Book Review:William Gibson's Count Zero

Neuromancer is rightly one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time. You can tell because it has never been made into a movie, much less a successful one. Count Zero is a loose sequel. It references some of the occurrences of its predecessor but is mostly its own thing.

The author has a very distinct style. Very noir. Very ambiguous. He describes in great detail the trees and lets you figure out what the forest looks like for yourself. This is both wonderful and teeth grindingly frustrating. Sometimes he literally skips the action he’s been building up to, leaving the reader grasping for closure and a sense of what’s going on.

At the same time the world he has created and the big ideas he casually throws around are compelling enough to make the reader persist. Having said that, the world he has created is not pleasant. The common theme is humanity losing its humanity in a sea of information and technology. So in spite of some dated technological ideas, it’s still relevant.

Book Review: Creatures of Light and Darkness by Roger Zelazny

I’ve been on a Zelazny kick of late. I really like Lord of Light and the first Amber series. There are definitely ideas in Creatures of Light and Darkness that have carried over from the former. And there are ideas that are more fully explored in the latter.

The novel, inspired by Egyptian myth, is both beautiful and horrific with numerous stylistic changes. But at the same time it can drift into mythical and allegorical territory. Is anything in this book to be taken literally?

At one point a character is wrestling with all comers at a public fair. It’s very concrete with lots of blood and mud and nothing but a rope barricade holding back the spectators. Then another character shows up to do battle with the first character and their conflict is so intense it threatens to destroy the entire planet. What kind of power do these characters have?

Nothing is explained in depth. The bizarreness is accepted as just the way things are. I found myself looking for a grand unification theory to explain everything. But maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s just a myth written from the far future. Draw from it what beauty and morals are available and don’t try to explain it.