|
This article may not meet the general notability guideline or one of the following specific guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: Biographies, Books, Companies, Fiction, Music, Neologisms, Numbers, Web content, or several proposals for new guidelines. If you are familiar with the subject matter, please expand or rewrite the article to establish its notability. The best way to address this concern is to reference published, third-party sources about the subject. If notability cannot be established, the article is more likely to be considered for redirection, merge or ultimately deletion, per Wikipedia:Guide to deletion.
This article has been tagged since August 2008. |
This article is about the novel titled Count Zero. For the Boston rock band, see Count Zero (band). Count Zero is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the middle volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which includes Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive, and is a prime example of the cyberpunk sub-genre.
Count Zero was serialized by Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine in the 1986 January (100th issue), February & March issues. The black & white story art was done by J. K. Potter. The January cover is devoted to the story, with art by Hisaki Yasuda.
Count Zero was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1986 and was also nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1987.
Plot introduction
Eight years after the events of Neuromancer, strange things begin to happen in the Matrix, leading to the proliferation of what appear to be voodoo gods (hinted to be the fractured remains of the joined AIs that were Neuromancer and Wintermute).
Two powerful multinational corporations are engaged in a battle for control (extending into space) over a powerful new technology (a biochip) using hackers and the Matrix as well as espionage and violence.
Explanation of the novel's title
The title of the book, other than being the pseudonym of the main character Bobby Newmark, was also claimed by Gibson to be a word-play on the alleged computer programming term count zero interrupt. According to a frontleaf of the book, in a "count zero interrupt", an interrupt of a process decrements a counter to zero. The exact quote is "On receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero." (However, the term "count zero interrupt" and its alleged definition appear to have been invented by Gibson himself.)citation needed
Plot summary
As with later Gibson works, there are multiple story-line threads which eventually intertwine:
Thread one: In the southwestern USA, Turner, a corporate mercenary soldier, has been hired out to help a brilliant researcher (Mitchell) 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 of the expected Mitchell. Her father had apparently altered her nervous system to allow her to access the Cyberspace Matrix directly, without a "deck" (a computer), 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 Virek (see thread three) desires above all else, so that he can make an evolutionary jump to something like omniscience and immortality.
Thread two: Seven years after the events in Neuromancer a young New Jersey-suburbs amateur computer hacker, Bobby Newmark, self-named "Count Zero," is given a piece of black market software "to test," plugs himself into the matrix and it almost kills him. The only thing that saves his life is a sudden image of a girl made of light whom interferes and unhooks him from the software just before he faints. She is Mitchell's daughter (see thread one). They physically meet only at the very end of the book.
Thread three: Marly, a small gallery owner in Paris until she was tricked into trying to sell a hoax, and newly infamous as a result, is recruited by ultra-rich, reclusive (cf. Howard Hughes) industrialist and art patron Josef Virek to find the unknown creator of the futuristic Joseph Cornell style boxes (because one contained indications of biosoft construction in its tiny, intricate design).
All of these plotlines come together at the end of the story -- and Virek, the hunter of his immortality 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 (introduced in Neuromancer, and designed by the head of this Rockefeller-like family, the Tessier-Ashpools). These AI units now interface with humanity in the form of different Haitian voodoo gods, as the best representation of themselves that they can have 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 constucted 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 sentient. But most of humanity remains unaware.
Characters
Cover of the April 1987 Ace paperback edition with cover art by Richard Berry.
Bobby Newmark
At the beginning of the novel, Bobby is a small time "cowboy" (hacker) who wants to be a big name in cyberspace. He is given what he naively trusts is an "ICE breaker" (hacking software), unaware that he is in fact being used to test some unknown software to see what it does. He is directed to use the software to infiltrate a black ICE database which nearly ends up killing him. But at the last moment Bobby is rescued, while in Cyberspace and dying, by an image of a girl, Angela Mitchell, who is somehow able to enter cyberspace without using a "deck" (computer). The acronym ICE is shorthand, incidentally, for "Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics". The most formidable of these data defense networks are powerful enough to trace back and physically terminate any hacker making an attempt to defeat them. Most interesting is the fact that this is legally sanctioned, or is, at least, not illegal.
Bobby realizes his target must now know where he lives, so he flees. Shortly after leaving his apartment, he is brutally mugged for his deck and left for dead, only to be rescued and given medical attention by the owners of the software Bobby tried out, a small group who are very interested in what happened to him in Cyberspace. Bobby and Angela (who are roughly the same age) physically meet at the end of this book (and become lovers as is indicated in the third book Mona Lisa Overdrive).
Newmark makes a minor appearance in the third Sprawl novel, Mona Lisa Overdrive. Eight years older, he is physically comatose, but mentally jacked into a stolen and massive storage and computing database which contains a virtual reality approximation of the world. Near the end of the story Bobby is reunited with Angela, whom he had not seen for several years.
Turner
Turner (the only name by which he is known in the novel) is a mercenary who is employed by various corporations to help vital employees of competing corporations "defect" to Turner's employers. The novel begins with an account of a job in New Delhi in which Turner was nearly killed by a mobile bomb. After three months of reconstructive surgery in Singapore, Turner takes a vacation in Mexico, where he meets and becomes sexually involved with a woman named Allison. While on the beach with Allison, Turner sees a familiar yacht close to shore and a powerboat from the yacht approaching the beach, bearing the logo of the Hosaka Corporation. Turner tells Allison to leave while he waits for the raft's passenger to come ashore. He already knows that the passenger is Conroy, another mercenary with whom Turner has worked in the past. Conroy recruits Turner for another "extraction" job; this time, Conroy and Turner are to help a man named Christopher Mitchell leave Maas Biolabs for Hosaka. Mitchell carries with him the expertise to design and manufacture "biochips", a technology superior to the nearly ubiquitous silicon microprocessors of the era. Maas Biolabs holds the patents and secrets to biochip technology and will use every means it can to prevent Mitchell's escape. Conroy also reveals that Allison is a "field psychologist" working for Hosaka to monitor Turner and help his recovery.
Turner is a disciplined professional, but is troubled by memories of past jobs that ended tragically as well as his relationship with his gifted brother Rudy (who is a reclusive alcoholic and drug addict). Turner comes to realize that the unsuccessful attempt to "bring over" Christopher Mitchell from Maas to Hosaka resulted from a betrayal and suspects that Conroy is behind it. He also recognizes that Angie Mitchell was sent out from the Maas facility by her father, and she is in grave danger, and resolves to protect her while finding out who is pursuing her and why.
Marly Krushkhova
Marly, prior to the beginning of the story, operated a small art gallery in Paris. She was disgraced (and became notorious) when she attempted to sell a forged box assemblage that was supposedly a lost piece by the American sculptor Joseph Cornell. She was unaware that the piece was a fake; the forgery had been commissioned by the gallery's co-owner (and Marly's then-lover) Alain, who embezzled money from the gallery to finance the commission and then convinced Marly that the piece was an authentic long lost Cornell. Unemployed and living with her friend Andrea, Marly receives a job offer from the immensely wealthy businessman Josef Virek. During her interview, conducted via a very advanced simstim link, Virek informs Marly that he has collected several remarkable box assemblages similar to those created by Cornell. Virek then hires Marly to find out who is producing the pieces, offering her unlimited financial support during the course of her search.
Marly is not, however, easily led, and quickly realizes there is more than meets the eye in her new job. Though she welcomes the opportunity to get out of her current situation, Marly does not fully trust the mysterious and secretive Virek. This mistrust only deepens when it becomes clear that she is being followed and monitored by Virek's agents, in particular Virek's right-hand man, Paco. Marly tries to stay a step ahead of Virek and Paco while discovering the identity of the boxes' creator.
Quotation
"He'd used decks in school, toys that shuttled you through the infinite reaches of the space that wasn't space, mankind's unthinkably complex consensual hallucination, the matrix cyberspace, where the great corporate hotcores burned like neon novas, data so dense you suffered sensory overload if you tried to apprehend more than the merest outline." (Excerpt from William Gibson's Count Zero)
External links
|
.jpg)
