“All plots tend to move deathward,” the narrator of “White Noise” says. “This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.”

A new Don DeLillo novel is an occasion, and Michiko Kakutani celebrates Zero K as  “a kind of bookend to White Noise.” Like many of DeLillo’s earlier books, the new novel catches death, technology, and power in a futuristic prism both shocking and familiar.