The book features six essays on the notion of surface written from an architectural, philosophical, literary, mathematical, and computational angle, as well as several lighter asides ranging from cookery to poetry.

Its treatment of one theme as a collection of vignettes written in different voices (linguistic, mathematical, computational, mock-literary, and pop-cultural) nods back to Raymond Queneau’s 1947 Exercises in Style, in which the same trivial event is told and re-told in different idioms.

The pagination taps the formal affinity between a publisher’s book spread and a mathematician's surface, both of which draw on the concept of mathematical matrix.

[7] The book’s argument and restrained use of computer graphics by the standards of the day (dominated then as now by computer-generated renderings[8]) elicited a mixed reception.

[13] Some readers noted its lack of engagement with other pressing issues of the day, such as sustainability and ecology, as well as its blank and solipsistic tone, occasionally questionable syntax, and pedestrian graphic design.