[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/count_zero_first.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:First Edition Cover]]

->''"On receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero."''

''Count Zero'' is about a freelance mercenary named Turner. After a botched job destroys much of his body, he is given a new one by his employers and enjoys some well-deserved R&R with a beautiful woman on the Mexican coast. Against his wishes, his vacation is cut short when his handler Conroy sends him on a job to extract a talented scientist from Maas Biolabs.

Wait, no. It's about the art dealer Marly Kruschkova, recovering after being victimised by a con artist. To her astonishment, she is contacted by the insanely wealthy Josef Virek, a man who's a megacorp unto himself. Virek hires her to find the creator of a set of the Virek Collection, a set of wooden boxes containing miscellaneous items, with a near-unlimited budget and no deadline.

Wait, ''no.'' It's about the wannabe console cowboy Bobby Newmark. After narrowly avoiding death twice, he finds himself in over his head in a world of computer hackers, shady dealings and voodoo gods.

It's a complicated book, to say the least.

''Count Zero'' is the 1986 sequel to Creator/WilliamGibson's ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'', and the second book in the ''Literature/SprawlTrilogy''. While not as well known as ''Neuromancer'', it's considered by many Gibson fans to be even better.
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!!This book provides examples of the following tropes:

* AirborneArtillery: Immediately after Turner botches Dr. Mitchell's extraction, an unidentified attacker craters his base camp. While Turner at first suspects an orbital laser strike or a tactical nuke, he eventually concludes that the attack must have come from a massive railgun hidden on one of the corporate blimps he had spotted on radar prior to the extraction run but dismissed as weather balloons because they stayed hundreds of kilometers away from the base camp.
* AssholeVictim: [[spoiler: Alain, who is murdered by Herr Virek's - or possibly Maas Biolab's - henchmen after he gives up the info on the boxes to Marly]].
* BadassInANiceSuit: The Kasuals, a vicious Barrytown street gang, take this trope up to eleven. They habitually dress in elaborate formal garb that includes silk brocade and lace cravats. Even when they're wasting punks on the streets.
* BigBad: [[spoiler:Virek, who turns out to be the common thread in all three stories.]]
* BrainUploading: [[spoiler: Virek's]] ultimate goal. He seeks out [[spoiler: the boxmaker]] on the assumption that will serve as a missing link between AI and a transferred human intelligence.
** Justified by his status in the world. Given his [[spoiler: vast wealth and lack of an heir,]] his death would cause chaos in the world economy. An immortal uploaded intelligence, on the other hand...
* BrickJoke: The very first chapter mentions that Turner's reconstruction involved a set of genitals purchased from the open market. In the epilogue, Turner's son asks why he doesn't look like his dad.
* CallBack: In the final scene of the novel, [[spoiler: Turner takes his now-seven year old son to visit the squirrel wood where he crashed his plane during the Mitchell extraction]].
* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler:As it turns out, everything was set up by Virek.]]
** [[spoiler:The AI's are this as well, as pretty much every major plot point was initiated by one of them.]]
* CreepyChild: Angie Mitchell has shades of this, [[spoiler: particularly when the AI constructs begin speaking through her à la DemonicPossession]].
* ContinuityNod: There's quite a few references to the fate of the Tessier-Ashpools following the events of ''Neuromancer'', and The Finn gives a quick recap of [[Literature/{{Neuromancer}} the Straylight run]] for Bobby and Lucas, though he doesn't mention Case, Molly, or Armitage by name.
** Angie also mentions dreaming of a woman with mirrors for eyes and a man that helped the Matrix "become whole". This of course refers to [[spoiler: Molly's mirrorshades and Case turning the Matrix into a giant superintelligence by merging Neuromancer and Wintermute.]]
** Turner wields a Smith & Wesson .408 tactical with a xenon projector, the same model the Finn tried to sell to Automatic Jack in "Burning Chrome."
** Jammer actually talks about Quine and Automatic Jack's run on Blue Lights, and states that Jack built his custom deck.
* DeathSeeker: Herr Virek, confined to a life support vat for decades, laments in his first appearance that his company would never let him die, even if a ROM construct was made. [[spoiler: It's why he's looking for whatever's left of Neuromancer.]]
* TheDragon: Paco, to Herr Virek.
* DemonicPossession: The AIs come across as this when they speak through [[spoiler: Angie via the implants in her brain]].
* DemotedToExtra: The Tessier-Ashpool family (the main antagonists from ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'') have faded into obscurity by the events of ''Count Zero''.
* DoubleMeaningTitle: The title refers to a "count zero interrupt", a type of computer crash that can occur when the AI gets into a computer system. Count Zero is also Bobby's street handle ("Count", as in the aristocratic title).
* DoubleAgent: A few. [[spoiler: Conroy has two plants that don't know about each other on Turner's extraction team, and Conroy himself turns out to be working for Virek.]]
* {{Dreamville}}: After Turner gets blown up in the beginning, he spends a few months in a simulation of a suburban New England childhood while undergoing surgery.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: While the novel's two epilogue chapters provide endings for all of the main characters (Marly [[spoiler: appears to have done well for herself, even though this is only mentioned in passing]], Bobby and Angie [[spoiler: find happines in each other's arms, but theirs really turns out to be a [[TheEndOrIsIt fake ending]], since their stories are continued in ''Literature/{{Mona Lisa Overdrive}}'']]), only [[spoiler: Turner's]] ending is a genuinely happy one, with him finding love in his [[spoiler: late brother's girlfriend]] and founding a family. He's also the character who arguably had to suffer the most throughout the novel, with pretty much everything he attempted having gone awry in one way or another.
* EveryoneCallsHimBarkeep: The Dutchman.
* {{Fiction 500}}: Oh yeah, Virek's definitely up there. When any action taken with your assets can potentially destabilize the economies of a couple ''nations'', you know you're rich.
* TheFundamentalist: Wigan Ludgate.
* {{Goth}}: The Gothicks, unsurprisingly, have a casual goth aesthetic involving black trenchcoats and makeup.
* GrandFinale: The shootout at Jammer's club, where all three subplots finally converge.
* GrimReaper: The AI sometimes takes the form of Baron Samedi, the voodoo god of death. [[spoiler: At the end, it assumes this form when it kills Virek]].
* HandCannon: Turner's Smith & Wesson revolver, loaded with high-explosive bullets.
* HollywoodVoodoo: Averted. Beauvoir and his associates are normal, quietly religious (if rather superstitious) people whose religion just happens to be Voudon.
* [[FlyingCar Hover Car]]: Turner and Angie use one to get to the Sprawl.
* KissMeImVirtual: Bobby has a "holoporn" projector that puts several girls on the walls of his bedroom, but he doesn't care about the girls anymore - he just likes how it makes the room seem bigger.
* MagicFromTechnology: Played with. The AI constructs try to emulate the Loa (gods) of the voodoo religion, and Beauvoir and his allies seem to understand them as both.
* ManInTheMachine: Herr Virek hopes to become one (after all, it's a big step up from being stuck in a [[PeopleJars Person Jar]]).
* MrExposition: The Finn, a minor character from ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'', briefly assumes this role.
* NeuralImplanting: Turner has a slot in his head for "microsofts", such as one for speaking Spanish.
* OnlyOneName: Turner. Even his brother only calls him Turner.
* ParentalNeglect: Sadly, Bobby endures a lot of this from his mother. Having soap operas broadcast into her mind 24/7 via brain implants doesn't exactly help.
* PeopleJars: Herr Virek spends the whole novel in one, only communicating with others through his digital avatar.
* PersonAsVerb: As the Finn later explains 'Pulling a Wilson' is named after Bodine Wilson, a guy he used to know
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: Jaylene Slide takes the loss of her boyfriend (Lucas) very personally. Within seconds of learning the murderer's name ([[spoiler:Conroy]]), she has a friend of hers kill him by blowing up two whole floors of the building where he's staying. The AI calling itself "Baron Samedi" also gets upset at [[spoiler: the death of Jackie]] and goes after [[spoiler: Virek]] on his home turf as a result.
* RecurringCharacter: The Finn is the only character to appear in both ''Count Zero'' and ''Literature/{{Neuromancer}}'', though he only has a minor role in each.
* ShapedLikeItself: Bobby's condo has carpet-colored carpet and curtain-colored curtains.
* SmugSnake: Alain, Marly's ex-lover. He'd been embezzling from her gallery, and he commissioned the forged Cornell box in the hope of selling it and replacing the stolen money.
* SwitchingPOV: The POV rotates between Turner, Bobby, and Marly. And the next-to-last chapter is told from the POV of [[spoiler: Tally Isham, a famous simstim actress who is briefly mentioned early in the book]].
* TagalongKid: Bobby spends most of the novel following around the people who actually know what's going on. Or at least they know more than he does.
* TechnologyMarchesOn: Marly has to order a special accessory program to make her phone filter calls from numbers not in her permanent directory; today, that's a standard freeware app for most smartphones.
* ThanatosGambit: [[spoiler:The biochip designer Mitchell organised the extraction with the intention of saving his daughter instead of himself.]]
* TheUnreveal: [[spoiler:The boxes are being made by a robot. Marly doesn't find out who made the robot.]]
** Similarly, [[spoiler: Turner finds out that Mitchell was augmented by AI technology that enhanced his intelligence. But he doesn't find out how this happened. Or why...]]
* UnusualEuphemism: "Chopped out" is slang for being assaulted, usually by members of a rival gang.
* WalkingTheEarth: Wigan Ludgate did this for a while after he became convinced that God was dwelling in cyberspace, and eventually travelled into space. [[spoiler: Marly runs into him at the abandoned Freeside space station]].
* WeCanRebuildHim: In the first chapter Turner is blown apart by an explosive assassination drone, he then spends several months in a simulation of an idealized New England childhood while a corporate surgeon puts him back together, though mostly with donor or cloned organs rather than cybernetics [[spoiler: which explains why his son in the end doesn't look like him.]]
* WhereAreTheyNowEpilogue: [[spoiler: Marly has become one of the most successful art dealers in Paris. Angie is a simstim actress working as a understudy to the famous Tally Isham, and she is in a relationship with Bobby, who now works as her bodyguard. Meanwhile, Turner is happily married to Sally (his brother Rudy's ex-wife), and he has a son with her]].
* WholePlotReference: The turf war between the Gothicks and the Kasuals involves a group of misfits of varying social classes pitted against the very preppy Kasuals - quite a bit like the conflict between the Greasers and Socs in S.E. Hinton's ''Literature/TheOutsiders''.
* XtremeKoolLetterz: The Gothicks and the Kasuals.