SOURCE: Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr. “Antimancer: Cybernetics and Art in Gibson's Count Zero.” Science-Fiction Studies 22, no. 1 (March 1995): 63-86.

In the following essay, Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., discusses the portrayals of art and cybernetic technology in Gibson's Count Zero.

1. Count Zero Is Penance for Neuromancer

Like Milton's Satan, Gibson's console cowboy and the all-replicating Artificial Intelligences of cyberspace slipped out of his authorial grip, creating pleasure from the very points that he wished to question. In that first novel, the loss of the body's affections and the mind's reflections seems a small price to pay for the ecstasy of communication. Neuromancer created a convincing image of a cyberpunk future that was not only inevitable, but habitable, if only by those who know how to navigate it.

Gibson's second novel lacks Neuromancer's intensity and drive.¹ Gibson has said that he intended this damping so that he could learn some more traditional story-telling...