Bobby Newmark is entirely human: a rustbelt data-hustler totally unprepared for what comes his way when the defection triggers war in cyberspace. With voodoo on the Net and a price on his head, Newmark thinks he's only trying to get out alive. A stylish, streetsmart, frighteningly probable parable of the future and sequel to Neuromancer

Product Description
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.

If you're one of those Gibson fans who hasn't quite gotten around to reading COUNT ZERO, you're in for a rare treat.


A good sciebce-fiction work   November 17, 2000
 20 out of 23 found this review helpful

The first paragraph of this book sets the narrative tone for the rest of the work, indeed, it is the trademark style of William Gibson and his growing body of science fiction work. Turner is a mercenary in a not-to-distant future earth civilization. In this networked world, multinational mega-corporations, with names like Maas Biolabs and Hosaka wield enormous power especially over the network and the cyberspace world it encompasses.

In these corporations, genius scientists have lifetime contracts. They are well-paid prisoners of these giant enterprises. One such scientist, Christopher Mitchell, a man credited with creating the biochip, a replacement for the silicon chip, wants to leave his current employer Mass Biolabs and join rival Hosaka. The latter commissioned a reconstituted Turner with the job of bringing Mitchell safely out. "It took the Dutchman and his team three months to put Turner together again," the author writes. "They cloned a square meter of skin for him, grew it on slabs of collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides. They bought eyes and genitals on the open market. The eyes were green."

Count Zero is the second in a trilogy Gibson has created based on a networked society. The three books explore the notion of information as a life force unto itself that can be stored, manipulated, and evolved into different life forms. In the telling of his tales, Gibson introduces the reader to a rich assortment of unforgettable characters.


Gibson's best.   November 28, 2000
 18 out of 21 found this review helpful

I'd never read a book that started with a bang quite like this one, with the hero of the novel caught in a lethal blast on page one. The story continues foward from there. This is one of the seminal works of the cyberpunk movement; you can be rebuilt more handsome and more dysfunctional.

Like the protagonist, the book's perspecive is shattered here, whirling away in fragmentary views of the action that follows from a handful of different characters who know nothing of each other until they all fall into place at the end and all, or most, is made clear. It's a literary style that Gibson uses for every work after this one, but never with quite the same perfection as this first time.

It's hard to not see this work in the shadow of Neuromancer. It's also tempting to see it in the light of the Star Wars Trilogy. (Yes, of course I'm talking about the original trilogy.) If Neuromancer is the captivating first work that could have started a genre all by itself, and Mona Lisa Overdrive is the somewhat dissappointing finale that you love anyway for the series it was in, then Count Zero is the edgy piece in the middle. It's the one that's brimming with the promise of everything that came before and after, and in the end, rewards rereading again, and again.

Am i making sense here? No? Well, perhaps you should read the book and decide for yourself then...


SF NOIR...POETIC DREAMSCAPES OF A DISTOPIC FUTURE...(Part 2)   May 21, 2007
 8 out of 8 found this review helpful

I have read this masterpiece (together with the other two of the Sprawl series: NEUROMANCER and MONA LISA OVERDRIVE) during my university years, about a decade ago. Since then I have re-read it countless times.

Of the three this is my favorite: good and evil voodoo legbas as AI cyberspace avatars; life in the Sprawl comes into focus, sharply. The eye-watering smog and the ozone smell of new electronics surround a storyline that moves on deserted highways with the assurance of an armored hovercraft..

Even reading only some pages brings up powerful imagery, unforgettable prose...

Start with NEUROMANCER. Then this one. And then MONA LISA OVERDRIVE.

A Masterpiece Trilogy!!! Own them all!!!


Not as absorbing as Neuromancer   October 24, 1999
 7 out of 8 found this review helpful

I read Neuromancer and LOVED it...so of course I had to finish the trilogy. Count Zero was a good read, but didn't have enough new techno gadgets to satisfy me. Also, I didn't think the characters were as empathetic as Molly and Case were. Still, you definitely have to read it before you get to Mona Lisa Overdrive since MLO is pretty much a direct continuity from Count Zero.