COUNT ZERO by William Gibson
i finished Count Zero by William Gibson about two weeks ago. it is the second in his Sprawl trilogy (after Neuromancer, before Mona Lisa Overdrive). it is one of my most favoritest sci-fi books that i've ever read.
in addition to its amazing Lime-Cayenne Pineapple Wedges, it deserves some sort of award for Best Opening Few Sentences--here's how it starts:
They set a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pehromones and the color of his har. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT. He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a palace called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
AWESOME, right??? i thought so. "bare brown legs and pedicab tires"--i can picture that, it's part of the world we live in...but what the f*#@ is a "slamhound"? apparently it "scrambles" and makes things go boom. the rest of the book is great, too. gibson writes with bits and pieces of imagery thrown in...when things are happening fast for characters, he throws in non-sentences like, "Red fingernail, cookie exploding." i made that one up. but point being, there will be a paragraph of dialogue, or regular descriptive prose, and then something Happens--and you get a clump of visual adjectives and nouns lacking sentence form...creates impression of Suddenness, makes you re-read the words, see the picture, and realize something's going on that you and the characters are registering but not fully digesting. ok enough of my "analysis". Count Zero has more Humanity than Neuromancer (you actually care about a couple of the characters), but less than the third book in the trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive, which has a bit too much of the Humanity stuff (i ended up being a bit annoyed with and tired of its main character).
in sum, Count Zero = Excellent Book. thanks again, Billy Gibson.
in addition to its amazing Lime-Cayenne Pineapple Wedges, it deserves some sort of award for Best Opening Few Sentences--here's how it starts:
They set a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pehromones and the color of his har. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT. He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a palace called the Khush-Oil Hotel.
AWESOME, right??? i thought so. "bare brown legs and pedicab tires"--i can picture that, it's part of the world we live in...but what the f*#@ is a "slamhound"? apparently it "scrambles" and makes things go boom. the rest of the book is great, too. gibson writes with bits and pieces of imagery thrown in...when things are happening fast for characters, he throws in non-sentences like, "Red fingernail, cookie exploding." i made that one up. but point being, there will be a paragraph of dialogue, or regular descriptive prose, and then something Happens--and you get a clump of visual adjectives and nouns lacking sentence form...creates impression of Suddenness, makes you re-read the words, see the picture, and realize something's going on that you and the characters are registering but not fully digesting. ok enough of my "analysis". Count Zero has more Humanity than Neuromancer (you actually care about a couple of the characters), but less than the third book in the trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive, which has a bit too much of the Humanity stuff (i ended up being a bit annoyed with and tired of its main character).
in sum, Count Zero = Excellent Book. thanks again, Billy Gibson.