Guest blog by Simon John Hillman
Having finished reading William Gibson’s stunning debut novel Neuromancer, I was left with a slightly hollow feeling of ‘melancholy’ at having completed reading such a breathtaking work of modern literature.
So it was quite a relief to recall the fact that Neuromancer is the first instalment of Gibson’s epic Sprawl trilogy. I immediately set about reading the sequel, Count Zero, fully expecting it to be unable to match-up to its’ remarkable predecessor. How wrong I was!
‘Count Zero’ picks-up the story several years after the events that took place in Neuromancer. Whilst there are several references to characters in the previous novel, the book presents and interweaves the personal stories of three completely new and very different individuals – Turner, Marley, and Bobby.
Turner is a tough but intelligent mercenary, employed by a huge transnational hi-tech corporation, who specialises in extracting corporate ‘assets’ from equally ruthless rival companies. Marley is a recently disgraced Paris gallery owner, who is hired by a mega-wealthy, self-absorbed business tycoon to locate and identify the creator of a series of idiosyncratic ‘boxes’. And Bobby is a young cyber-cowboy who almost dies inside the matrix on an illegal run for his shady employers, and is saved at the last minute … by somebody or something completely unexplainable.
Slowly but surely, their fates become intertwined against a backdrop of bitter and relentless corporate warfare, passion and betrayal, street-gang rivalries, prophetic technology, and a cyberspace matrix which has become increasingly inhabited by ‘entities’ that appear to be … Voodoo gods!
If you appreciate mesmerising imagery, realistic dialogue, intrigues, enigmas, and believable characters, then you could do worse than grab a copy of Count Zero… and prepare for a truly remarkable read of your life!
About the reviewer: Simon John Hillman is a Bangkok-based British expatriate who teaches Social Studies and Psychology to high school students.
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