《零伯爵》-en

I read Neuromancer half a year ago; only yesterday did I pick up this book.

The book itself isn’t long—maybe novella length? A few hours to finish. The translation is rough; I even spotted typos early on—don’t make me learn English… Three storylines run in parallel, so the start is a bit confusing, but you catch on quickly—just accept how the story unfolds.

The first thread is Turner, the merc, killed in New Delhi, rebuilt by the Dutchman, then hired into the main plot.

The second is Marly, humiliated in Paris for peddling fakes, then hired by the tycoon Virek to find whoever made a certain wooden box. That line isn’t as tightly woven with the other two; it sits a bit “over” Neuromancer, more like exposition—it also feels a bit odd.

The third is Count Zero Bobby, who uses “Twice a Day” to run his icebreaker against a database and nearly gets killed; “the Virgin” saves him. He goes to “Two-a-Day” to find out what happened and enters the main arc. Bobby doesn’t get that much page time—three parallel lines, and he’s only one—and even in his thread he’s mostly pushing the plot alongside others. I don’t fully get why the English title is Count Zero (zero interrupt count)—maybe a punchy sci‑fi name to sell copies.

Halfway through I had this feeling: everyone is a gear in a precise machine. Call the machine “the world” or “fate”—maybe there’s no such thing as individual will. No single protagonist; each person is a gear, turned by others and turning others, driving the world/fate forward.

The author really loves describing objects—every prop in the environment laid out clearly; some call it a “fetish for things” (lol).

Personally I like this one more than Neuromancer—the latter’s later stretch made me want to skip: everything’s explained and the story keeps going. This one wraps once things are clear.

The centipede-like thing that seals to skin to heal wounds in Count Zero shows up in Blade Runner 2049—so that’s where it came from.

Reading a novel is like entering another world; we bring something back with our own experience. Looking forward to the next world—and what I bring back.