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There are many hearts to William Gibson’s Zero History. Part of the pure, undiluted joy you will experience when you read Zero History is uncovering those secret, sacred hearts for yourself. Like kernels, germs, gems, you’ll dig them out from the fertile earth of the novel’s imaginative life.
You’ll sense that wavering dread that Hollis Henry (retired lead singer and erstwhile journalist) experiences when Hubertus Bigend, corporate monolith and psychic vampire, goads her into tracking down the mind behind Gabriel Hounds denim fashion. Near the novel’s beginning, it will begin to feel like that part where the dream of the horror movie is just about to become too much. You’ll sense that hopeful wonder of a world that may yet be righted, when Mere speaks of the Budo-Christian disconnect between the world consumers see in glossy magazines, and the horror-sacrifice needed to make that world from the lives of poor, hungry women sleeping on apartment floors.
If you’re like me, you’ll find these gems moving through the book reading at breakneck pace—but it won’t feel like that at all. It will feel slow and rhythmic, like the slow beating pulse of the planet that syncs with human brainwaves at about 7.8Hz. You’ll smuggle Zero History into your daily life, you’ll read it on your daily commute across the bay, or deep enough under the city to not see natural light, or in the elevator, on the way to your next meeting. The book will become a device. You’ll set aside the iPad, iPhone, you’ll unplug. Time will unfurl…
