Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Count Zero (Sprawl #2)

3.93 of 5 stars 3.93 · rating details · 17,155 ratings · 373 reviews

A corporate mercenary wakes in a reconstructed body, a beautiful woman by his side. Then Hosaka Corporation reactivates him, for a mission more dangerous than the one he’s recovering from: to get a defecting chief of R&D—and the biochip he’s perfected—out intact. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties—some of whom aren’t remotely human...

Paperback, 308 pages

Published March 7th 2006 by Ace Books (first published 1986)

more details... edit details

Get a copy:

More…

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Best of Cyberpunk

7th out of 143 books — 518 voters

Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books

190th out of 2,944 books — 12,411 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 3,000)

filter | sort: default (?) | rating details

Apr 30, 2009 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fast-fun-and-fabulous, speculativefiction

I would perhaps complain that the ending was a bit to deus ex machina for my taste, but then the entire book is wound around the theme of god being in the machine. From the vodou loa who seemingly possess various characters and steer the entire plot; to the mad European trillionare who has reached near immortality through preservation vats and virtual reality; to the insane former net cowboy who now believes he has found god in the random yet deeply moving works of art created by long abandoned...more I would perhaps complain that the ending was a bit to deus ex machina for my taste, but then the entire book is wound around the theme of god being in the machine. From the vodou loa who seemingly possess various characters and steer the entire plot; to the mad European trillionare who has reached near immortality through preservation vats and virtual reality; to the insane former net cowboy who now believes he has found god in the random yet deeply moving works of art created by long abandoned industrial robot; everything in Count Zero is about god, machines, and that perhaps the line between the two is not so clear.

Then again, Neuromancer was largely about sentient AI, and how if computers and the net become omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, that is pretty much the definition of God. I personally enjoyed Neuromancer a bit more, simply because I like the question of god to remain fuzzy, for the factor of faith to blur the interpretation of what occurs -- both see the same bolt of lightening, but to the atheist the lightening is just a meteorological, to the believer, it is a sign from above. In Count Zero the loas seem to actually haunt the net and actually seem to sculpt the events in the book. It could be that they are merely highly advanced AI manifesting as African gods, but Gibson seems to lean a bit more towards the divine here.

That said, Gibson is perhaps one of the best stylists writing sci-fi. I love the genre, but read less of it than I might like simply because the prose in most sci-fi is mediocre, if not down-right bad. There is this generic, functional "sci-fi voice" that the majority of "good" SF writers fall into, where the sentences and paragraphs are merely scaffolds to prop up their ideas: whatever intriguing plot they've devises, some moral or spiritual crisis explored through technology or alien species. As long as the ideas are good enough, I don't usually mind, and that's what SF tends to be about, both for the authors and their audience -- ideas. It doesn't matter that Canticle for Lebowitz, Anvil of Stars, or I, Robot all sound about the same, because the ideas are fascinating and hold you spell-bound.

Gibson, on the other hand, has ideas that grab you and prose can make you pause and re-read a sentence. He can craft brilliant, even quotable lines, and shift his style to near stream-of-consciousness to show the mind-blowing effects of hitting black ice, being drugged, or having one's memory artificially restored. He throws around lingo and slang just to the edge of being pretentious without (usually) falling over, with the effect of having a living, breathing world whose dirt and grime are familiar enough to make it immediate and real, yet just alien enough to be the exotic future.

Well, on to Mona Lisa Overdrive, then I can review the entire Sprawl Trilogy. (less)

8 likes · like · see review

Sep 22, 2011 Kat Hooper rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

"They plot with men, my other selves, and men imagine they are gods."

Several years have passed since Molly and Case freed the AI who calls himself Neuromancer. Neuromancer’s been busy and now his plots have widened to involve several people whom we meet in Count Zero:

Turner is a recently reconstructed mercenary who’s been hired by the Hosaka Corporation to extract Christopher Mitchell and his daughter Angie from Mitchell’s job at Maas Biolabs. Mitchell is...more ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.

"They plot with men, my other selves, and men imagine they are gods."

Several years have passed since Molly and Case freed the AI who calls himself Neuromancer. Neuromancer’s been busy and now his plots have widened to involve several people whom we meet in Count Zero:

Turner is a recently reconstructed mercenary who’s been hired by the Hosaka Corporation to extract Christopher Mitchell and his daughter Angie from Mitchell’s job at Maas Biolabs. Mitchell is the creator of the world’s first biochip, and he’s secretly agreed to move to Hosaka. Extracting an indentured research scientist is a deadly game, but Turner is one of the best.

Bobby “Count Zero” Newmark, who wants to be a console cowboy, has just pulled a Wilson (that means he majorly screwed up) on his first attempt at running an unknown icebreaker. He nearly died in the matrix but was saved by a girl he’d never seen before. Now he’s freaked out, on the run, and buildings are exploding behind him as he’s being hunted by a mysterious helicopter with a rocket launcher.

Marly Krushkova lost her art gallery after her boyfriend tried to sell a forgery. Now she’s been hired by Joseph Virek, the world’s richest man, to find the artist who’s creating and selling some strange shadowboxes. These expensive and enigmatic objets d'art seem like collections of random pieces of junk, but they speak to Marly. Using her intuition, and Joseph Virek’s money, she hopes to find the unknown artist.

Other memorable characters are the voodoo priests and priestesses, The Finn, Tally Isham the Sense/Net celebrity, the prophet Wigan Ludgate who thinks God lives in the matrix, a bar owner named Jammer, and a whole mob of Gothicks and Kasuals. All of their stories eventually collide as we discover who’s haunting cyberspace.

Count Zero is the first sequel to William Gibson’s cyberpunk classic Neuromancer. If you haven’t read Neuromancer yet, you’ll probably be lost because Gibson just drops you into his world without instructions, explanations, or technical support. Even though you think you’ve been to his world before (it’s Earth after all), you haven’t, and Gibson never tells us what happened to make it unrecognizable. It appears that large biotech companies are in control (or maybe I should say they’re out of control) and there are no authorities to check their ruthless behaviors. What happened to the U.S. government? Why are so many cities ruined and abandoned? What is “the war” that people keep referring to? Where is the middle class? There are still rich people who buy art, wear stylish clothes, and set trends for the masses, but many of those who try to keep up are illiterate, addicted, and without electricity and clean water. They escape their lives with designer drugs and by plugging into cheap simstim fantasies.

It’s partly these questions, which are never answered, that make Neuromancer’s sequel work so well. Many sequels feel pallid because the world and the characters are no longer new and exciting, but Gibson avoids sequel stagnancy by creating a gaudy and grueling world that we feel like we should understand, and making us desperate for more information (but rarely delivering it).

It also helps that in each book of the Sprawl trilogy, we have new characters to get to know. And you have to admire Gibson’s characters. Not as people, perhaps, but as characters. For example, Bobby (Count Zero) is a total loser. He’s like that obnoxious kid in high school who was always trying so hard to make people like him. Gibson gets this just right, never explaining Bobby to us, but letting us gradually figure him out just by listening to him talk or by seeing things from his perspective. This is carefully and cleverly done for every character.

The plot of Count Zero is fascinating, unique, and unpredictable as Gibson finally brings together all of these weird and colorful events and characters. There are some answers in the end, and the story's connection to Neuromancer is eventually made clear. But there are many questions left to answer, so after you finish Count Zero, you’ll want to have Mona Lisa Overdrive, the concluding novel of the Sprawl trilogy, ready to go.

I listened to Brilliance Audio’s version of Count Zero which was read by one of my favorite voice actors, Jonathan Davis. He is always wonderful and his grimy and jaded male voices are perfect for this kind of novel. My only issue is one I’ve had with Davis before: he has essentially one female voice. I have listened to so many books read by Mr. Davis that I actually feel like this one woman is showing up in all these different novels. (Hey, what are Thecla and Agia and Vlana and Ivrian doing in the Sprawl??) Count Zero has only a few female characters who don’t overlap much, so Davis does well with this story, but I’ll be listening for Angie and Marly next time I’m in Lankhmar.(less)

4 likes · like · see review

Feb 06, 2013 A. Mark Thomas rated it 5 of 5 stars

I first picked this book up at a friend's home - it changed my life!
Don't you love a book that you can't put down; we all like different aspects of novels etc, but it's so wondrous when a writer opens your mind, entertains you, challenges you ...
I can only think of a few books that have done that "over the journey" (to use one my most hated phrases!); Lord of the Rings and World According to Garp another two examples (not all, just another two).
I started reading it one evening late and read unt...more

like · see review

Nov 19, 2012 Alexander McNabb rated it 4 of 5 stars

The second of Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, this is very much a continuation of Neuromancer but is, in hindsight, overshadowed by its successor, Mona Lisa Overdrive.

But the book's still a rocking good read, seemingly splashed on the page with strokes of such verve at times it feels like it's careening out of control. It's a bit fractal - the novel as a whole feels like a leviathan spaceship-cum-junkyard, bits hanging off it everywhere, but the whole thing set in unstoppable forward motion.

I feel guil...more

1 like · like · see review

Jul 06, 2012 Nigel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's funny, because I remember when I read this the first time, all sorts of incomprehension and mistakes jumbled together as I forced my way through. I loved the writing. I loved the writing, the setting, the sci-fi cool, the characters and the three intertwining plots, but in the end I barely had a clue what was going on. The Maas biotech stuff I got, sure, another high-tech maguffin, but the loa and their horses, despite having read Neuromancer and having it all laid out quite clearly in the...more

like · see review

Feb 08, 2012 Donovan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi, thriller

This is the second of The Sprawl series. It sees an emerging technique of Gibson's writing to have multiple story lines that twist together at the conclusion. While it makes for a gripping read, it can make things hard to understand until you get used to this form of writing. I very much like the way it keeps elements from Neuromancer and weaves them in to this new story.

Plot ***Spoilers***
Thread One:
In the southwestern USA, Turner, a corporate mercenary soldier, has been hired out to help Mitc...more This is the second of The Sprawl series. It sees an emerging technique of Gibson's writing to have multiple story lines that twist together at the conclusion. While it makes for a gripping read, it can make things hard to understand until you get used to this form of writing. I very much like the way it keeps elements from Neuromancer and weaves them in to this new story.

Plot ***Spoilers***
Thread One:
In the southwestern USA, Turner, a corporate mercenary soldier, has been hired out to help Mitchell, a brilliant researcher, make an illegal career move from Maas' corporate fortress built into a mesa in the Arizona desert to another corporation. The attempt is a disaster, and Turner ends up escaping with the scientist's young daughter, Angie Mitchell instead. Her father had apparently altered her nervous system to allow her to access the Cyberspace Matrix directly, without a "deck", but she is not conscious of this. She also carries the plans, implanted in her brain by her father, of the secrets of construction of the extremely valuable "biosoft" that has made Maas so influential and powerful. This "biosoft" is what multibillionaire Josef Virek desires above all else, so that he can make an evolutionary jump to something resembling omniscience and immortality.

Thread Two:
A young New Jersey-suburbs amateur computer hacker, Bobby Newmark, self-named "Count Zero", is given a piece of black market software by some criminal associates "to test". When he plugs himself into the matrix and runs the program, it almost kills him. The only thing that saves his life is a sudden image of a girl made of light who interferes and unhooks him from the software just before he flatlines. This event leads to his working with his associates' backers to investigate similar strange recent occurrences on the Net. It is eventually revealed that Bobby's mysterious savior is Angie.

Thread Three:
Marly Krushkova, a small gallery owner in Paris until she was tricked into trying to sell a forgery, and newly infamous as a result, is recruited by ultra-rich, reclusive industrialist and art patron Josef Virek to find the unknown creator of a series of futuristic Joseph Cornell style boxes. Unbeknownst to her, the reason behind Virek's interest in these boxes is related to indications of biosoft construction in the design of one, which he suspects may be contained in the others.

All of these plot lines come together at the end of the story and Virek – the hunter of his immortality and unlimited power – becomes the hunted. It is hinted that multiple AIs secretly inhabiting cyberspace are the fragmented, compartmentalized remains of two AIs, Neuromancer and Wintermute, having joined together. These AI units now interface with humanity in the form of different Haitian voodoo gods, as they have found these images to be the best representations of themselves through which they can communicate with people. Hackers worldwide are becoming aware that there is something weird loose in the cyberspace matrix, but most are understandably reluctant to talk about (or deal with), "voodoo spooks" supposedly haunting cyberspace. The "voodoo gods" have constructed the elaborate series of events in the novel, having originally given Mitchell the information for developing the biosoft, instructing him to insert a biosoft modification in his daughter's brain, and then sent the Cornell boxes into the world to attract, and enable the disposal of, the malicious Virek.

The Cyberspace Matrix, a synergistic linked computer database that encompasses all information on Earth, has become home to sentient beings. But most of humanity remains unaware.(less)

like · see review

Jan 04, 2012 Thecubanmissile rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

Gibson is without a doubt one of my favorite writers. The second book in the Sprawl trilogy touches on a few of the themes in Neuromancer to great success. I do not think that the actual plot to this book has anything on the sheer racing brilliance of Neuromancer, and that is why it falls in the four star range. I would probably more accurately give the book 3 3/4 stars, but heading back into the Matrix by way of Steely Dan Sprawl is always a pleasure. Also, I really like the character arc of Co...more

like · see review

Mar 27, 2011 Andreas rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Sprawl Trilogy consists of:

* Neuromancer
* Count Zero
* Mona Lisa Overdrive

Gibson invented the cyberpunk subgenre with this plot-wise loosely connected series of books and he revitalized SciFi in the process. His sparse, cool prose and his approach to characterization mark the writing of many of his successors, probably chief among those Neal Stephenson.

His descriptions of cyberculture have aged well, since he was wise enough not to be too specific about hardware and software. He himself at...more

1 like · like · see review

Dec 24, 2010 Pvw rated it 3 of 5 stars

Set in a cyberpunk world, this book contains virtual reality, cybernetics, neural implants, high-tech weaponry, total globalisation and dominating multinational corporations, amongst others. In the opening lines, which I will quote a bit further on, we are introduced to Turner. He is an extraction agent, that means his job is to assist in the 'brain drain' from one big corporation to another. Whenever a high ranking engineer is willing to defect to a rival company, Turner is called in to smuggle...more Set in a cyberpunk world, this book contains virtual reality, cybernetics, neural implants, high-tech weaponry, total globalisation and dominating multinational corporations, amongst others. In the opening lines, which I will quote a bit further on, we are introduced to Turner. He is an extraction agent, that means his job is to assist in the 'brain drain' from one big corporation to another. Whenever a high ranking engineer is willing to defect to a rival company, Turner is called in to smuggle the employee out of the hands of the private militia that guards him and deliver him safely to his new employers. No resources are spared to obtain that goal. In 'Count Zero', Turner will have to extract a guy named Mitchell, the inventor of a revolutionary bio-chip, out of the underground compound of Maas Neotek and deliver him to the Japan based Hosaka company. But first Turner runs into a few enemies he probably made on previous jobs, and that results in these impressive first lines of chapter one:

"They set a slamhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tyres. Its core was a kilogramme of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.
He didn’t see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco façade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway. The Dutch surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner hadn’t made it out of Palam International on that first flight, and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support vat.
It took the Dutchman and his team three months to put Turner together again. They cloned a square metre of skin for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharies. They bought eyes and genitals on the open market. The eyes were green."

... making clear that it is not yer random Jane Austen novel you are about to read.

More characters are introduced, one of them is Bobby Newmark, the Count Zero from the title. He is an information cowboy, he plugs into the matrix and accesses secret files (a bit like Johnny Mnemonic in the movie, also based on a Gibson story). All the characters have their own plotlines which neatly come together in the last chapters.

Gibson is sometimes called the Raymond Chanler of science fiction. I can relate to that; his sentences have the same machine gun-like drive and rhythm, and the seemingly unimpressed coolness with which Gibson mentions the weirdest high-tech developments, reflects the casual nothing-I-haven't-seen-a-million-times-before attitude of the typical Chandler detective.

The action portions in 'Count Zero' are up to the level, and some descriptions or dialogues are astonishing for their language alone, even without taking into account the meaning. The end may seem a bit too easily wrapped up. But on the whole, the book reads like a rollercoaster and takes you along on an insane adventure through a world which is recognisably modern with a luxurious touch of exaggeration every bit of the ride.
(less)

like · see review

Feb 10, 2013 Jason rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: e-books, read-2013

3 Stars

Well, just like with Neurmonancer, William Gibson’s amazing command of the English language, coupled with his incredible writing style was not enough for me to love Count Zero. It is very well written, fast paced, filled with cool sci-fi action scenes and gadgetry, and not overly long in length.

The problem with this book is that I really never cared one bit about any of the characters in this book, or in book one for that matter. As a result, all the world building, science, and cool gadg...more

3 likes · like · see review

May 13, 2013 David Mcangus rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

With Count Zero, William Gibson employs the familiar device of fragmenting his narrative between multiple protagonists. On paper, this was a good idea. By utilising four characters and telling their stories separately, it had to the potential to go into greater detail with the world building and increase the complexity of the plot. The problem however, is that by incorporating four protagonists, his weakness in characterisation is made that more apparent. In Neuromancer, Molly was the linchpin....more

like · see review

Oct 20, 2011 Joshua Furr rated it 3 of 5 stars

I suspect that some science fiction / fantasy readers are annoyed by novels where more happens "in the wings" than in the narrative. I am not one of those readers. As a transition between Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive I find Count Zero a by-the-numbers spy novel / cyberpunk but what I like most about it are the clues left strewn about the book about what is going on with the characters from Neuromancer. Did the Neuromancer split himself up into a bunch of AI deities? And did they really mo...more

like · see review

Dec 12, 2012 The_britguy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Tras un parón de lectura (he tratado de volver a ráfagas, pero sin éxito) debido a razones de índole personal bastante catastróficas, decidí volver a la lectura con una obra que me motivara y no excesivamente difícil de digerir.
Creo que Count Zero cumple esas prerrogativas, ya que el cyberpunk es un subgénero que me motiva muchísimo al aunar un tufillo a novela negra (que tanto me gusta), la ciencia ficción y la investigación social en las distopias futuristas.
William Gibson recoge la trama en u...more Tras un parón de lectura (he tratado de volver a ráfagas, pero sin éxito) debido a razones de índole personal bastante catastróficas, decidí volver a la lectura con una obra que me motivara y no excesivamente difícil de digerir.
Creo que Count Zero cumple esas prerrogativas, ya que el cyberpunk es un subgénero que me motiva muchísimo al aunar un tufillo a novela negra (que tanto me gusta), la ciencia ficción y la investigación social en las distopias futuristas.
William Gibson recoge la trama en un punto posterior a la ofrecida en Neuromante, Neuromancer aunque no es imprescindible su lectura (sin embargo, sí recomendable, ya que ofrece mucho background que realza el "sabor" de la obra) y nos hace avanzar en nuestro conocimiento de "lo que se cuece" en el Sprawl, ese derrame urbanístico resultante de la yuxtaposición de los "ensanches" de todas las megalópolis de la Costa Este de los EE.UU.
En un estilo narrativo bastante fractal, Gibson nos va acercando a través de los distintos personajes al nudo del libro de una manera un tanto confusa en un principio. Me costó centrarme en si algunos de los protagonistas eran el mismo, pero cambiando el nombre, en distintos flashbacks; tampoco ayudaba el recurso recurrente de un léxico especializado (p.e. "salchichero, vaquero, jockey, etc.") propio de la jerga de los personajes acostumbrados a la interacción con el ciberespacio.
Sí me ha gustado el reconocer cada vez más esa geografía modificada en ese universo futurista de Gibson, y también la propia del ciberespacio, donde las IAs ya no son algo tan tangencial, sino elementos de interacción con los humanos bastante más numerosos.
De hecho, en este número se incrementa esa especie de pseudofilosofía por la que sería también conocido el autor, y por la que también se reforzaría su influencia ética/estética dentro del más amplio movimiento cultural cyberpunk.
Desde situaciones en la trama no del todo desveladas ni explicitadas por el autor, los personajes siguen el curso fractal de sus decisiones hasta llegar a un punto de casi colisión en el desenlace, dejando abierto (como así decide al publicar posteriormente la continuación Mona Lisa Overdrive) el final a un desarrollo de los mismos.
Me gusta su manera de revolver entre los escombros de sus escenarios y el slang, aunque sí me gustaría que tuviera una acción menos confusa, que fuera más fácil para el lector entender "qué es lo que está pasando" en algunos momentos narrativos, pero supongo que forma parte del encanto del autor.
Muy recomendable para los amantes del género, ya me ha lanzado a leer su continuación :-)(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jun 13, 2010 Vomithatsteve rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who like cyberpunk for the sake of cyberpunk

Gibson seems to be one of those authors who is long on prose and short on narrative. He creates vast, grungy worlds of shadowy corporations playing vast games of chess. Then he tells the stories of the individuals caught in the middle of these complex schemes far beyond any individual's scope to understand.
Unfortunately, he gets too caught up in the visual style of the world, and the details about what's going on tend to be neglected.

Compared to Neuromancer, Count Zero is a much better book, at...more

1 like · like · see review

Feb 24, 2013 Fuzzy Cow rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: entertainment

This book follow three people as they try to explain the crazy events they find themselves in. The first is Turner, who's job is getting business men out of contracts by almost CIA like extraction. Things go bad for him though, when instead of his usual mark, an unexpected girl is the person who shows up for extraction. The second is Bobby, who is a young cowboy, who after his first, and quite unusual, run on the matrix finds himself a sought after commodity by people trying to kill him. He fin...more This book follow three people as they try to explain the crazy events they find themselves in. The first is Turner, who's job is getting business men out of contracts by almost CIA like extraction. Things go bad for him though, when instead of his usual mark, an unexpected girl is the person who shows up for extraction. The second is Bobby, who is a young cowboy, who after his first, and quite unusual, run on the matrix finds himself a sought after commodity by people trying to kill him. He finds allies in a group of gansters who practice Voodoo. The final strange story that unfolds is that of Marly, an art currator who is blacklisted because she tried to sale a forged piece. One day, out of the blue, she gets hired by the richest man in the world to find the artist who makes small boxes fill with random things, and emit a sense of loneliness. Yeah, strange things are happening out in the world, but how does three crazy stories make a cohesive book?
Well, they do make a singular book. Half the fun of this book is how these seemingly random stories tell a fourth. The worst part is that the fourth story seem to be completely unrealted to the four stories being told. The main characters seem to have almost no influence on the over arching story. This made the ending anticlimactic as the characters just kind of watched what was going on.
Another issue I had was that Marly, and pretty much every other female in the book, seemed obsessed with guys. Marley felt like she was falling in love with every guy she meets. I know this is a book mostly guys read, but really?
Is the book better than Neuromancer? Yeah, I think that the prebuilt world of Neuromancer allows William Gibson to focus on his story. He is able to tell a more complex tale, but he didn't focus on the characters enough to make the ending a fulfilling one. The small stories were good, but the reactive stance the characters in the big picture made the exercise of putting it together feel pointless. (less)

like · see review

Dec 24, 2010 Yvette rated it 3 of 5 stars

I always start in the middle. Not sure why that is, but I never, ever start at the beginning of the series.

Sometimes, I even start at the end! Even then, I don't work backwards logically. Nope. Not me.

So, it was with some surprise that I read the wiki on this book and learned that the "cyberspace gods" referred to, hinted at, derided, and viewed with suspicion in this book are the leftovers of characters from the last book. Well. Nobody told me. It would have been nice if they had!

I may never go...more I always start in the middle. Not sure why that is, but I never, ever start at the beginning of the series.

Sometimes, I even start at the end! Even then, I don't work backwards logically. Nope. Not me.

So, it was with some surprise that I read the wiki on this book and learned that the "cyberspace gods" referred to, hinted at, derided, and viewed with suspicion in this book are the leftovers of characters from the last book. Well. Nobody told me. It would have been nice if they had!

I may never go back and read Neuromancer. I may never get around to it. I have a TBR pile that is monstrous, and this may well have been Gibson's one and only shot at me! But that's another matter. Time flies and there's nothing you can do about it. It doesn't fly backwards, most days.

What I thought of it: If I had to call it anything, I'd call it "literary sci-fi." No kidding. There were so many ways he could have gone with this story, so many different avenues, but he chose the ones he chose and he chose to tell it the way he did. He doesn't write badly. Hubby picked up the book, read a few lines, and said, "He writes pretty well."

That's high praise coming from a Joseph Conrad man!

For me, though, the issue came down to time. It took a long time for the plots to weave together. Took time for the major events to take place. Took time to set it all up. It wasn't a wham-bam-thank you ma'am sort of affair. Wasn't a star bursting out of the gate, but rather a slow trickle of information, filled with 80's references (such as Bucky Balls), that in the end, left a lot of questions unanswered for the reader.

Among them, WHY in the end does he choose to go to Sally? What does that say about him deep down? About his goals? Needs? We saw just scraps and hints of his inner life throughout the book, not enough to make a whole vision of the man. In the end, he walks off the stage.

WHY in the end, is Marly willing to die? WHY are the rich man and Paco killed? Is the "god" that killed him a corporation? Do we ever really know for sure? For that matter, why the high body count during the book? Who's behind it and why? I was never 100% sure.

Maybe the issue is that the characters weren't ever deep enough to be totally real, or revealed to me, so that in the end, I knew what they'd instinctively desire. No?

And then there's the issue of time. Read a chapter, put it down. Read a chapter or two, put it down. NOt the chewiest thing I've ever read - Jose Saramago's "The Double" took a couple of months to read in comparison to the time spent on this one - but it was chewier than most sci-fi, though still very technology-oriented, as one would expect sci-fi to be. It just had this other literary-type feel to it that nagged at my senses, sort of like a guard dog that sat there with its beady eyes and said, "put this down and I'll bite ya, pick it up and I'll bite ya." I felt between a rock and hard place the entire read.

In some ways, it's a no-win situation. If you're looking for high-speed and chills, this isn't the book to read. But if you're looking for awkward situations, a muddy plot, mysterious characters that are never really seen, and an impending sense of doom on every page, this is the book for you!
(less)

1 like · like · see review

Jun 12, 2012 Rayn rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk fans

This is my second time through this book but it has been so long I don't think I can give it a starred rating yet.

However, in William Gibson's standard style the book opens with a complete mind fuck. It's Earth but not the one you know. It's a future vision of our planet with elements that make you want to be there while at the same time hoping we don't go down his dark path into the world he sees being created by technology.

_________________________________________________

Done now and I enjoy...more

like · see review

Aug 15, 2009 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read09, sci-fi-fantasy, sff-audio, read2011, location-cyberspace

This is the middle book of the Sprawl Trilogy by Gibson (in between Neuromancer and Mona Lisa Overdrive), and my absolute favorite. The other two are largely action-based, and this one had a lot of that but also a lot of beautiful descriptions, somewhat mystically-oriented plotlines, and it really drew me in, probably because I'm no stranger to cyberspace myself. I really loved the ending, so much that I re-read it twice before moving on.

"Bobby had been trying to chart a way out of this landscap...more

3 likes · like · see review

Mar 28, 2009 Colleen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fast paced, complicated thriller that splices a future where people surf the web by direct brain patches. Several sets of characters are followed as they join or escape the corporate blogesphere. Count Zero is a kid who wants to get out of the boring Jersey suburbs and hussle his way into money. Angie is a cyborg who lives in a biotech complex in Arizona where her father has sold his soul to the corporation he works for. Other characters are more or less jaded by the freelance work they do for t...more

like · see review

Nov 30, 2008 Nick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Good sequel to Neuromancer, not as mind blowing though. It took me a long time to read. The beginning jumped between three stories and didn't really start to connect the dots between them until the second half. Some good action scenes and one or two memorable characters. I'll probably read more Gibson eventually, but will switch to something else for now.

1 like · like · see review

May 25, 2010 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, cyberpunk, favorites

William Gibson's "Neuromancer," the first book in The Sprawl Trilogy, was loved by all for its original voice, and it really managed to reinvigorate science fiction in the era. The first novel to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards, the second book had a lot to live up to, and in my humble opinion, it surpasses it.

Between the first two books of the trilogy, Gibson has managed to create not only an interesting future world, but an entire culture. Everything including language, religio...more William Gibson's "Neuromancer," the first book in The Sprawl Trilogy, was loved by all for its original voice, and it really managed to reinvigorate science fiction in the era. The first novel to win the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick awards, the second book had a lot to live up to, and in my humble opinion, it surpasses it.

Between the first two books of the trilogy, Gibson has managed to create not only an interesting future world, but an entire culture. Everything including language, religion, technology, economy, demographics and more are brought to life through the novels. The greatest strength of Gibson's storytelling is he never TELLS you, he SHOWS you. His prose is outstanding, without a misplaced word. Its astounding from the beginning, and when you get to the end and realize that everything has been foreshadowed from the first few chapters, it becomes all the more impressive.

"Count Zero" tells three story lines at once, alternating between chapters. The first and primary story is that of Turner, an unaffiliated mercenary-for-hire who has recently gone through a really bad job that ended up with having to have his face reconstructed following an explosion in New Delhi. Despite the previous disaster, Turner is given the job of extracting a wealthy and influential scientist who means to defect from one mega-corporation to another, but things get rocky when Turner begins to suspect that someone on his team is a double agent.

Bobby Newmark, alias Count Zero, is a computer hacker who knows he is being chased. His deck, which is the equipment used to jack into cyberspace, is stolen, and in the process of trying to track it down and the people who took it for him, he gets thrust into what seems like a war in cyberspace, between his associate's and a computer virus that appears to have taken a life of its own.

Marly Krushkova is a small-time art dealer whose reputation has been ruined by accidentally trying to sell a hoax painting. She is recruited by brilliant, but reclusive, industrialist Josef Virek, who gives her the task of tracking down the creator of mysterious boxes that may hold the key to Virek's future.

I cannot stress enough how awesome this book was. It was a lot smoother of a read than "Neuromancer," but in my mind no less outstanding, and I think possibly better. The characters are great and interesting, especially the mercenary Turner, who turns out to be easily among my favorite characters in sci-fi. Highly recommended to anyone who loves science fiction, but you should probably read "Neuromancer" first.(less)

3 likes · like · see review

Feb 01, 2012 Mateo rated it 5 of 5 stars

My friend told me this wasn't as good as Neuromancer but I found it to be an incredibly written novel. To me they are both fantastic, but for different reasons and because they attempt different things.
Neuromancer seems more of a macro-scale novel, looking more at the big picture of the AI and how the cybernetic upgrades and such function in society. There is more revelry in the sheer possibility of the technology written about in the story.
Count Zero looks at these ideas from the micro-scal...more

like · see review

May 06, 2010 Jimboninja rated it 5 of 5 stars

Of the Sprawl books, this is definitely my favorite. In fact, I find copies of it every now and then while rummaging through boxes...

The writing is classic Gibson with great descriptive passages that read like poetry. I especially like the opening scenes in Mexico; a hot airport, a bus ride on a mountain road, and a cheap hotel room near the beach.

Count Zero is grittier than Neuromancer with less concentration on the Matrix and more on vehicles and hardware. The main character is a corporate me...more

1 like · like · see review

Jan 31, 2013 Don Ferguson rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction

I read Neuromancer and Count Zero consecutively. Actually, I didn't; I got them on audible and listened to them. I think that's the problem I had with them.

These, along with Mona Lisa Overdrive, are a classic science fiction trilogy, and they definitely show their age. The author ran far with some technologies, and completely missed others (like telephones and wireless) so the books now sort of have a steam-punk vibe.

The problem I had with these books was that I had a hard time following all the...more

like · see review

Aug 15, 2012 Christopher rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sci-fi

The book feels like the vary boxes of art described in the book. a collection of seemingly random everyday things put together to form a bigger picture. you fallow several characters none of them particularly special and unravel what is going on in the world. I enjoyed the story but felt I wanted to know the stores of the characters a little more and since they were so clip and paste together in such a short narrative that I barley get to know the characters and the story was done the plot disco...more

like · see review

Feb 13, 2012 Chris rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Where the first in the Sprawl trilogy, Neuromancer, outlined the world through a nebulous, almost hallucinatory narrative, Count Zero took the ideas outlined into a cruising progression. In some ways, the former was more advanced, more out there than the latter. This novel makes the world human again through the actions of humans: their stories, backgrounds, myths, and deaths.

Some of what transpired in Neuromancer is detailed here and there in Count Zero, the fallout from the grand denouement f...more

like · see review

Jun 13, 2011 Angela rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2007, bookcrossed-or-otherwise-set-free

From the back cover: "Gibson's vision of the future is stylishly hip and frighteningly probable. From the software black market and the daring keyboard cowboys who plug into systems brain-first for mega-heights...to the haute culture of the art world where true genius hides underground like hunted prey...to the exclusive realm of the corporate technocrats where members of the brilliant aristocracy need an army of hi-tech, high-paid mercs to make a career move...."

It seems as though that blurb sh...more

like · see review

Dec 30, 2011 Mercurybard rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

like · see review

Dec 08, 2011 Isabel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A top research scientist's desire to defect from one corporation to another links three characters whose stories at first seem totally separate. Firstly there is Turner, the security specialist in charge of extracting the defecting scientist from his previous employer's grasp. Then there is Marly, a disgraced art dealer hired by a billionaire to track down the unknown artist who created some mysterious wooden boxes. Finally there is Bobby Newmark (aka Count Zero), who gets into a world of troubl...more

like · see review

May 07, 2011 Raj rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: cyberpunk, sci-fi

I think that the three stars I'm giving to this book are provisional at the moment, since, through no fault of the book itself, the story here never really gelled for me. The problem was that I was reading it in a very bitty way, with a chapter here or a few pages there, which never gave me enough time to hold enough of the story in my head to make things slot into place. At some point, I'll have to read it again more thoroughly and re-review it then.

Having said that, there's still a lot to admi...more

like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … 99 100 next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
The final dialogue exchange...(spoilers)	6	55	Feb 13, 2013 04:54am
A question about the resolution (Big spoiler included)	1	34	Feb 25, 2012 04:11am
Just aquired this book.	2	23	Sep 07, 2008 01:58pm

combine
Other Editions (41)

More editions...

Genres

Science Fiction

568 users

Science Fiction > Cyberpunk

396 users

Science Fiction Fantasy

51 users

Science > Technology

31 users

Fantasy

30 users

Literature > American

30 users

Cultural > Canada

28 users

Adventure

27 users

Business

25 users

Economics

24 users

See top shelves...

Readers also enjoyed similar books

Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology
by Bruce Sterling (Editor)
Broken Angels
by Richard K. Morgan
When Gravity Fails
by George Alec Effinger
Wetware
by Rudy Rucker
Synners
by Pat Cadigan

About William Gibson

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

William Ford Gibson is an American-Canadian writer who has been called the father of the cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction, having coined the term cyberspace in 1982 and popularized it in his first novel, Neuromancer(1984), which has sold more than 6.5 million copies wor...more

More about William Gibson...

Books by William Gibson

More…

Share This Book

Facebook Twitter Your website

Trivia About Count Zero

1 trivia question

More quizzes & trivia...

Quotes from Count Zero

“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.” — 41 people liked it

“His nostrils were permanently flared, as though he sniffed invisible winds of art and commerce.” — 5 people liked it

More quotes…

title link	preview: Count Zero
avg rating	preview: Count Zero Goodreads rating: 3.93 (17155 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22200.Count_Zero?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309285929l/22200.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22200.Count_Zero?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Count Zero by William Gibson[/url]

Count Zero (Sprawl #2)

Friend Reviews

Community Reviews

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website