Count Zero
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- This article is about the novel titled Count Zero. For the Boston rock band, see Count Zero (band).
| Count Zero | |
.jpg/200px-CountZero(1stEd).jpg) Cover of first edition (hardcover) |
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| Author | William F. Gibson |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | the Sprawl trilogy |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Victor Gollancz Ltd |
| Publication date | 1986 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 261 pp |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-575-03696-6 (first edition) |
| Preceded by | Neuromancer |
| Followed by | Mona Lisa Overdrive |
Count Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the middle volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which includes Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a prime example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.
Count Zero was serialized by Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in the 1986 January (100th issue), February & March issues. The black & white story art was done by J. K. Potter. The January cover is devoted to the story, with art by Hisaki Yasuda.
Count Zero was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1986 and was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1987.
Contents |
[edit] Plot introduction
Eight years after the events of Neuromancer, strange things begin to happen in the Matrix, leading to the proliferation of what appear to be voodoo gods (hinted to be the fractured remains of the joined AIs that were Neuromancer and Wintermute).
Two powerful multinational corporations are engaged in a battle for control (extending into space) over a powerful new technology (a biochip) using hackers and the Matrix as well as espionage and violence.
[edit] Explanation of the novel's title
The title of the book, other than being the pseudonym of the main character Bobby Newmark, is also reported to be a word-play on the computer programming term[citation needed] count zero. According to a frontleaf of the book, in a "count zero interrupt", an interrupt of a process decrements a counter to zero. The exact quote is "On receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero."
[edit] Plot summary
As with later Gibson works, there are multiple story-lines which eventually intertwine:
Thread One: In the southwestern USA, a corporate mercenary soldier (Turner) has been hired out to help steal a brilliant researcher (Mitchell) from a competing corporate fortress. The attempt is a disaster and Turner ends up with the scientist's young daughter, whose nerve system has been altered to allow her direct access in her head to the Cyberspace Matrix. But she is not conscious of this.She carries evidence, implanted in her brain by her father, of the "biosoft" construction that Virek (see next paragraph) desires above all else so that he can make an evolutionary jump to something like omniscience and immortality.
Thread Two: Seven years after the events in Neuromancer a young, untested, New Jersey-suburbs computer hacker, Bobby Newmark, nicknamed Count Zero, gets hold of a piece of black market software, plugs himself into the matrix and almost gets himself killed. The only thing that saves his life is a vision of a girl made of light whom he sees in the matrix before he faints. She is Mitchell's daughter, the girl in paragraph one, above. They meet only at the very end of the book.
Thread Three: Marly, a small gallery owner until she became caught with a hoax and newly infamous as a result, is engaged by ultra-rich, reclusive (cf. Howard Hughes) industrialist and art patron Josef Virek to find the unknown creator of his futuristic Joseph Cornell style boxes (because one contained the biosoft construction in its tiny, intricate design).
All of these plotlines come together at the end of the story -- and Virek, the hunter of his immortality, becomes the hunted, it appears. (You could say he gets "too close to the sun" and melts his wings.) It appears that the AI (introduced in Neuromancer and designed by the mother of this Rockefelller -like family, the Tessier-Ashpools) has sent the Cornell style box into the world with the biosoft to attract and dispose of Virek (though this may be just a result of Virek going where he shuoldn't).
The Cyberspace Matrix, a synergistic linked computer database that encompasses all of Earth, has become sentient. But most of humanity remains unaware.
[edit] Characters
[edit] Bobby Newmark
At the beginning of the novel, Bobby is a smalltime "cowboy" (hacker) who wants to be a big name in cyberspace. He buys what he naively trusts is an "ICE breaker" (hacking software), unaware that he is in fact being used to test out some unknown software to see what it does. His test nearly ends up killing him but at the last moment Bobby is rescued, while in Cyberspace and dying, by a girl, Angela Mitchell, who is somehow able to enter cyberspace without using a "deck" (computer). The acronym ICE is shorthand, incidentally, for "Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics". The most formidable of these data defense networks are plenty powerful enough to physically terminate any hacker making an unsuccessful attempt to defeat them. Most interesting is the fact that this is legally sanctioned.
Bobby realises his target must now know where he lives, so he flees. Shortly after fleeing, he is brutally mugged for his deck and left for dead, only to be rescued and given medical attention by the owners of the software Bobby tried out, a small group who are very interested in what happened to him in Cyberspace. Bobby and Angela (who are roughly the same age) become lovers after the end of this book (as indicated in Mona Lisa Overdrive).
Newmark makes a minor appearance in the third Sprawl novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Eight years older, he is physically comatose, but mentally jacked into a massive storage and computing device which contains a virtual reality approximation of the world. Near the end of the story Bobby is reunited with Angela, whom he had not seen for several years.
[edit] Turner
Turner (the only name by which he is known in the novel) is a mercenary who has been employed by various corporations, often to help vital employees of competing corporations "defect" to Turner's employers. The novel begins with an account of a job in New Delhi in which Turner was nearly killed by a mobile bomb. After three months of reconstructive surgery in Singapore, Turner takes a vacation in Mexico, where he meets and becomes sexually involved with a woman named Allison. While on a beach with Allison, Turner sees a familiar yacht close to shore and notices a raft from the yacht approaching the beach, bearing the logo of the Hosaka Corporation. Turner tells Allison to leave while he waits for the raft's passengers to come ashore. He already knows that one of the passengers is Conroy, another mercenary with whom Turner has worked in the past. Conroy recruits Turner for another "extraction" job; this time, Conroy and Turner are to help a man named Christopher Mitchell leave Maas Biolabs for Hosaka. Mitchell carries with him the expertise to design and manufacture "biochips", a technology superior to the nearly ubiquitous silicon microprocessors of the era. Maas Biolabs holds the patents to biochip technology and would use every means it could to prevent Mitchell's escape. Conroy also reveals that Allison is a "field psychologist" working for Hosaka to monitor Turner and help him recover.
Turner is a disciplined professional, but is troubled by memories of past jobs that ended tragically as well as his relationship with his brother Rudy (who is an alcoholic and drug addict). Turner comes to realize that the unsuccessful attempt to "bring over" Christopher Mitchell from Maas to Hosaka resulted from a betrayal and suspects that Conroy is behind it. He also recognizes that Angie Mitchell is in grave danger, and resolves to protect her while finding out who is pursuing her and why.
[edit] Marly Krushkhova
Marly, prior to the beginning of the story, operated a small art gallery in Paris. She was disgraced when she attempted to sell a forged box assemblage that was supposedly a lost piece by the American sculptor Joseph Cornell. She was, however, unaware that the piece was a fake; the forgery had been commissioned by the gallery's co-owner (and Marly's then-lover) Alain, who embezzled money from the gallery to finance the commission and who convinced Marly that the piece was an authentic Cornell. Unemployed and living with her friend Andrea, Marly receives a job offer from the wealthy businessman Josef Virek. During her interview, conducted via a very advanced simstim link, Virek informs Marly that he has collected several remarkable box assemblages similar to those created by Cornell. Virek then hires Marly to find out who produced the pieces, offering her considerable financial support during the course of her search.
Marly is not, however, easily led, and quickly realizes there is more than meets the eye in her new job. Though she welcomes the opportunity to get out of her current situation, Marly does not fully trust the mysterious and secretive Virek. This mistrust only deepens when it becomes clear that she is being followed by Virek's agents, in particular Virek's right-hand man, Paco. Marly tries to stay a step ahead of Virek and Paco while finding out the identity of the boxes' creator.
[edit] Quotation
"He'd used decks in school, toys that shuttled you through the infinite reaches of the space that wasn't space, mankind's unthinkably complex consensual hallucination, the matrix cyberspace, where the great corporate hotcores burned like neon novas, data so dense you suffered sensory overload if you tried to apprehend more than the merest outline." (Excerpt from William Gibson's Count Zero)
[edit] External links
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