but sometimes those connections can hang on a not-so-protected string. If a tech-challenged novelist can figure out a system of damage — and nothing I reveal here is beyond the fingertips of anyone — then perhaps it is time for us to reevaluate our systems, or at least be aware of what could unfold, or untangle. Colum McCann is the author, most recently, of the novel 'Twist.' If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
28-03-2025
- Los Angeles Times
It's no metaphor — undersea cables hold together our precarious modern life
In the early days of the pandemic, I began pondering the idea of healing. I stumbled upon a story about a cable repair vessel, the Leon Thevenin, which had attended to a cable break off the west coast of Africa. The cable, which had broken deep at sea, had caused an alarming and potentially fatal slowdown in internet connections in western and southern Africa. The break seemed like a reasonable metaphor for our fractured times: The cable had snapped during an oceanic landslide precipitated by huge floods in the Congo River. It took the ship more than a month to find the rupture and complete the repair. The idea of a cable carrying all our data under the sea appeared to me, at the time, to be a touch anachronistic in this, our digital age. After all, everything on my computer seemed to live in the cloud. Advertisements suggested that my phone shot its information upward, celestially, then bounced it back down to earth. My night sky was peppered with moving satellites. Even my printer was wireless. However, I was soon to learn that most of our information actually does move along the cold wet floors of our silent seas, and that the cables were far more vulnerable than I could have imagined. In fact, I — a virtual Luddite — was able, over the course of three years of research, to imagine a reasonable plan that could take down a good chunk of the world's internet. It is estimated that more than 95% of the world's intercontinental information travels through underwater cables that are no bigger than the pipes at the back of your toilet. Within those cables there are tiny strands of fiber optic material, the width of an eyelash. The 500-plus working data cables in the world carry not only our emails and phone calls but also the majority of the world's financial transactions, estimated to be worth $10 trillion a day. Of course, they also carry all our petty desires and inanities, the emojis, the porn, the TikToks, the data smog. They are, essentially, our technological umbilical cords. The Elon Musks of the world might want us to believe that Starlink is the true wave of the future, but satellites are slower and considerably more expensive, and most experts say that we will be using underwater cable systems for at least the next three decades. Yet, the cables, like all of us, must break sometimes. Fishing trawlers can snag a wire. Dropped anchors from cruise ships can exact damage. An underwater earthquake or a landslide can snap the cable deep in the abyssal zone. Or, as has happened increasingly in the last year, they can be sabotaged by state actors and terrorists bent on disrupting the political, social and financial rhythms of an already turbulent world. Historically, cables in Taiwan, Vietnam and Egypt have all been vulnerable to breakage and sabotage. Last year, the Houthi rebels in Yemen were accused of cutting three cables underneath the Red Sea. This January, the British defense secretary, John Healey, accused Russian ships of spying on the location of undersea communication and utility cables that connect Britain to the rest of the world. Chinese and Russian carriers have been accused of dragging anchor over fiber optic cables in the Baltic Sea, causing damage in Finland, Estonia, Germany and other NATO territories. All of this has, in essence, precipitated a Coldwater War. In 2023 the former Russian president and close Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev said that there were no longer any constraints 'to prevent us from destroying the ocean floor cable communications of our enemies.' Cables — often several of them bunched together — come into our shores via landing stations. These are essentially coastline buildings, in suburban areas. They appear like low-slung windowless bungalows. The landing stations generally have minimal security. Even in the New York area, the landing stations are protected by little more than a camera and sometimes a chain-link fence. During the pandemic, I was able to access a Long Island landing station and stand directly above the manhole cover where the cables came from across the Atlantic. With a crowbar I could have reached down and touched them, felt the pulse of the world's information traveling through my fingertips. But sabotage on a small level is never going to disrupt our vast information flow. One of the beauties of the internet is that it is self-healing, meaning that information, when blocked, just travels in a new direction. But a coordinated series of attacks on the landing stations, combined with some low-level sabotage at sea (an ingenious diver can fairly easily manage to cut a cable), augmented by some deep-sea sabotage (the severing of cables using ropes and cutting grapnels lowered from boats), could, in fact, bring the world economies to a screeching halt. The idea of a global takedown may seem a little far-fetched to some, and the world is more at risk from fishing trawlers dropping anchor, but then again we didn't anticipate airliners flying into skyscrapers back in the early part of the century. The next major 9/11 could possibly happen underwater, with a series of attacks that are simultaneously local and global. A few strategically placed boats, a handful of divers and a couple of on-land sabotage teams could send the world into a vicious tailspin. The deep-sea sabotage is most worrying because it can take a repair boat several weeks to find a break and initiate a fix. The continent of Africa, for instance, relies on a small number of major cable systems running along its east and west coasts. If the cables are simultaneously severed, the whole continent could go down. And a breakdown can affect just about everywhere: If Africa or the Baltic Sea or the Philippines were to become isolated, the repercussions would be felt all over the globe. Information can lead to liberation. But the control of it can also become a new form of colonization. Once upon a time, we had ships. Now we have fragile tubes. This is especially frightening in a world where no one nation seems to want to be the police anymore. The International Cable Protection Committee is an effective lobby, but it's more a forum than a legislative organization. The task of repair nearly always falls to private businesses. The cables are owned by network operators (SubCom, Alcatel, Nippon Electric Co.), but increasingly content providers (Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta) are putting their money in cables to ensure the interconnection of their data centers. We are connected, and wired to one another, but sometimes those connections can hang on a not-so-protected string. If a tech-challenged novelist can figure out a system of damage — and nothing I reveal here is beyond the fingertips of anyone — then perhaps it is time for us to reevaluate our systems, or at least be aware of what could unfold, or untangle. Colum McCann is the author, most recently, of the novel 'Twist.'
