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Some recent Zero History tweets by William Gibson

• https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/21071771903

  RT @lighthed @GreatDismal Bigend's preferred method of travel? http://bit.ly/b1jS2M [HB is moving on to an Ekranoplan. Early September.]

  Fri Aug 13 15:14:03 +0000 2010

• https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/21010989672

  RT @jaypea_aitken: @GreatDismal when can I get my paws on Zero History in the UK? [Sept 7]

  Thu Aug 12 22:30:43 +0000 2010

• 
  https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/20943831373

  RT @MatiasBuselli: @GreatDismal is the UK edition of Zero History different from the US, besides the cover? [Not that I know of.]

  Thu Aug 12 03:46:21 +0000 2010

• https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/21010989672

  @paparatti Used to be about a year, til paperback? Actually, I don't know when, for Zero History.

  Wed Aug 11 18:21:14 +0000 2010

Hat tip to Node Magazine:

YouTube video trailer for Zero History:

Prepare for ZERO HISTORY by William Gibson

"Someone is developing what may prove to be a somewhat new way to transmit brand vision."
"A certain genuinely provocative use of negative space.

"Who?"

"I don't kno," he said. "I haven't been able to find out.I feel that someone has read and understood my playbook. And may possibly be extending it.

"Then send Pamela. She understands all that. Or someone else."

"But that is exactly it. Because they 'understand all that' they won't find the edge. they won't find the new. And worse, they'll trample on it, inadvertently crush it, beneath a certain mediocrity inherent in professional competence."
"I need a wild card. I need you."
"Does 'The Gabriel Hounds' mean anything to you?"

William Gibson's now infrequently updated blog (now that the is a heavy user of Twitter) gives some tantalising plot and location hints about the forthcoming novel ZeroHistory

Monday, May 31, 2010

BOOK EXPO AMERICA LUNCHEON TALKBOOK EXPO AMERICA LUNCHEON TALK

posted 4:57 PM

[...]

Zero History, my ninth novel, will be published this September, rounding out that third set of three books. It's set in London and Paris, last year, in the wake of global financial collapse.

Some of the fragments of text previously published on the blog are set on the cost of South Carolina, where William Gibson grew up in his youth.

See the official William Gibson Books discussion board thread Fragments of a Hologram Bill

I wish that I could tell you what it's about, but I haven't yet discovered my best likely story, about that. That will come with reviews, audience and bookseller feedback (and booksellers are especially helpful, in that way). Along with however many interviews, these things will serve as a sort of oracle, suggesting to me what it is I've been doing for the past couple of years.

If Pattern Recognition was about the immediate psychic aftermath of 9-11, and Spook Country about the deep end of the Bush administration and the invasion of Iraq, I could say that Zero History is about the global financial crisis as some sort of nodal event, but that must be true of any 2010 novel with ambitions on the 2010 zeitgeist. But all three of these novels are also about that dawning recognition that the future, be it capital-T Tomorrow or just tomorrow, Friday, just means more stuff, however peculiar and unexpected. A new quotidian. Somebody's future, somebody else's past.

Simply in terms of ingredients, it's about recent trends in the evolution of the psychology of luxury goods, crooked former Special Forces officers, corrupt military contractors, the wonderfully bizarre symbiotic relationship between designers of high-end snowboarding gear and manufacturers of military clothing, and the increasingly virtual nature of the global market.

I called it Zero History because one of the characters has had a missing decade, during which he paid no taxes and had no credit cards. He meets a federal agent, who tells him that that combination indicates to her that he hasn't been up to much good, the past ten years. But that quotidian now finds him. Events find him, and he starts to acquire a history. And, one assumes, a credit rating, and the need to pay taxes.
>

At a guess, that character is likely to be Milgrim, who features in Spook Country and also in three of the blog published text fragments: "The Gabriel Hounds", "Fifteen" and "Maquette, which are likely chapter titles in Zero History.

It's also the first book I've written in which anyone gets engaged to be married.

[...]

Another hint via Twitter, about the forthcoming new novel Zero History by William Gibson, due to be published this 7th September 2010,

https://twitter.com/GreatDismal/status/12384009603

RT @theautumnal: Would you say that "Zero History" is more like "Pattern Recognition" or "Spook Country"? [Triangulation?]

Sun Apr 18 06:17:06 +0000 2010

Rather than the geometrical or surveying definition of Triangulation, the Social Sciences or , more particularly the Political use of the word is probably the meaning what William Gibson is conveying i.e. the middle ground between the two previous books in the trilogy.

Does this observation also hold true for third novel in each of his previous trilogies ?

Sprawl trilogy:

1. Neuromancer (1984)
2. Count Zero (1986)
3. Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)

Bridge trilogy:

1. Virtual Light (1993)
2. Idoru (1996)
3. All Tomorrow's Parties (1999)

Bigend trilogy:

1. Pattern Recognition (2003)
2. Spook Country (2007)
3. Zero History (2010)

A small plot hint via William Gibson's blog, where he has been answering questions from some William Gibson Board fans, which mentions a central London location in Zero History, which also featured in Pattern recognition and in Spook Country:

William Gibson blog - Thursday, April 08, 2010 - 8.27 AM

From Bictaker:
Q In Pattern Recognition, Cayce visits Neal's Yard, which seemingly fits her character profile and compliments the storyline for me, as I find it a wonderful little corner of our metropolis. But, why Neal's Yard? Did you pick it at random - a pin in the map, had a previous chance visit created an impression, or was it recommended to you as an appropriately bohemian locale for the leading lady to frequent.

A If you know the 60s history, it's a Disneylanded bohemia. Very amiably Disneylanded, but still. But I think I sent her there because I'd seen a sign, a few years earlier, announcing a Pilates studio. Oddly, Neals Yard (some people insist on spelling it that way) is also glimpsed, literally on the run, in Zero History. My first British publisher was Victor Gollancz, on the other side of Covent Garden, so I have fond memories of Seven Dials when it was still somewhat seedy. Paul Smith had set up in Floral Street but there was still a certain sub-Soho grit.

[...]

"Neal's Yard" or "Neals Yard" ?

The missing apostrophe in Neals Yard is not due to the road sign erected by the Local Council's highways department perhaps it is the influence of mobile phone SMS text messaging abbreviations.

However, there is a growing trend in the United Kingdom, whereby illiterate local council bureaucratic jobsworths decide to drop the apostrophe and other punctuation in street signs and on maps. This also affects many place names named after Saints, e.g. The Daily Telegraph newspaper illustrates this point in an article with photos of

S^T_.. PAUL'S SQUARE

which has mutated into

ST PAULS SQUARE

in the centre of the city of Birmingham.

St. Paul's Square in Birmingham with and without the apostrophe Photo: PA via the Daily Telegraph - Apostrophes abolished by council

Note also the abbreviation of "Saint" simply to "ST" rather than to "ST." or the more complicated abbreviation illustrated above.

Inevitably, being Britain, there is an Apostrophe Protection Society which opposes this trend.

If you look at these Google Street View images>, you can see that the old street signs at the Monmouth Street entrance to Neal's Yard

and at the Short's Gardens entrance (note another apostrophe)

both still display the apostrophe in Neal's Yard, as do all of the shops and shopping arcades nearby.

Running through or past Neal's Yard CCTV

Anybody running through or past Neal's Yard, as hinted at in the William Gibson blog post above, might be picked up on the Closed Circuit TeleVision (CCTV) surveillance cameras which cover both of these entrances.

There are further CCTV cameras within Neal''s Yard proper, which appear to be connected via infra red laser data links to the Thomas Neal shopping arcade on the other side of Short's Gardens.

See London CyberPunk Tourist Guide - Covent Garden - Neal's Yard

There is also a Blue Plaque dedicated to Monty Python, where the famous eccentric British comedy series / industry began its initial recordings:

The Short's Gardens entrance to Neal's Yard has a water clock sculpture. One shop to west, is the Neal's Yard Dairy Cheese Shop, which harks back to the original use of the premises.

This shop produces an overwhelming taste and smell sensation, with real "live" cheeses such as Cheddar and Stilton etc.. and is one of cyberpunk fiction author William Gibson's favourite shops in this area :

Friday, August 31, 2007

A SOVEREIGN FOR SOUL-DELAY
posted 5:03 AM

Yesterday morning I walked around the corner to Neils Yard Dairy and bought myself 200g. of the Montgomery's unpasteurized cheddar.

Asked for it by name. The clerk, in a proper cheeseman's cap, wrapped my interestingly discoloured wedge in that special white paper they use, glossy on the inside, folding it that way I can never quite master.

Now it's 5:23AM PST, back in Vancouver, and the Montgomery's cheddar really *is* a sovereign medicine for jet lag. And that is the reason it costs almost as much as heroin, in America.

Interestingly, now (20th August 2009), the offices above this Neil's Yard Dairy are being advertised as "Trendy Offices to Let"