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.

6 people found this helpful

good reading, not very good book

The narration is quite good, but this book needs editing. I have been a fan of Gibson for most of my life, and I quite liked the first of his recent books set in the present day, Pattern Recognition. But the second one was less interesting , and this, the third in the series, has every character speaking almost exactly alike, constantly asking each other to explain things that were just explained in the narration, and way, way too much detail. The color and texture of every object in the book is noted. And if you're not that into fashion, you're going to find the whole premise mystifying. Anyway, l recommend Pattern Recognition instead.

9 people found this helpful

Bigend needed a little more Blomkvist

The Bigend trilogy could have been a smarter version of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - essentially this is that series if Delillo (circa White Noise) had been at the keyboard. They are both fun and sharp, but what one lacks in sticky insights the other lacks in action, and each (like the reader) suffers a bit. Bigend is a great idea for a character, but there isn't much "there there" - HH's endless soul searching is fatiguing and Milgrim (who ought to be a little more like Bourne, imho) just comes across as muddle minded. All that said, it is filled with good stuff about what would best be characterized as a long rumination on the nerd hive mind. If you are interested in memes, gear/fashion fetish culture and corporate design espionage, this is the only game in town.

17 people found this helpful

A brilliant writer who just gets better and better

William Gibson used to write about the future, but, by the time he got to spook country (the prequel of this book) he was writing about the present, not because his genera had changed, rather because it had stayed the same and time had passed such that he was now writing about the present.
Zero history is a classic Gibson book. It makes you want to start a company and build something he has so easily and deftly imagined.

2 people found this helpful

Best of the three

I really enjoyed the book. No, it's not "about fashion." Fashion is just part of the setting. It's about how people think, about marketing and about why people want what they want and do what they do. It's about how the term "secret brand" can exist without being an oxymoron. It's about what's interesting, and it's interesting itself. So, for all of that, plus the cleverness of Gibson's prose, I recommend the book. There were a couple little things that bugged me, which is why I didn't give it 5 stars. The characters in the story are almost all very privileged, very smart, very given to communicating with short bursts of words. Nobody worries about where their next meal is coming from. They work without knowing how much they'll be paid or when. They just do what's in front of them if it seems interesting. That seems to be as true for the main character as it is for less consequential characters that have fairly menial service "jobs." I can understand that people like that exist in the world, but not in such a commonplace way that there would be so many in the same story, unless this is some kind of semi-utopian world where that's become the norm, something that you'd want the author to devote at least a sentence to. It gives the whole thing a feeling of airy unreality. <Minor spoiler ahead> The other thing is that the main character, Hollis, stops being interesting as soon as her boyfriend shows up. Even though he's basically an adrenaline junky that does stupid things for a living, he's somehow very smart, capable, connected, blah, blah, blah like all the others and just takes over. He gives commands without so much as a "please," and she just does what he says. You can write it off as her being in love and relieved to see him, but it just doesn't quite jive with the independence she showed all the way through the beginning of the story, and it bugs me when characters seem to suddenly shift like that without adequate justification. Anyway, good book, well written, and my objections sound worse than they are.

1 person found this helpful

gibson, give us more.

as i await the release of agency, i am re-reading some of my favorite gibson books. this is a fantastic end to the blue ant series, which is an ingenious study of consumerism and counter culture. start with pattern recognition and go through this thoroughly enjoyable trilogy. zero history has a compelling plot full of well-developed characters and just enough invention to keep you listening for the future. highly recommend.

1 person found this helpful

An unofficial sequel to Spook Country.

The pleasure of Gibson is the texture of his prose. The story is entertaining but the gritty detail is the real attraction.

1 person found this helpful

Gibson does it again

Cinematic in scope , Mr. Gibson creates tension and drama between contrasting characters which carries through to a climactic finish

Interesting. Like a tv show plot

it's ok. not great. but easy going read. with gibson it's about the characters not the story

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.