Book: Zero History

Author: William Gibson

Reviewer: Keith Morgan, Principal Librarian for Digital Media, Research and Information Services, NCSU Libraries

Zero History is another of William Gibson’s “speculative novels of last Wednesday.”   Gibson’s interest in technology and trends, from locative art, viral marketing and the culture of surveillance and paranoia spin through a story that involves arms dealers, federal agents, armored urban vehicles and is, in the end, absurdly and hilariously about pants. The fact that the book references both the Festo AirPenguin and the Ekranoplane is just one measure of Gibson’s absurdist take on modern life.