Count Zero

Count Zero is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It presents a near future whose technologies include a network of supercomputers that created a "matrix" in "cyberspace", an accessible, virtual, three-dimensionally active "inner space", which, for Gibson, was seen as being dominated by violent competition between small numbers of very rich individuals and multinational corporations. The novel is composed of a trio of plot lines that ultimately converge. Count Zero is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which began with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive. It was serialized in the January through March 1986 monthly issues of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine; the January cover was devoted to the story, with art by Hisaki Yasuda. While Gibson did not introduce the concept or coin the term "cyberpunk", a subgenre of science fiction (nor particularly associated himself with it), he is considered to have first envisioned and described the concept of "cyberspace". The novel, Count Zero, is nonetheless regarded as an early example of the cyberpunk subgenre.