Zero History (Blue Ant, #3)

Oct 10, 2010 RandomAnthony rated it 4 of 5 stars

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.

After the...more

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Sep 19, 2010 Max Renn rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 stronger showing, than we'v...more

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Jan 07, 2011 Chris Herdt rated it 3 of 5 stars

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-millionairesses.

"One day, such a multi...more

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Jun 13, 2010 Max Renn rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 stronger showing, than we'v...more

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May 07, 2011 Robert J. Sullivan rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 using to follow...more 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 using to follow him and plants it in the baby carriage of a Russian mobster. The mother's bodyguard beats up Foley, Gracie's man, who blames Milgrim, and tries to kidnap him.

The kidnapping fails and a companion of Milgrim's injures Foley. Foley blames Milgrim again and kidnaps Chombo, a key member of Bigend's team, then offers to trade Chombo for Milgrim. Garreth, Henry's daredevil ex-boyfriend, shows up and organizes a wildly hi-tech rescue for Chombo. Gracie and his associates are carted off by government men, Henry and Garreth decide to get married, and Milgrim becomes a member of Bigend's inner circle. Bigend takes his team to Iceland, which he owns most of, due to Chombo's work.

This is the second Gibson book I've read and I don't get him. Either he's a lot more subtle than he seems or he missed out on some of the basics of storytelling, like plots, character motivation, and McGuffins, the object that starts things in motion, in this case, clothing design.

Really? Jeans? That's it? I'm a collector of McGuffins, in my own way, and I love a good one: the Ark of the Covenant, a couple of stolen nuclear weapons, all the gold in Fort Knox. This doesn't cut it. Oh, there's some talk about a cutting edge marketing techniques and the possibility of a sale to the military that failed to lift my interest.

The central characters, Henry and Milgrim, fall into what I consider the Jimmy Olsen School of Protagonists - no special skills, no strong motivation, no particular reason for the author to pick them as the Point of View. I seem to see more and more of that in my reading. Why focus on Alfred the butler when the goddamn Batman is standing right there? Personally, I like Milgrim, who's out of Swiss rehab and reassembling his personality after ten years as an addict. Bigend puts him on the problem because he "notices things." I wouldn't send a newly-recovered addict for coffee without a backup plan.

As far as a tightly woven plot goes, this thing is macrame. No one will talk about the clothing designer including Henry's friend, Heidi. Why? They once bonded over a pair of shoes. Henry finds the designer and doesn't tell Bigend because of their shared love of fabric (or something). Gracie decides to interrupt a major business deal and help his subordinate with a kidnapping because it's exciting. Bigend doesn't call the cops when Chombo is kidnapped because it would spoil the hi-tech rescue. Bigend provides all sorts of tracking and safety for the jeans crew and nothing to watch or protect his most critical asset, Chombo.

There's a rule in theater that if you show a gun in the first act, you have to use it by the third act. Heidi, Henry's friend, suddenly produces a set of hi-tech darts on page 232, demonstrates world-class skill, and starts carrying them. Just in time, too, because she rescues Milgrim from Foley with them on page 257. Perhaps Gibson should consider introducing critical elements a little farther apart.

There are some cute toys in the book: the world's ugliest tee shirt, a flying penguin, a rattan thighbone.

So let's recap: Bigend is engineering a major financial coup that will move him into the "too-big-to-fail" category and Chombo, a key player, is kidnapped because of a small peripheral deal that Bigend has going that ultimately fails. Gibson focuses us on the insignificant deal. We get to watch a game of hopscotch while the Super Bowl plays just out of sight.

One note. Iceland, which isn't mentioned that I remember before page 393, used to be a major player in world finances, but cratered in 2008. People who worked in finance are trying to get jobs as fisherman. Only outside intervention prevented their banking system from failing completely. Gibson doesn't mention any of this. The book was published in 2010. He might as well have picked Haiti as his go-to paradise.

Okay, you tell me. Is Gibson subtle or is he f***ing with his readers? Or is he incompetent? I lean toward the last two.(less)

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Sep 19, 2010 Chad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 actually exists.

This...more

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Nov 05, 2011 Lisa rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 be on it,...more 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 be on it, maybe there’s a cryptic message. The meet might be in Tokyo. Or London. Or Perth. Bring cash.

It’s also about technology. In Gibson’s worlds, there is technology under the surface of things, behind the scenes, hidden from most people. Those flashes of light in the sky aren’t UFOs — someone knows exactly what they are, but they aren’t going to tell you. There may very well be a sinister purpose behind those traffic cameras on every corner, a purpose so secret that even the people who designed them don’t fully understand how they can be used.

And then there are the people. There are some amazing characters in this book. There’s Hubertus Bigend, a man as big as his name. He’s got the sort of power that you don’t see, that moves behind the scenes and makes anything possible. There’s Milgrim — a former drug addict with a subtle but powerful gift. He sees things in ways that normal people do not. Bigend’s money and influence got him cleaned up and now Bigend uses his special talents. And then there’s Hollis, who worked for Bigend once and swore she’d never do it again. Now she’s in financial trouble and her former boss is taking advantage.

I loved this book. It’s fast-paced, it’s well written, the vocabulary is terrific and the story does not go any of the places you expect it to go. The characters are unusual, like Fiona the bike messenger who is so much more than a bike messenger and Garreth, extreme-sport enthusiast, who may have connections that go even higher than Bigend’s. I am fascinated by the hotel Hollis is living in, Cabinet, full of curiosities and strange artwork. (When I read this piece on the Los Angeles hotel, Petit Ermitage, I immediately thought of Cabinet.) I want to rent an apartment there and sleep under the big bird cage.

William Gibson looks like such a normal guy, but he writes these crazy, amazing books! Sadly, it doesn’t look like his tour schedule is coming anywhere near my town, or the towns I travel to, but I keep hoping. There’s more about him at his website.(less)

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May 17, 2013 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I loved all three of the Blue Ant books, although Pattern Recognition was my favorite. This shouldn't be worth noting, but I kept stopping to wonder & try to pick apart why his women characters felt so real to me. Best I can come up with is a) they remind me of myself (so ymm) and b) he writes them as people who happen to be women. I kept finding myself stopping reading to figure out how, exactly, Gibson accomplished (b) but I still don't have a good example or explanation. The best I can do...more

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Apr 24, 2013 Bjorn rated it 3 of 5 stars

The future keeps coming closer. To quote a common statistic, it took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users, the Internet 4 years, Facebook less than a year to reach 200 million...

So it makes sense that the horizon comes closer for William Gibson too. He made his fame with futuristic cyberpunk novels about virtual reality, then over the last decade realised that this is the virtual reality and instead started looking at our world as it currently stands (or will in 18 months), how technology in...more The future keeps coming closer. To quote a common statistic, it took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users, the Internet 4 years, Facebook less than a year to reach 200 million...

So it makes sense that the horizon comes closer for William Gibson too. He made his fame with futuristic cyberpunk novels about virtual reality, then over the last decade realised that this is the virtual reality and instead started looking at our world as it currently stands (or will in 18 months), how technology influences us now - but also how we influence it, what we try to do with it, and what it says about us. Zero History is the third (and final?) part of the series that started with Pattern Recognition and continued with Spook Country, loosely centered around the ad man (Mad Man?) Hubertus Bigend and his quest to track future trends - to get only a few seconds head start over his competitors. It's also the one where it feels like Gibson's been left behind by the technological developments, finally abandoning ante- for all-out post-.

It's no big surprise, really. I mean, remember the stuff that sounded futuristic in Pattern Recognition, the enhanced reality, geocaching and stuff? You can download a dozen apps for that right now if you want. If anything, Gibson's avatar (heh) in this novel seems to be Milgrim, the former junkie who after 10 years of being otherwise occupied is utterly baffled by the idea of Twitter. Which actually works rather well with the plot, which looks forward by looking back. This time, Bigend sends his troops after... a pair of jeans. No, really. The argument is that since everything the US Military has worn or used over the last century (the t-shirt, the marching boot, the cargo pants, the jeep, the Humvee) has become streetwear for the common man, but we're now living in a post-postmodern world where originals imitate copies, if you want a military contract (a certain cash cow in the days of perpetual war) you need to find the perfect pair of jeans to sell them. To find, if you will, the Platonic idea of it, beneath the clutter of brands and hype and design that the 20th century put on... well, everything from jeans to political ideas.

It's about atemporality. About opting out of the industrialization of novelty. It's about deeper code.

So Gibson launches a plot that gives him plenty of excuses to comment on how we function, both as a society and as individuals shaping and being shaped by it, and how there's always something underneath our fascination with the New (and why we increasingly want it to look like something Old). We get rock stars turning themselves into secret agents, secret agents turning themselves into fashion icons, mobsters becoming A-list celebrities or the other way around, and... oddly enough, his most coherent plot in years also becomes his least interesting one. While Zero History has a lot to recommend it - particularly on the character side - it also plods along far too often, losing track of its ideas under all the namedropping, car chases and flying penguins (no, really). Oddly enough, for a novel about stripping away it gets awfully cluttered, and for a novel about the proximity of the future, it takes a little too long for me to feel the need to finish it.

That's not to say it's bad; if you liked the last two - at least one of which is a masterpiece, IMO - you should definitely give Zero History a spin too. If nothing else, there's a surprise cameo towards the end that'll give you a huge smile. But Gibson has done better.(less)

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Jan 17, 2013 Alteredego rated it 4 of 5 stars

Zero History is the third novel in William Gibson's sequence involving the octopus like Blue Ant PR agency, and its vaguely sinister owner, Hubertus Bigend.

Hollis is a rock singer employed by Bigend to find the designer of an achingly trendy denim brand. Milgrim is a fixer with a mysterious past, involved in shady dealing for Blue Ant and assigned to aid Hollis. The story is told, in alternate chapters, from the viewpoints of these two main protaganists.

In his iconic sprawl novels, Gibson wrote...more Zero History is the third novel in William Gibson's sequence involving the octopus like Blue Ant PR agency, and its vaguely sinister owner, Hubertus Bigend.

Hollis is a rock singer employed by Bigend to find the designer of an achingly trendy denim brand. Milgrim is a fixer with a mysterious past, involved in shady dealing for Blue Ant and assigned to aid Hollis. The story is told, in alternate chapters, from the viewpoints of these two main protaganists.

In his iconic sprawl novels, Gibson wrote something that was unequivocally science fiction, albeit virtually inventing the sub genre of cyberpunk as he did so. Zero History is barely, if at all, a work of science fiction. His world is very recognisably our own, driven by iPhones, the internet, and twitter, although he writes in the margins of society, where shady power brokers trade real violence in battles for brands and for market position and information.

If that makes this sound like a techno-thriller, it is a long way from the works of Michael Crichton or Tom Clancy. It is more as if Gibson has taken the real world which has evolved in a parallel manner to his cyberpunk vision, and has created a new version of what the semi legal nether world looks like and how it underlies and interfaces with a mainstream market economy.

Although this is barely science fiction, it is closer to Gibson's sprawl trilogy than any of his other novels since. Both are based in the fringes of an interconnected, networked society, the former the fictional cyberspace, the latter what it has in reality become. It is interesting to note that the importance of branding and marketing is the major development which Gibson didn't foresee in the 80's. The street samurai of the Sprawl is re-incarnated as a female despatch rider. At the start of Neuromancer, Gibson set out his stall with his famous simile about the sky over Chiba city, and here his trademark imagery of a man-made environment, is very much in evidence, based, for example, on the colours of urban decay. Bigend is almost a human Wintermute and finally, Zero History ends, like Mona Lisa Overdrive, with a game changing "something big" and it can surely must be a conscious decision that the human catalyst in both cases is called Bobby.

The genre of Zero History is difficult to define. It is more intelligent and less reactionary than a typical techno-thriller. It is too much based on the contemporary world to be science fiction. It could be described as socio-fiction, using an SF style to comment on today's society. Whatever it is, it is an easy reading, fast paced, exciting thriller (of some variety) which makes intelligent observations about where we are today.

It is not entirely successful. Like many of Gibson's later works, it it something of a road movie of a book; the story-telling journey is more interesting than the eventual denouement, which feels somewhat rushed. Also it is one of those novels which would benefit from a cast list at the start. A number of characters make one appearance, disappear for half the book and then re-appear, leaving me thinking "now who was that again?" Or maybe I'm just getting old.

So, I would definitely recommend Zero History as an entertaining and interesting read. It will probably be more palatable to those with an ear tuned to SF, but Gibson is a unique writer with a vision and street smart style which should not be ignored by a wider audience.(less)

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Jan 14, 2013 Toby rated it 3 of 5 stars

Zero History follows from Spook Country and wraps up (probably) the "Big End" or "Blue Ant" trilogy that started with Pattern Recognition. I found this novel as tepid as I did Spook Country.

Most of the cast and crew of Spook Country is back in this one; Hollis and Milgrim and of course Bigend. William Gibson starts with a conceit that seems just absurd enough to work -- fashion industry espionage and the search for the designer of some mystery jeans. Throw in some macguffins, a coup at Blue Ant,...more

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Jan 09, 2013 The Hermit's rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've had a hard time following William Gibson's writing style in Mona Lisa Overdrive and Virtual Light. He doesn't develop characters in a humanistic way with depth and history and obsesses over materialistic details. This story seems to be a more philosophical and critique oriented one of our current times, if a little paranoid. That said, I think as a near-future science fiction writer he definitely does have a pulse on what's going on in the world. I think part of the reason his writing is s...more I've had a hard time following William Gibson's writing style in Mona Lisa Overdrive and Virtual Light. He doesn't develop characters in a humanistic way with depth and history and obsesses over materialistic details. This story seems to be a more philosophical and critique oriented one of our current times, if a little paranoid. That said, I think as a near-future science fiction writer he definitely does have a pulse on what's going on in the world. I think part of the reason his writing is so abstract and autistic is that it is also a literal form of social criticism/critque; he is trying to make a literal representation of the fleeting humanity of our near-future/current postmodern world and mind-state as it ironically becomes more digitally 'connected' and industrialization become globalized.

From my vague following and understanding of Zero History, I interpreted the Gabriel Hounds jeans and general description of the 'hobbling/'wobbly' fashion industry as an allusion to the cultivation of capitalist bubbles(the housing bubble, e-commerce, etc. ) and their subsequent 'popping'... In that sense, Gabriel Hounds represents just another desperate attempt at forming up a (fashion) bubble, except that it employs a new method of bubble-building propaganda inspired by recent techniques employed in covert warfare.

I interpreted the general chase after Gabriel Hounds jeans as an extreme example of the phenomenon of 'cult branding'; wherein people identify with certain products as if they are a part of their intimate culture (think: Harley Davidson) to replace their lack of personal cosmology in an increasingly post-industrial first world of instantaneous digital communication as their immediate environment becomes more foreign and less trustworthy due to terrorism and isolation caused by said digital isolation. The hunt for the cult brand, Gabriel Hounds, is a substitution for culture that these modern consumers have lost/forgotten and an exercise in nostalgia and hauntology(something we see in the world today) as their real space-time environments become instantaneous and hence immobilized via technology.

3 stars for describing the relationship between current capitalism and communication and forming philosophical ideas of their interplay into an accessible concrete narrative with a critique. Minus 2 stars because that 'concrete' of a story just wasn't dry enough; leaving the reader with a hard to follow mush. I just completed reading Paul Virilio's The Administration of Fear, an interview with the cultural theorist and visionary that goes into detail this relationship between fear-inducing shrinking time-space, the negative effects of the propaganda of progress, war & terrorism and the world economy. It's a wonderful resource if one were to try to find a deeper meaning in the abstraction of Zero History.(less)

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Dec 05, 2012 Christine rated it 2 of 5 stars

I think the first time I had heard of this book, I was at the author's booksigning (so this was a couple years ago). But I wasn't expecting to see him there (I stumbled upon the event on a random evening I was at the store) and at that point I had read Pattern Recognition and some of his earlier sci-fi (futuristic?) work.

I didn't know he had kept writing about Blu Ant. Thought Pattern Recognition was ok as a standalone.

So my thought was recently, I will try this book, thinking it had not much to...more

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Nov 21, 2012 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

I didn't know going in this was the third book with the same characters or at least some of the same characters. I worked it out in the first chapter or two as I recognized the references to previous happenings from the blurbs on the back of Gibson's earlier books. Now I have to go back and read them. Not because this book doesn't work without them (it works fine), but because I want to read some more about these characters.

That said, I liked this story on its own.

I liked the writing in this boo...more

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Oct 29, 2012 Amarilli73 rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Alla ricerca delle architetture nascoste del mondo

Anche se si inserisce nel cosiddetto Ciclo di Bigend, a mio parere questo romanzo può essere tranquillamente letto come opera autonoma. Ambientato nel futuro prossimo (cioè appena qualche anno più avanti rispetto al nostro decennio), riprende uno dei temi più cari di Gibson, ovvero la rappresentazione di una realtà straniata/straniante, dove la tecnologia che anche noi possediamo (in primis, l’i-phone, che tutti i personaggi possiedono ed usano i...more Alla ricerca delle architetture nascoste del mondo

Anche se si inserisce nel cosiddetto Ciclo di Bigend, a mio parere questo romanzo può essere tranquillamente letto come opera autonoma. Ambientato nel futuro prossimo (cioè appena qualche anno più avanti rispetto al nostro decennio), riprende uno dei temi più cari di Gibson, ovvero la rappresentazione di una realtà straniata/straniante, dove la tecnologia che anche noi possediamo (in primis, l’i-phone, che tutti i personaggi possiedono ed usano in modo continuo ed ossessivo, o la dipendenza da Twitter, o ancora l’onnipresenza delle telecamere e dei rilevatori GPS) si è fatta padrona e predomina, finendo per ammorbare e annichilire i rapporti sociali, i gusti della collettività, lo sviluppo dell’economia, persino il singolo sentimento, un tempo prerogativa dell’essere umano.

Rispetto ad altre opere precedenti (come Neuromante o Luce Virtuale ), direi che qui Gibson si è fatto un po’ prendere la mano dalla sua analisi socio-tecnologica e dal desiderio di preconizzare e portare all’estremo le tendenze del nostro tempo, a discapito della trama generale (tanto che, come thriller distopico, risulta invero assai deboluccio, sia in termini di suspense, sia per un finale buonista che non è assolutamente alla sua altezza).
Hollis Henry, ex-cantante che ha perso gran parte dei propri risparmi nella crisi dei mercati finanziari, e Milgrim, crittologo e reduce da una clinica dove lo hanno disintossicato e resettato (per cui non ricorda più nulla dei suoi ultimi dieci anni di vita), vengono assoldati dal miliardario belga Hubertus Bigen (uno dei personaggi più inquietanti e più riusciti di Gibson: “uno troppo ricco, uno che flirtava pericolosamente con le architetture nascoste del mondo”), per aiutarlo nel recupero e nella conquista di un marchio “nascosto”, ovvero di una moda capace di condizionare e modificare i gusti della società, senza che la società neppure se ne accorga.
In questa missione i due verranno aiutati da Heidi, un’altra ex-rockstar, da Garreth, l’ex-ragazzo di Holly, artista che si esprime attraverso performance di base-jumping (ovvero lanciandosi dai grattacieli più altri del mondo, travestito da scoiattolo), nonché da una girandola di personaggi più che improbabili (tra tutti Fiona, la ragazza-corriere che riprende un altro tema caro a Gibson, e già apparso in Luce Virtuale).

Tra “Coolhunter” (i segugi dei nostri gusti collettivi) e “Ghostbrander” (i ricercatori che scovano i marchi inattivi, che sono però talmente parte del nostro passato da essere capaci di avere ancora una visibilità iconica o una narratività vitale), i nostri dovranno vedersela con il mondo della pubblicità e della moda, dove nulla viene lasciato al caso.

E qui viene fuori l’aspetto migliore di Gibson, la sua acutezza nell’analizzare criticamente gli aspetti più oscuri delle strategie di mercato (ad esempio, nel lancio di un nuovo marchio, basato non più sulla visibilità estrema, ma piuttosto sulla segretezza estrema, tramite la diffusione “limited editon” di pochi capi, in luoghi esclusivi, e per un target di clienti a sua volta rigidamente selezionato).

Lo stile visionario e confuso di Gibson, all’inizio può risultare lievemente urticante, ma poi ti avvolge, ti conquista. Certe descrizioni minuziose dei materiali, dei suoni, degli odori, scomposti in uno straordinario elogio del particolare (come l’arredamento di una singola stanza d’albergo, le suppellettili conservate in una teca, la forma e i colori delle cromature dei sanitari di un bagno, o ancora i graffi sul casco di un motocilista che sfreccia nel traffico di Londra, o ancora l’architettura degli edifici: “un caseggiato del XVIII secolo, la cui facciata ricordava l’espressione di qualcuno sul punto di addormentarsi in metropolitana”) mi hanno lasciato estasiata, a volte ricordandomi certe descrizioni puntigliose dei vasi di fiori di proustiana memoria.

Una sorta di Proust del XXI secolo, dunque? In realtà, questo paragone non è poi così azzardato, ed anche Gibson deve esserne consapevole, perché non si lascia sfuggire l’occasione per mettere in bocca a Milgrim proprio una citazione divertita sulla “petite madeleine” inzuppata nel thè…
(less)

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Jul 01, 2012 Mommalibrarian rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is not science fiction. I only discovered it was the third in a series (Blue Ant) when I came here to write my review. No way to know if reading them in order over a short time interval would improve the experience. In the beginning of the story Gibson uses a fair number of $5 words which I always enjoy. He also comes up with great snapshots.

"She hung up before he could say goodbye. Stood there with her arm cocked, phone at ear-level, suddenly aware of the iconic nature of her unconscious p...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Ann Littlewood rated it 5 of 5 stars

Gibson writes about the weirdest things. Now he's into fashion. Whatever... the man is a brilliant stylist in my opinion. He can turn out a metaphor or a description that leaves me agape. I don't really care where he chooses to take us--I'm there for the glory of the ride.

Ahem. Back to earth. Literally. This isn't science fiction (which he also writes) since it's set in the present and uses science that already exists, or close enough. You'll find characters from previous books Pattern Recogniti...more

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May 06, 2012 Jeffery Nicholas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Despite having Hollis Haris in it (read my review of Spook Country) this book is actually decent. It still is not one of Gibson's best, but it is at least entertaining. I don't know why, but I do like Bigend even though no one else does. And I like Milgrim who liked Bigend, and I hate Hollis who doesn't like Bigend, so I think I'm okay. The plot moves, although bringing in Garreth is sorta weird. It's like Gibson is rolling dice with his plots or something. But he fears he has no ideas left, I d...more

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Mar 14, 2012 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked this up on a whim and was pleasantly surprised by this one until about the last 100 pages. After three-fourths of the book was devoted to character development and thought-provoking commentary on branding and marketing, the book shifted gears into an action thriller with fortuitous coincidences accumulating at such a rate your suspension of disbelief becomes stretched to the breaking point. I suppose since this was the last book in a loosely connected trilogy, character arcs had to reac...more

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Feb 19, 2012 Rhodes Hileman rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 scene with his "cart...more

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Nov 13, 2011 wychwood rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, sff

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 it. Spook...more 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 it. Spook Country was rather disappointing in comparison, but I feel like Zero History goes some way to redeeming it; I want to read all three in sequence now, to see how they fit together, but my initial feeling is that the developments of ZH would make SC work better as well. Plus I want to see where some of the threads start! I thought Milgrim was awesome, and Hollis is definitely growing on me; I did spend the first few chapters confused because I'd forgotten that Cayce was a different person(!), although that made part of the payoff of the book even sweeter.

It wasn't perfect, by any means; I did begin to get a little fed up with the constant obsession with brand names, which started sounding a little false after a while. Cayce has reasons to notice, but it seems like every single character does so. And while I know that it's a feature that Bigend is fantastically wealthy and likes to do weird things with the money, it did grate somewhat; I spent part of the day trying to find out how much it would cost to courier my passport to me, and it is really not as easy as Gibson makes it sound! I expect the superrich do things like that without thinking, but the characters aren't superrich themselves, and they seem to adjust to it in a way I wasn't really comfortable with. It's a very, hm, one-percent-ish mindset. Similarly, I do like the quirkiness they always end up encountering, but it does sometimes end up feeling as though Gibson is trying too hard; not everything should be that unique and weird.

But despite all of that, I really did enjoy the book. It kept me thoroughly entertained when I needed it (and reading Hollis and Milgrim's extended musings on St Pancras and Eurostar while sitting in the terminal had an appropriate weirdness to it!), and it felt like a really good resolution to the trilogy. I definitely want to come back and look at all of this series again.(less)

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Oct 25, 2011 Terry rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: science-fiction, speculative-fiction, fiction

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 sufficiently app...more

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Sep 26, 2011 Stacy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: scifi-horror-thriller

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

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Sep 09, 2011 David Nelson rated it 4 of 5 stars

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...more

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Aug 22, 2011 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-lack-objectivity-on-this-one, sf-fantasy-horror

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 their obsessions, wh...more

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Jun 02, 2011 Stas rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: a-roman-noir, speculative-realism

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 Neuromancer ca...more

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May 15, 2011 Timothy Hallinan rated it 4 of 5 stars

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. The previously drug-addic...more

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May 01, 2011 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 and appropriately worldl...more

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Mar 07, 2011 Ludo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction

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...more

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Feb 08, 2011 Matt rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 features the ret...more 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 features the return of ex-lead singer of the Curfew, who I thought was a delightful tour guide from the previous Bigend book. There, I loved her, and I think that might be why I thought that book was so great-- it also fetishized weird art, and post-rock from the late eighties, and the obsession some people have with that kind of music (me included, of course).

In this book, I didn't respond that strongly-- the cat nip here, I think, is meant to be the crazy hotel/ private club where the characters stay, and its elevator and beds. But it just didn't grab me, even though it was obviously meant to, since we keep returning to it in the book.

The scan here, too, seems sort of ungrounded, in the way that the heist at the heart of Spook Country never did-- the interest in jeans and whatever else was happening with the retired spies also hunting a contract to make the same for the military never really came together for me in a satisfying way. It felt like zero gravity as a plot.

I do think that the way the book engages the financial crisis is really interesting. Like, really really well done-- matter of fact, without being maudlin. And the very end, and the new status quo for Bigend is also appealing-- throughout this book, Bigend is compared to a Bond villain. I'm not sure that's the way I want him to go, but it might be fun if he did get down to some serious malfeasance. And now, it seems, he has that potential.

At the same time, the way characters from earlier Bigend books take curtain calls here makes me think that we've seen the last of them. In other words, I don't know where this goes next, if anywhere.(less)

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Zero History (Blue Ant #3)

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