Bobby Newmark is one of the main characters in the

William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...

novel ''

Count Zero ''Count Zero'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, originally published in 1986. It is the second volume of the Sprawl trilogy, which begins with ''Neuromancer'' and concludes with ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'', and is ...

''. His

handle A handle is a part of, or attachment to, an object that allows it to be grasped and manipulated by hand. The design of each type of handle involves substantial ergonomic issues, even where these are dealt with intuitively or by following tra ...

in the Matrix is "Count Zero", from which the novel derives its name. Newmark is one of several Gibson characters who live through information.

Fictional character biography

At the beginning of ''Count Zero'', Bobby Newmark lives in his mother's condominium in Barrytown, New Jersey. Bobby is a hotdogger, a neophyte

hacker A hacker is a person skilled in information technology who uses their technical knowledge to achieve a goal or overcome an obstacle, within a computerized system by non-standard means. Though the term ''hacker'' has become associated in popu ...

with aspirations of becoming a big-time cowboy in the worldwide cyberspace construct, the Matrix. He acquires an

ICE Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...

breaker, software designed to defeat security systems, from a friend, unaware that it is actually a stolen experimental corporate model and that he is its unwitting test dummy. His test run ends in disaster, nearly costing him his life ("pulling a wilson", in hotdogger slang). At the last moment Bobby is rescued by the apparition of a girl, which releases him from the grasp of the ICE destroying his nervous system. This episode leads Bobby to leave home. Seeking the friend who lent him the software, Bobby becomes acquainted with Beauvoir and Lucas, two Matrix cowboys who learned of his salvation at the hands of the mysterious girl, whom they refer to as the Virgin. Lucas takes Bobby to the Sprawl, where he becomes entangled in a dispute between his new chaperons and the massive

zaibatsu is a Japanese language, Japanese term referring to industrial and financial vertical integration, vertically integrated business conglomerate (company), conglomerates in the Empire of Japan, whose influence and size allowed control over signi ...

, Hosaka. With Bobby's help, the situation is eventually defused, and he is introduced to Angela Mitchell, the girl being sought after by Hosaka, and the mysterious Virgin who saved Bobby's life. Until this point, Angela has been in the care of the mercenary Turner, the protagonist of one of the book's other concurrent storylines. The two eventually become lovers. In the third Sprawl novel, ''

Mona Lisa Overdrive ''Mona Lisa Overdrive'' is a science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson, published in 1988. It is the final novel of the cyberpunk Sprawl trilogy, following ''Neuromancer'' and ''Count Zero'', taking place eight years after ...

'', Bobby, now eight years older, plays a less central role: he is comatose and jacked into a large gray box called an aleph, which is actually an unfathomably massive data storage device which contains a virtual reality approximation of the entire world. It is here that Bobby now makes his home. Throughout the book, it is shown that Bobby and Angela have been separated for an extended period because Bobby had mysteriously disappeared. At the end of the book, they are reunited, and Angela joins Bobby inside the aleph.

Literary analysis

Bobby Newmark has been described as one of the "most fully developed of Gibson's characters".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Newmark, Bobby Sprawl trilogy William Gibson characters Literary characters introduced in 1986 Characters in American novels of the 20th century