| Count Zero | |
| Author: | William Gibson |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Series: | Sprawl trilogy |
| Genre: | Science fiction, cyberpunk |
| Publisher: | Victor Gollancz Ltd |
| Release Date: | 1986 |
| Media Type: | Print (hardback and paperback) |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Isbn: | 0-575-03696-6 |
| Isbn Note: | (first edition) |
| Preceded By: | Neuromancer |
| Followed By: | Mona Lisa Overdrive |
Count Zero is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It presents a near future whose technologies include a network of supercomputers that created a "matrix" in "cyberspace", an accessible, virtual, three-dimensionally active "inner space", which, for Gibson—writing these decades earlier—was seen as being dominated by violent competition between small numbers of very rich individuals and multinational corporations. The novel is composed of a trio of plot lines that ultimately converge.
Count Zero is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which began with Neuromancer and concludes with Mona Lisa Overdrive. It was serialized in the January through March 1986 monthly issues of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine; the January cover was devoted to the story, with art by Hisaki Yasuda. According to Gibson, the magazine version was edited with his permission to allow access to youth audiences in the United States.
While Gibson did not not introduce the concept or coin the term "cyberpunk", a subgenre of science fiction (nor to particularly associate himself with it), he is considered to have first envisioned and described the concept of "cyberspace". The novel, Count Zero, is nonetheless regarded as an early example of the cyberpunk subgenre.