The iconic visionary returns with his first new novel since the New York Times bestseller Spook Country.
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reviews
Oct 10, 2010
RandomAnthony
rated it: 
William Gibson is the Jay-Z of his genre. I think. I can’t be sure, as I don’t listen to much rap (few 41 year-old men should say “hip-hop”) anymore. Let me explain. I have long admired Jay-Z’s effortless delivery and the joy with which he seems to embrace his talents; he sounds like he knows he’s good, values his craft, and enjoys the hell out of what he does. And although William Gibson is quieter and, uh, more Canadian, I felt the same way about the author while reading Zero History.
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Jan 08, 2011
Chris
rated it: 
After about page 100, I told Nicola that this book was about an insane search for awesome jeans, but that Gibson is clearly out-of-the-loop because he thinks exclusive jeans might sell for 200 Australian dollars.
Yesterday, she tells me what she thinks happens in the book (without having read any of it):
"A designer decides to make a pair of jeans out of a magic carpet. They are one-of-a-kind, and priced accordingly: $250. Obviously they only appeal to multi-millionairess More...
Yesterday, she tells me what she thinks happens in the book (without having read any of it):
"A designer decides to make a pair of jeans out of a magic carpet. They are one-of-a-kind, and priced accordingly: $250. Obviously they only appeal to multi-millionairess More...
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Jun 13, 2010
Shane
rated it: 
William Gibson builds his novels the way the way a sushi chef would build grand complications.
Here, in the third volume of what might be called his 'Blue Ant' trilogy, he continues the process of refining and stripping story down to its essential elements, leaving more room for the seductive arcana of his finely tuned obsessions. The edgeworld fetishes that have always been the materia of true import in Gibson's work.
The extra space in the narrative also allows for a str More...
Here, in the third volume of what might be called his 'Blue Ant' trilogy, he continues the process of refining and stripping story down to its essential elements, leaving more room for the seductive arcana of his finely tuned obsessions. The edgeworld fetishes that have always been the materia of true import in Gibson's work.
The extra space in the narrative also allows for a str More...
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May 07, 2011
Robert J.
rated it: 
Warning - spoilers
Hollis Henry (female), ex-rock singer, recent author of an art book, and Milgrim (male), recovering drug addict, are recruited by Hubertus Bigend (male), powerful marketer and financier, to locate the designer of a secret brand of jeans. Gracie (male), Special Forces pretender, second rate arms dealer, and military supplier wannabe, is also interested in the brand and sends his men to follow Henry and Milgrim to Paris (from London). Milgrim finds the bug they're u More...
Hollis Henry (female), ex-rock singer, recent author of an art book, and Milgrim (male), recovering drug addict, are recruited by Hubertus Bigend (male), powerful marketer and financier, to locate the designer of a secret brand of jeans. Gracie (male), Special Forces pretender, second rate arms dealer, and military supplier wannabe, is also interested in the brand and sends his men to follow Henry and Milgrim to Paris (from London). Milgrim finds the bug they're u More...
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Jan 24, 2012
Chad
rated it:
I wish Gibson's books came with footnotes.
Each book in this series is structured around some sort of macguffin. Zero History actually has a few, each fascinating. The main one involves fashion, an area of interest I usually do my best to ignore. Here, I hung on every word. Gibson has a knack for picking out the sci-fi that's already present in our world, and then making it seem even more fantastic. Every time I thought he'd made something up, a quick search revealed that it ac More...
Each book in this series is structured around some sort of macguffin. Zero History actually has a few, each fascinating. The main one involves fashion, an area of interest I usually do my best to ignore. Here, I hung on every word. Gibson has a knack for picking out the sci-fi that's already present in our world, and then making it seem even more fantastic. Every time I thought he'd made something up, a quick search revealed that it ac More...
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Sep 19, 2010
William Gibson builds his novels the way the way a sushi chef would build grand complications.
Here, in the third volume of what might be called his 'Blue Ant' trilogy, he continues the process of refining and stripping story down to its essential elements, leaving more room for the seductive arcana of his finely tuned obsessions. The edgeworld fetishes that have always been the materia of true import in Gibson's work.
The extra space in the narrative also allows for a stronge More...
Here, in the third volume of what might be called his 'Blue Ant' trilogy, he continues the process of refining and stripping story down to its essential elements, leaving more room for the seductive arcana of his finely tuned obsessions. The edgeworld fetishes that have always been the materia of true import in Gibson's work.
The extra space in the narrative also allows for a stronge More...
Nov 05, 2011
Lisa
rated it:
Zero History by William Gibson was one of the emergency books I picked up on my trip to Amsterdam and what a lifesaver! It kept me from going crazy on the flight over, although it almost kept me from getting any sleep! It’s a wild ride through secret territory that kept my attention every second.
Zero History is about fashion…sort of. It’s about underground fashion — so secret that there are no stores, no catalogs, no websites. There is only a mailing list and if you’re lucky enough to More...
Zero History is about fashion…sort of. It’s about underground fashion — so secret that there are no stores, no catalogs, no websites. There is only a mailing list and if you’re lucky enough to More...
Feb 19, 2012
Rhodes
rated it:
An old connection snapped into place near the end of this read when the allergy to logos resurfaced. I had read Pattern Recognition when it came out years ago, and this tale just this year. Hubertus Bigend really becomes central in this volume. That is one feels his centrality, as a sun spinning the other characters around him. His openness to, penchant for, surprising innovations from his minions, as well as competitors, makes him interesting, provocative, and likeable.
The sce More...
The sce More...
Dec 20, 2011
Jason
rated it:
To be honest, I would recommend Spook Country, and then to stop, as far as the Bigend trilogy goes. This suffers from the same problem that Pattern Recognition had, which is that far too many things happen purely on coincidence--the resolution of the big showdown depending on multiple levels of coincidence. Further compounding the problems is a need to tie things together. Which means that characters you didn't care about from other books get facetime for the purpose of collecting things.
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Nov 13, 2011
wychwood
rated it:
I bought this in St Pancras, to while away the eight hours until my passport arrived and I could catch the Eurostar (don't leave your passport at home when you're trying to leave the country, it rarely helps). It may have benefited from the undivided attention I was therefore able to give it, but it was also engrossing enough to keep me reasonably entertained.
I absolutely adored Pattern Recognition; it's my favourite Gibson, and was one of my top ten favourites of 2006, the year I read More...
I absolutely adored Pattern Recognition; it's my favourite Gibson, and was one of my top ten favourites of 2006, the year I read More...
Oct 25, 2011
Terry
rated it:
I normally love William Gibson's writing and I suppose here I still do, but even Gibson isn't good enough to cover this story's utter lack of a meaningful plot, developed characters, or an integrated narrative. For the first time, I feel let down by Gibson.
Zero History follows characters previously established in Spook Country but reading this book first is by no means necessary. There are one or two bones to the aware reader to call back to Spook Country as well but they aren't suff More...
Zero History follows characters previously established in Spook Country but reading this book first is by no means necessary. There are one or two bones to the aware reader to call back to Spook Country as well but they aren't suff More...
Sep 26, 2011
Stacy
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Sep 09, 2011
David
rated it:
As an undergrad I once got in an argument in class about Wuthering Heights. The prof's claim was that Wuthering Heights was a great novel; my position was that Wuthering Heights was a waste of everyone's fucking time (direct quote, which sorta fills me with shame today), because it had almost nothing to tell any of us (i.e., average undergrads at the University of Michigan in the mid-90s) about our lives and our world--not because of its displacement in time, but because it was entirely concerne
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Aug 22, 2011
Michael
rated it:
I'm pretty much in Gibson's camp and so find it hard to be entirely objective about his books.
I thought this one was nearly as strong as the awesome Pattern Recognition after the disappointingly baggy Spook Country. Hard to justify exactly why, though. It's not the plot—as usual with his books, the caper plots feel a bit by-the-way. They're fun enough, but they're not really the point and he's never pretend otherwise.
I suppose it boils down to his love of his characters and More...
I thought this one was nearly as strong as the awesome Pattern Recognition after the disappointingly baggy Spook Country. Hard to justify exactly why, though. It's not the plot—as usual with his books, the caper plots feel a bit by-the-way. They're fun enough, but they're not really the point and he's never pretend otherwise.
I suppose it boils down to his love of his characters and More...
Jun 02, 2011
Stas
rated it:
I read Neuromancer 10 years ago. I liked it. Burning Chrome, i think, already left me a bit cold. At the time I just thought his books would make better movies, they so felt like movie scripts.
His early books were feverishly excited about the Net and its promises, set distinctly in a future that was different from our world. (while being its extension, of course, and excitement was often a kind of dreadful excitement. Maybe this is what a lot of people were feeling in 1984, when Neuromanc More...
His early books were feverishly excited about the Net and its promises, set distinctly in a future that was different from our world. (while being its extension, of course, and excitement was often a kind of dreadful excitement. Maybe this is what a lot of people were feeling in 1984, when Neuromanc More...
May 15, 2011
Timothy
rated it:
William Gibson's newest is the third in what I think of (and maybe he does, too) as his "Blue Ant" books. I'd say "trilogy," but there may be more on the way. Blue Ant is the name of a highly secretive and absolutely enormous advertising agency run by the mysterious magnate with a name like a Flemish painter, Hubertus Bigend. Well, Blue Ant's not so much into advertising as it is branding. In the Blue Ant books, branding is everything, both economically and politically.
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May 01, 2011
Sarah
rated it:
Yes.
WG carries the momentum of Spook Country with the majority of SC's cast of characters, as well as a few players from Pattern Recognition set. Because of that carry-over, there is a tangible payoff for having read the first of the three as it is required to solve a chunk of the mystery, but still good either way.
I absolutely fell in love with Milgrim on this go-round. Gibson has this minimalist - yet eloquent - way of rendering details that makes him (M) both innocent More...
WG carries the momentum of Spook Country with the majority of SC's cast of characters, as well as a few players from Pattern Recognition set. Because of that carry-over, there is a tangible payoff for having read the first of the three as it is required to solve a chunk of the mystery, but still good either way.
I absolutely fell in love with Milgrim on this go-round. Gibson has this minimalist - yet eloquent - way of rendering details that makes him (M) both innocent More...
Mar 07, 2011
Ludo
rated it:
I first read 'Neuromancer' some 20+ years before and I was hooked. This was what new and exiting literature should be. The whole first wave of cyberpunk novels was a blast but Gibson was the best with his dark dystopian view of the world dominated by large conglomerates. I have read all his subsequent books and with each book he got further away form cyberpunk, from science fiction. Especially the last three books (the excellent 'pattern recognition', the exciting 'Spook country' and now the som
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Feb 08, 2011
Matt
rated it:
Okay, so Gibson is a very particular kind of writer, with his style of fine-grained particularity about things that makes everything he turns his eye on a kind of fetish. And fetishes, as I think most adults know, are very specific-- it's lucky, then, when the reaction to the fetish is only boredom and some mild exasperation, as I felt with this book.
It's the third of the Bigend books, Bigend being the super-entrepreneur that's animated the last couple Gibson books, and this one featur More...
It's the third of the Bigend books, Bigend being the super-entrepreneur that's animated the last couple Gibson books, and this one featur More...
Feb 01, 2011
Jason
rated it:
About 10 years ago I read that William Gibson, the father of cyberpunk, did not have email. Did not have the internet. Nothing more recent than a FAX machine. So I was surprised when, a few years later, he produced the mainstream fiction novel PATTERN RECOGNITION, which is heavily vested internet culture. With PATTERN RECOGNITION, Gibson turned back and showed us just how cyberpunk we have in fact become, and he has continued to explore it in his subsequent books, SPOOK COUNTRY and ZERO HISTORY.
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Jan 14, 2011
Paul
rated it:
What to say about a book from the author who coined the term "cyberspace"?
First off, I'm used to Gibson's style by now, after 15+ years of reading his stuff, starting in high school with the ever-cited Neuromancer. I then read the others in that "trilogy", Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Then with his second set of stories, starting with Virtual Light and going from there.
There is a certain bit of acclimation that one has to do in order to read and " More...
First off, I'm used to Gibson's style by now, after 15+ years of reading his stuff, starting in high school with the ever-cited Neuromancer. I then read the others in that "trilogy", Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive. Then with his second set of stories, starting with Virtual Light and going from there.
There is a certain bit of acclimation that one has to do in order to read and " More...
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Jan 09, 2011
Jeff
rated it:
A longer review later; I have a lot of catching up to do here.
In short, in many ways classic Gibson. But, in some ways, it was a little too ... I don't know, neat and tidy, and happy-ending ... ish. Gibson's novels tend to end somewhat ambiguously, some more than others. And just because a book has a neat and tidy ending doesn't necessarily make it bad.
But it felt at times a little forced here; I can't provide specific examples -- I'm just going off my impressions. But More...
In short, in many ways classic Gibson. But, in some ways, it was a little too ... I don't know, neat and tidy, and happy-ending ... ish. Gibson's novels tend to end somewhat ambiguously, some more than others. And just because a book has a neat and tidy ending doesn't necessarily make it bad.
But it felt at times a little forced here; I can't provide specific examples -- I'm just going off my impressions. But More...
Dec 30, 2010
Mike
rated it:
A lot of fuss and bother over a pair of pants...
Seriously, is Gibson leaving SciFi? There's nothing in here (except perhaps Milgrim's drug rehab) that couldn't happen today. The idea of a man without a history is interesting, but that really doesn't play a role in the story. The man without a history is really just a supporting character; everyone else has a history, and quite a long one. Lots of iPhones and Macbook Airs don't make scifi, or even cyberpunk.
You could see t More...
Seriously, is Gibson leaving SciFi? There's nothing in here (except perhaps Milgrim's drug rehab) that couldn't happen today. The idea of a man without a history is interesting, but that really doesn't play a role in the story. The man without a history is really just a supporting character; everyone else has a history, and quite a long one. Lots of iPhones and Macbook Airs don't make scifi, or even cyberpunk.
You could see t More...
Nov 24, 2010
drbarb
rated it:
I like Gibson's books, and I like the ex-rockstar girl and Milgram as characters. This was one of the first books I read on my Android phone using Kindle reader software. Thus, I would read it on the el each day. It worked for me. I like the trend spotting in this book. I was telling my son about the material Gibson sort of describes that enables someone to become invisible to the more and more ubiquitous surveillance cameras everywhere (book takes place in UK -- even more cameras than in the US
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Nov 12, 2010
Craig
rated it:
I pick up Gibson when I'm looking for a light read. That's meant to be complimentary rather than a knock on his effort, because I know that he'll string me along with suspense and action, keeping it well engaging without requiring too much mental effort, until the end where he lays out some massively thought-provoking tie-in, leaving me in wonder about the future.
This book had the suspense, the action, but missed out completely on the thought-provoking tie-in. I read it in such a frenz More...
This book had the suspense, the action, but missed out completely on the thought-provoking tie-in. I read it in such a frenz More...
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Oct 23, 2010
Tim
rated it:
Well, this is likely the end of Bigend, and I've got to say, I'm sad to see him go.
Not so much because I like the character, per-se, but because I don't like the uncertainty of where Mr. Gibson will go next. I have faith in him implicitly, it's just my nerves, you know?
This book feels stronger than the last (Spook Country), but that's not to imply the last book wasn't good. I was happy to see Milgram back, to see Hollis doing her thing... and to see/hear/feel the details that G More...
Not so much because I like the character, per-se, but because I don't like the uncertainty of where Mr. Gibson will go next. I have faith in him implicitly, it's just my nerves, you know?
This book feels stronger than the last (Spook Country), but that's not to imply the last book wasn't good. I was happy to see Milgram back, to see Hollis doing her thing... and to see/hear/feel the details that G More...
Oct 05, 2010
On the first page of William Gibson’s latest book, he describes a character’s clothing this way: “wrapped in Japanese herringbone Gore-Tex, multiply flapped and counter-intuitively buckled.”
On the same page, Gibson describes a taxi: “Pearlescent silver, this one. Glyphed in Prussian blue, advertising something German, banking services or business software; a smoother simulacrum of its black ancestors, its faux-leather upholstery a shade of orthopedic fawn.”
Folks, this is T More...
On the same page, Gibson describes a taxi: “Pearlescent silver, this one. Glyphed in Prussian blue, advertising something German, banking services or business software; a smoother simulacrum of its black ancestors, its faux-leather upholstery a shade of orthopedic fawn.”
Folks, this is T More...
Sep 24, 2010
Kurt
rated it:
I have been a fan of William Gibson's writing since 'Neuromancer'. His ability to illustrate a world comprised by the best and worst of what the possible future will look like has always been entertaining. This book is a further extension of an idea and story line the last two books of his have established. Which is his work, which was once considered science fiction, set decades in the future, is now set in contemporary times but is still just as entertaining as his earlier works because his pe
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Sep 11, 2010
Carolyn
rated it:
Zero History provides a big end to the Bigend books. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
I find the development of Gibson's storytelling fascinating. His first three novels, the trilogy started by Neuromancer, took place in a world in which people could jack in to a vast network on which information was represented visually. It was a visionary concept, and Gibson used it beautifully--those books were never, first and foremost, about cyberspace, but about how the its human characters interfaced More...
I find the development of Gibson's storytelling fascinating. His first three novels, the trilogy started by Neuromancer, took place in a world in which people could jack in to a vast network on which information was represented visually. It was a visionary concept, and Gibson used it beautifully--those books were never, first and foremost, about cyberspace, but about how the its human characters interfaced More...
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Dec 01, 2011
Graham
rated it:
I didn't enjoy this as much as the previous 2 books in this series, but even so, it was still much better than most of the novels I have been reading recently (Stephenson's "Reamde", Richard k. Morgan's "Market Forces"). I love the Style Gibson is using for these books - the chapters of 2-3 page length, their snappy quirky titles, the tight prose that changes with the character point of view, and as always in Gibson books, that creepy feeling that another deeper darker plot i
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