Count Zero

Well, Count Zero is certainly a very different novel and not what I expected to be a follow-up to the famous Neuromancer. Unlike his famous first novel, Count Zero's prose is less Burroughs and more conventional while switching back and forth between three characters in each chapter until their stories intersect. While this makes the novel easier reading material, some of the magic and zany-ness of the first novel, set almost a decade before the events that transpire in Count Zero, is lost. Nonetheless, Gibson tackles in an interesting and postmodern way the consequences of AI becoming sentient and interacting with us in ways more aligned with Vodou and non-Western religions. Indeed, that is precisely the most interesting thing about this global dystopic future of zaibatsu domination and wealthy elites, becoming less human with each passing day, it seems, fighting for control of biochip innovations and power while changes in the Cyberspace resemble more and more Haitian Vodou possession and the intercession of powerful lwa.

In this regard, it is also interesting to note the much larger role played by black characters in this novel, African-Americans from the Projects of a New Jersey suburb, as their understanding of sentient fractures of the fusion of Wintermute and Neuromancer makes perfect sense within a Vodou worldview. Although sometimes reduced to stereotypical lines, specifically Jackie and Beauvoir, I found Beauvoir (perhaps a name inspired by the illustrious Haitian of that same name?) intelligent and his definition of Vodou as getting stuff done useful (paging Prothero?). And despite the skepticism and condescending remarks from various cowboys, observers, and dealers, the conceptual field of perception of the Vodouizan and their Haitian Creole speech and memory of mapou trees and possession, makes just as much sense as Marly's confrontation with the boxmaker (Gran Met). Indeed, perhaps that is the one of the powerful lessons of Count Zero regarding technological progress and innovation: the differences between the past traditions and advances in cybernetics are not so much linear but an entwined series of roots and routes. 

After discussing this novel via email with a relative, I think they are correct about this largely acting as a pot-boiler work in the so-called Sprawl Trilogy, with Gibson's use of Vodou, Rastafarians in Neuromancer and Japanese themes throughout the series as instrumental, conceptually and metaphorically, while also being post-modern and traditional simultaneously, as the Joseph Cornell-like boxes indicate. It would be an intriguing project to look at Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy in comparison with the neo-hoodoo novels of Ishmael Reed (and Japanese By Spring), Dany Laferriere's Japan-inspired novels that also feature Haitian and Japanese themes in conjunction, and some of the interesting research on mathematics and the sciences in African, Haitian, Rastafarian, or Santeria religions. Perhaps bones, charms, and computers have more in common than we realize?