Count Zero

Seven years after Neuromancer, three stories run side by side. Turner, a mercenary, is hired to move scientist Christopher Mitchell from Maas to Hosaka. The extraction goes wrong, and he escapes with Mitchell's daughter Angie, whose biosoft implants let her enter cyberspace without a deck. Bobby Newmark, a rookie hacker calling himself Count Zero, nearly dies and is saved by the image of a girl. Marly Krushkova is hired by billionaire Josef Virek to find whoever makes boxes in the style of Joseph Cornell. The threads meet: the matrix's voodoo gods are fragments of the old AIs, which used Mitchell and the boxes to lure Virek, who is taken out. Angie becomes a simstim star and Turner settles down to raise a child with Sally.

1. Behind the scenesCover of issue 100

   The book was first serialized in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine from January to March 1986. The January issue, the magazine's 100th, put the story on the cover. Gibson approved a version with less swearing and sex.

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2. Behind the scenesWhere the title comes from

   Count Zero is Bobby's handle and a play on the computing term "count zero interrupt." The book explains it as an instruction: on receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero.

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3. ReferenceJoseph Cornell's boxes

   The boxes Marly is chasing mimic those of American artist Joseph Cornell, known for small assemblages made from found objects. He was real and died in 1972.

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4. SetupGods in the matrix

   The hackers who take Bobby in talk about voodoo loa now showing up in cyberspace. Think about who they might really be: the answer ties this book to the first one.

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5. Behind the scenesUp for everything

   It was nominated for the Nebula and the BSFA Award in 1986, and for the Hugo and the Locus in 1987. Critic Dave Langford called it "a far better novel" than Neuromancer.

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