Zero History

By: William Gibson

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

The iconic visionary returns with his first new novel since the New York Times bestseller Spook Country.

Whatever you do, because you are an artist, will bring you to the next thing of your own...

When she sang for The Curfew, Hollis Henry's face was known worldwide. She still runs into people who remember the poster. Unfortunately, in the post-crash economy, cult memorabilia doesn't pay the rent, and right now she's a journalist in need of a job. The last person she wants to work for is Hubertus Bigend, twisted genius of global marketing; but there's no way to tell an entity like Bigend that you want nothing more to do with him. That simply brings you more firmly to his attention.

Milgrim is clean, drug-free for the first time in a decade. It took eight months in a clinic in Basel. Fifteen complete changes of his blood. Bigend paid for all that. Milgrim's idiomatic Russian is superb, and he notices things. Meanwhile no one notices Milgrim. That makes him worth every penny, though it cost Bigend more than his cartel-grade custom-armored truck.

The culture of the military has trickled down to the street- Bigend knows that, and he'll find a way to take a cut. What surprises him though is that someone else seems to be on top of that situation in a way that Bigend associates only with himself. Bigend loves staring into the abyss of the global market; he's just not used to it staring back.

Watch a Video

Critic reviews

“[Gibson] weaves an unnerving tapestry of technology, violence and anxiety.”—The Daily Telegraph (London)

“Fascinating.”—The Seattle Times

“Uncanny.”—San Antonio Express-News

“Brilliant, entertaining, and bittersweet.”—io9

“Zero History is another smartly scouted roadmap of alternate routes through today’s global culture, as powered by what a friend of mine used to call the military-industrial-greeting-card complex. It’s a world where cool is king, but also the key to power—and the future.”—Milwaukee Sentinel Journal

“What matters [about Zero History] are the highly textured, brilliantly evocative prose and the stunning insights Gibson offers into what we perceive as the present moment—the implication being, per the title, that’s all we have left. Unsettling and memorable.”—Kirkus Reviews

Not as good as Spook Country

The story was quite slow-moving the first two-thirds. Character development to be charitable, but no forshadowing at all about what conflict might arise. Set in Europe, with Gibson's signature flair for detailed narration.
About the narrator: Robertson Dean has a wonderful voice.
But the story: Basically an epilogue continuation of Spook Country, with Milgrim on center stage. His character redeemed after a lengthy rehab center. Only read this if you are a complete-ist fan of William Gibson.

Artfully written but boring

If this wasn’t the 3rd and final in a series, I would have stopped reading halfway through.

Gibson's Amazing Zero History

Gibson's most famous quote (which I'm sure he's tired of by now) is, "the future is already here – it's just not very evenly distributed". If Gibson's next book is to be on higher education he would not find a better place to start his research than at EDUCAUSE.
Zero History, the 3rd book in Gibson's Bigend trilogy, is about fashion (or anti-fashion), military contracting, inflatable spy drones, and much else. If you read Pattern Recognition and Spook Country (and if you have not you should), I'm betting that Zero History is already on your reading device. If you are not a Gibson reader you should become one.

What would Bigend, the multimillionaire founder of the viral advertising / cool hunting agency Blue Ant, want to know about higher education?

In Pattern Recognition, Blue Ant is described this way:
"Relatively tiny in terms of permanent staff, globally distributed, more post-geographic than multinational, the agency has from the beginning billed itself as a high-speed, low-drag life-form in an advertising ecology of lumbering herbivores."

Perhaps in the next book, Gibson will have Bigend create a similarly nimble and agile university. Or perhaps he will advise existing institutions on how to become more like Blue Ant.

great!

another in gibson’s catalogue that defines tech in ways imaginary
and not, Truthfully this trilogy is one i revisit often, superb.

Great book by one of the best in the business

William Gibson is pure genius. I enjoy all of his stuff immensely and this was no exception