Count Zero

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The Sprawl trilogy, of which Count Zero is the second part

Count Zero (ISBN 0441117732) is a science fiction novel written by William Gibson, originally published in 1986. A prime example of the cyberpunk sub-genre, it is set in the same milieux as Gibson's prior novel Neuromancer, and forms the middle volume of The Sprawl trilogy, which includes Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive.

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.

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.

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)

The title of the book, other than being the pseudonym of the main character Bobby Newmark, is also a word-play on the programming term count zero. In a loop, a counter typically reaches a zero value therefore exiting the loop.

As per Gibson's style in this series, are three main storylines which eventually intertwine: Turner, a mercenary 'corporate extractor,' sets out to 'shift' top researcher Mitchell to the Hosaka Corporation but becomes guardian to his daughter on a cross-country trip instead; Marly, a small gallery owner until she became caught with a hoax and newly infamous as a result, who is engaged by ultra-rich, reclusive (think Howard Hughes) industrialist and art patron Josef Virek to find the unknown creator of his futuristic Joseph Cornell-style boxes; and Bobby (aka Count Zero), a neophyte hacker who flatlines while hacking a corporate computer with a stolen piece of software (later stolen) and is revived by a mysterious cyber-presence.