335 pages
English language
Published Dec. 29, 1987 by Grafton.
Turner, 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: Maas-Neotek's chief of R&D is defecting. Turner is the one assigned to get him out intact, along with the biochip he's perfected. But this proves to be of supreme interest to certain other parties--some of whom aren't remotely human.
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.
The second novel of William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero is a stylish, streetsmart, frighteningly probable parable of the future and sequel to Neuromancer.
It takes a while until the suspense eventually builds up. Otherwise, a great cyberpunk read, but with less cyber than Neuromancer had.
I read this series as they came out, back in the 80s. After a few years of classic SF and Fantasy, it was good to come back to Gibson's cyberpunk, and younger me would have rated it 4 stars. For present day me, reading only months later, it rates less.
This story is the same setting at Neuromancer, but basically stands alone. Where the original was a heist plot, this is more of a tapestry - various threads that weave together and eventually meet. Of these threads, the strongest story is the most heist-like - the professional and the extraction team. The other threads were less memorable, even though one of them contained the title character.
Does it work? Yes, but slowly. This one took me far longer to finish than it should have. Will I finish the series? Absolutely, and not just because it is part of a reading …
I read this series as they came out, back in the 80s. After a few years of classic SF and Fantasy, it was good to come back to Gibson's cyberpunk, and younger me would have rated it 4 stars. For present day me, reading only months later, it rates less.
This story is the same setting at Neuromancer, but basically stands alone. Where the original was a heist plot, this is more of a tapestry - various threads that weave together and eventually meet. Of these threads, the strongest story is the most heist-like - the professional and the extraction team. The other threads were less memorable, even though one of them contained the title character.
Does it work? Yes, but slowly. This one took me far longer to finish than it should have. Will I finish the series? Absolutely, and not just because it is part of a reading challenge. Would I recommend it? Hrmmm... tentatively yes, but only if you enjoyed Neuromancer. This is more of the same with less direction.
