True Names... and Other Dangers

by Vernor Vinge

Contents:
Bookworm, Run! (1966)
True Names (1981)
The Peddler's Apprentice (1975) with Joan D. Vinge
The Ungoverned (1985)
Long Shot (1972)
Marooned in Realtime (excerpt) (1987)

Genres: Science Fiction, Cyberpunk, Fiction, Short Stories, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction, Classics

275 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 1981

About the author

Vernor Steffen Vinge was a San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels A Fire Upon The Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999) and Rainbows End (2006), his Hugo Award-winning novellas Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002) and The Cookie Monster (2004), as well as for his 1993 essay "The Coming Technological Singularity", in which he argues that exponential growth in technology will reach a point beyond which we cannot even speculate about the consequences.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/vernor...

Reviews

[Jason Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this obscure 1981 novella by the insider-loved science-fiction author Vernor Vinge because of recently learning that it's demonstrably the very first story to define the trope we now know as "cyberspace," and that the authors who eventually created the "cyberpunk" genre in the late '80s and early '90s (William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Neal Stephenson, etc) were all passionate fans of this book and basically used it as a starting place for their own stories. And after reading it, I can attest that all this is very much true, and that you can see the seeds of all the cyberpunk novels that came after fully formed here in this one -- the internet as a 3D virtual reality space, connecting to it via biomech headgear that taps directly into your neurons, within a physical US that has become an endless sprawl of crappy exurban spaces hooking together all the major cities, which has led some people to enjoy the virtual version so much that they're happy to let their physical bodies entropy into immovable objects, and where the most talented hackers of this system achieve virtual godlike powers and battle entities that may or may not be self-sentient AI programs run amok.

But there's something really interesting going on here from a historical perspective too, which you can directly compare to another transitional period in literary history -- namely, the years in the early 1800s when the Enlightenment was falling out of favor as the main cultural force in the arts, and Romanticism was just beginning its ascendency. For those who don't know, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein just three years after Jane Austen published Emma, 1818 versus 1815; and while both are great novels, one is definitely the last gasp of the previous age, while the other is the explosive beginning of the next. And so too was True Names published in 1981, while just three years later Gibson published his debut novel Neuromancer, with both of them sharing many details but hugely different in tone and spirit; for in what was perhaps the most interesting thing of all about reading this, Vinge's story is very much steeped in the murky countercultural mores of such '70s authors as Philip K. Dick and Roger Zelazny, with his hacker protagonist being a frazzled ex-hippie living in the woods of northern California, the means to connect online relying more on EEG manipulation aided by meditation than computer graphics zapped straight into one's neural cortex, the virtual world he inhabits being a pretty faithful reproduction of a backwoods castle from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-Earth (and with the hackers calling themselves "warlocks" instead of cyberpunk's "cowboys"), and the cabal of troublemakers he belongs to (who refer to themselves as a "coven") having much more the playful, chaotic spirit of old '60s phone phreakers and merry pranksters, there mostly to have fun and to gently Stick It To The Man, and all of them shocked and disconcerted when one of the people in their circle decides that it's time for them to seize some real power since, after all, the world's banks and military arsenals are on the same information web that they are.

Gibson, Stephenson, et al take this jockeying for power and control as an act-one given in their novels, their own protagonists being skittish rail-thin speed addicts living in the grimy back corners of rainy London or a neon-lit New York, their virtual reality not a fairyland of castles and elves but the sleek black glass of a Brutalist fever-dream. So even though True Names undeniably lays the groundwork for the cyberpunk novels that came immediately after, it's not even close to being a book you could categorize in the same genre, instead being more of a bridge that helped science-fiction move from the hippie weirdness of the '70s to the slick grittiness of the '80s, exactly like how Joy Division, the Cure and the Smiths were doing so in the world of music in these exact same years. That's why it's not getting a full five stars from me today, because you can't rightly call it a "lost cyberpunk classic," and it simply can't stand as an equal in quality to those now beloved titles; but if you're an aging cyberpunk fan like me, or simply someone who enjoys doing a deep and wide look at the genre's entire history, certainly this is a must-read anyway, fascinating from a historical perspective even if the story itself contains flaws that were then corrected by the books right after it. It comes with a limited recommendation in this spirit.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of short stories by sci-fi master Vernor Vinge, of which the eponymous True Names is the most influential having earned a Prometheus Hall of Fame award in 2007. It predates the classic cyberpunk novel Neuromancer by three years. I would absolutely recommend this fantastic story about virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and the power of names. Interestinging, Vinge says he owed the concept of "true names" to the excellent A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin. Amazing.

Fino Reviews of Joan and Vernor Vinge Books:
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
: Fino Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Negativni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Roman True Names se smatra začetnikom cyberpunk žanra. Vinge je ovaj roman napisao 1981., tri godine prije kultnog Neuromancera Williama Gibsona i dvije godine prije kratke priče Cyberpunk Bruca Bethkea gdje se izraz prvi put i pojavljuje.

Radnja je smještena u svijet nama bliske budućnosti gdje mnoge državne i financijske poslove obavljaju samostalna računala. FBI otkriva glavnog lika, "kompjuterskog čarobnjaka" koji radi sitne prekršaje u virtualnoj stvarnosti i regrutiraju ga da im pomogne u otkrivanju hakera koji je neprimjetno promjenio mnoge kritične postavke državnog sustava i skoro ga stavio pod svoju kontrolu.

Unatoč temi i godini izdavanja roman i nije toliko zastario. Vinge je dobro prikazao opasnosti prevelike automatizacije bilo kojeg sustava. Mudro je izbjegavao većinu računalne terminologije pa je priča razumljiva i onima koji nisu programeri, što je prava rijetkost u cyberpunk žanru. On koristi poznate simbole da bi objasnio komplicirane koncepte, na primjer kada glavni lik dolazi u siguran dio virtualnog svijeta gdje je njegova ekipa, taj dio je prikazan kao dvorac, a na ulazu je čuvar koji traži lozinku da bi spustio most. Neuroznanstvenik Marvin Minsky je u zanimljivom pogovoru napisao da i naš mozak na sličan način obrađuje informacije i stvara sliku o svijetu. Dotaknuo se i identiteta, svijesti, umjetne inteligencije...

Uglavnom, kratak roman koji je zabavan i brzo se čita, a ipak nije plitak.

[Alfaniel Aldavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experimental SHAMS review

SHAMS stands for Steve Hotopp Assisted Manuscription System™. SHAMS is hereby in testing stage. Steve, any system needs testing. Lets see the results.

SHAMS Review of True Names

I’m so nostalgic and nervous over this one. Vinge’s True Names is chock full of fantasy representations of cyberspace, MMORPG precursor imagery, shady games in anonymity that combine for an impressive and thought-provoking reading experience. The main character, Mr. Slippery, is a successful writer of participatory literature in the real world and a warlock in the virtual world, very skilled in manipulation of real-world data through the interfaces of the cyberspace. He is not that skilled in keeping a low profile in the real world, though.

I won’t divulge much of the plot, but I will say that the technological singularity is treated in a unique way for its time. The provocation, since Turing, has been to create an intelligence able to respond in real time like a human, to be completely not distinguishable from one. But if we get there, to the sentience of a different type of intelligence, what will be next for humanity is essentially unpredictable. The bigger point, it seems to me, is that there are elements we can predict before we get there: cyber-technology eventually precludes pseudonymity and anonymity, as it precludes any control over it by any governamental, NSAish and the like, agencies.

The book was a non-standard science-fiction fare when it was published. Vinge wrote a powerful narrative to illustrate the concept of virtual reality and what will be known afterwards as cyberspace. It was an effective marriage between fantastical science fiction and the ethical questions of technology advances.

All in all it was a convincing perspective about a disputable thesis, one you have to try on your own to know where you stand. I was enchanted by the classic cyberpunk feel, and knocked-down by the thought-provoking vision of the ultimate demise of a virtual experience as virtual, when the virtuality takes over reality.

5.9 stars rounded to 5.

(The actual review may come later.)

I think this is a successful experiment... One question, though: is this my review or Steve's?

For all original content authored by me, the following license is applied:

This work by Alfaniel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

[Susanna Neri · Rating 3 out of 5]

se consideriamo l'anno di pubblicazione è un romanzo pieno di buone idee, risulta oggi ingenuo e in alcuni punti datato, ma qualcosa lo ritroviamo in opere più recenti. Bella l'ambientazione fantasy della rete, forse il primo autore ad aver immaginato il mix

[Thom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally published as a novella in 1981, this version of True Names contains illustrations by Bob Walters and an afterword by Marvin Minsky. I read this back in 1984, and really enjoyed re-reading it on a plane flight across the country. Recommended!

While some of the tech is a little dated, Vinge keeps it mostly in the background. At one point, the protagonist utilizes other computers to increase his "power" online, and this is not so different from networked computers participating in a DDOS attack today. For a story written in 1981, the author was remarkably prescient.

Other aspects of the plot are also well done, and I found the female protagonist (Erythrina) well written. Using fantasy metaphors for the imagined "cyberspace" works well. The conclusion provides a satisfying and believable resolution to the story.

This novella was republished a few years after that in a collection titled True Names... and Other Dangers, which I need to read next. I plan to hand this publication to a friend who absolutely hated Neuromancer, in an attempt to show that not all cyberspace is bad.

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Vinge, even if A Fire Upon the Deep is still waiting to be read as well. 'True Names and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier' is a re-release of Vinge's same-titled novella, caught between introductions, essays, and an afterword.

The introduction of this edition is by Hari Kunzru, whom I've never heard of, to be honest. He gives a bit of background on the novella and the period in which is was written. Editor James Frenkel reminisces about his time as Vinge's editor at Tor Books and of course about the novella, obviously. Then comes Vinge's own introduction. He tells about how the novella came to be, what influenced him, what it's about, and so on. The afterword is by Marvin Minsky, another unknown name to me. Neatly put after the novella itself, he uses the events as basis for his view on the matter, on how the future might (have) look(ed).

The essays are by various experts in the field of information technology. The themes range from cryptography, encryption, big data (sort of), artificial intelligence, security software, ... In other words, lots of programming, to use one general term. Not every essay is as accessible as the other, of course. One must, in my opinion, have some knowledge on (or be interested in) the matter (or computers in general) to follow along. Yes, the explanations and visions may be dated, but you have to keep in mind that these essays were written in the early to mid 1990s. A lot has happened, a lot has changed since then. Especially with regards to the internet and how we utilise it. That said, it is interesting to read these guys experiences and insights of that period.

The novella itself then. It's a good 80 pages long and is about a hacking community, with mainly one guy (Mr Slippery aka Roger Pollack) having been tracked down. Gone privacy, indeed. The Feds want a huge favour from him: Considering his skills, he's the perfect man for the job, i.e. tracking down a certain Mailman, who seems to take control over the various networks. The Feds apparently don't have the means or people to catch him, hence appealing to "the dark side". Both Roger and the Feds (lead by one Virginia) are in a luxury position: Roger is the only one capable enough, but Virginia can keep his ass out of prison, since he's broken several laws so far as a hacker.

And so, they reach an agreement (under strict conditions) and Roger sets to work. His computer equipment is first quality, allows him to go farther than any regular computer user. He meets up with his friends, a sort of coven, in a virtual world. Based on the descriptions, it reminded me of Second Life, in a way. Each having his/her avatar, codes to access locations (with different rooms), and so on. If I'm not mistaken, hackers used some kind of electrodes to go into the world and "live" there.

As Mr Slippery (Roger) executes his task, which is for the sake of all humanity, else the world will go down, Mr Vinge describes what's going on. The story is fairly accessible, but of course you get your obligatory technical vocabulary. I have to admit that some elements went over my head, but not in a way that I couldn't follow the story. As you can imagine, all's well that ends well, but Roger still isn't a free man afterwards. And the Mailman? A programma invented by the Feds back in the day, set up to run its own course, to develop on its own. Goal: Secure the system, no matter what. Someone had let a copy of the programme loose. It was actually doing it job, but was destroyed by Roger and co., because the Feds couldn't (or didn't know how to) clean up their own mess.

As the end (of the story) came near, you start to realise (or you don't) how important computers have become in our lives, in society, everywhere. Airports, railway-stations, radio, traffic, hospitals, schools, power supply (throughout the country), communication, companies, space, ... And how you don't have any privacy any more.

Long story short: An interesting and entertaining story about computers, about networks, about encryption and trying to stay under the radar (privacy, not revealing your real name, ...). The essays were a nice bonus, offering background on the elements used in the novella.

[Gavin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Clunky, but only because it was foreseeing two different cultural shifts (black hat hacking and AI safety) decades ahead. Still a relatively good portrayal of AGI risk, how terrible it could be even if it was slower than us! But only because the competition is so bad.

The ending bases the entire future on the whims of one human, in one super em who wil subvert all other authorities. This is viewed as regrettable but better than the alternative, which is for the grey state bureaucracies to keep things just barely ok forever.

There's a limit to how bad Vinge can be - even when he's distracted by his enormous ideas (which need a postscript by Marvin Minsky to drag out fully) and the complete absence of our vocabulary, it's fine.

[Eva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before Neuromancer and Snow Crash, there was Vinge's "True Names", written in 1981. Hackers meet in cyberspace, a virtual representation of "data space" they call the "Other Plane". Metaphors and symbols of magic are applied to this world - they are warlocks and wizards, they cast spells - modern-day sorcery in a completely networked world. There are battles in cyberspace, amassing computation power that goes to your head and makes you Gods, encryption schemes to trick those who control you because they know your true name, there's the NSA, conflicts over good and bad and governing authorities, a dormant yet evolving AI, even upload of consciousness. There's a lot in there (and it's a rather slim book) - ideas that Vinge doesn't nearly get enough credit for. I am glad I got here, finally.

[Peter Garrett · Rating 2 out of 5]

The cyberpunk subgenre of science fiction was rooted in the work of New Wave SF authors such as Philip K Dick, Roger Zelazny and JG Ballard. Its themes began to emerge in the late 1970s in SF comics such as Judge Dredd, and crystallized around the 1982 Riddley Scott movie Blade Runner, the Japanese manga series Akira, and, in particular, William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer (1984).

Gibson consolidated four elements that came to define the subgenre: technology (especially the internet, cybernetics and artificial intelligence), society (a dystopic near-future extension of neo-liberalism), an unending desolate urban landscape, and a hard-bitten noir style, building on authors such as Raymond Chandler and William Burroughs and the gonzo journalism of Hunter S Thompson.

The most striking aspect of Neuromancer was its prediction of the internet, which didn’t exist when the novel was published. Gibson, who knew very little about computers, called it cyberspace. Placed in the novel’s dystopic social and urban milieu and described in Gibson’s attenuated language, the invention provides a disturbing and powerful fictional presence.

Neuromancer wasn’t the first novel, though, to predict the internet. Versions were also described in The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner (1975), and in Vernon Vinge’s 1982 novella True Names.

Despite its billing, though, True Names isn’t genuinely a work of cyberpunk. Only one of the four core themes is addressed in detail: Vinge’s cyberspace, known as The Other Plane, is reached through EEG readings and a little bit of transcendental meditation. Full of magical tropes (castles, dungeons, warlocks and spells), its atmosphere is evoked in a detailed and reasonably convincing manner.

Vinge touches on two more of cyberpunk’s core themes. State security is pitted against subversive hackers, who, in a clever extension of the use of magical tropes, must keep their True Names secret for fear of being identified and penalised in the real world. The natty teenage security agents who appear late in the book, slightly reminiscent of the John Travolta character in Pulp Fiction, are also a nice touch. There’s little, though, to transmit the feeling of menace that comes across in Neuromancer and, indeed, in earlier works such as Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the inspiration for Blade Runner).

In addition, a short descriptive passage about the urban landscape in Providence is slightly suggestive of scenes in Blade Runner. It’s said that Vinge was unable to sit through the movie because it reminded him so clearly of the landscape he had been attempting to realise in the novella. If so, it’s a pity that he didn’t make more effort to bring it to life.

The element that is completely lacking, however, is style. In Neuromancer, Gibson captures the reader immediately with an iconic first sentence:

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel."

(It’s ironic that the image he intended to convey, the black-and-white static of an untuned cathode ray tube, would not have existed in the post-modern world intended to evoke, but the power of the language is still undeniable).

Gibson then continues in a noir style with short sentences that disdain nouns and even pronouns as subjects. The effect, if this was a first person narrative, would be something like a hastily scribbled diary; but, in the context of a third person account, the attenuated writing works to draw the reader into the perceptual framework of the protagonist, Case, so as to appreciate his experiences as if they were first hand.

(In some of Gibson’s later work – such as The Peripheral, published in 2014 - the technique becomes so attenuated as to become little more than an irritating and confusing mannerism).

In True Names, Vinge achieves nothing like this. The narrative style, detached third person, is flat. The tricks considered an essential part of modern creative fiction are largely absent; the narrative point of view sometimes wanders from the protagonist, Mr Slippery, to other characters (in particular, Erythrina), and there are large blocks of expostulatory dialogue unbroken by stage direction, so the reader finds it difficult to picture the speaker during these bouts of mansplaining. The objective, authorial account of Mr Slippery’s experiences is a hindrance to empathy. His motivations and responses lack complexity, and we never really get to know him as an individual person.

The same goes for the other characters: despite their obvious physical differences, whether they’re human or mechanical or, on The Other Plane, representations of people, robots, or fax machines, they’re all pretty much indistinguishable. The individual described in the most detail, Erythrina, lacks depth; the revelation of the contrast between her virtual and real physical habitus seems banal rather than shocking, and the associated explanation for her brief uncharacteristic hiatus during an action scene, apparently a key moment in the plot, turns out to be an anticlimax. The only character who strikes the reader as interesting is the tough-tender cop Virginia. A few nice touches hint at more depth to her character that we would like to hear more about, but, frustratingly, this isn’t explored.

True Names certainly deserves credit as a predictor of the internet. It isn’t, however, either a fully rounded work of fiction or a genuine example of the cyberpunk subgenre.

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is something reminiscent of Asimov in the twists to many of these stories and something reminiscent of Arthur C. Clarke in the way Vinge pushes at how technology might drive a very radical change in what is human.

"Bookworm, Run!" - This 1966 story is the first one Vinge wrote that he ever was able to sell--he was still in high school at the time. I really liked his chimpanzee protagonist. Four Stars

"True Names" - I own The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge and there's a lot of overlap. In fact, four of the five stories in this collection can be found there. The exception is "True Names," a novella that runs for nearly a hundred pages. It says a lot about that story, that I'm not willing to discard this book and lose that story. It's a story that imaginatively blends fantasy and science-fiction tropes. In a virtual reality "warlocks" manipulate cyberspace through a fantasy realm interface. Five Stars

"The Peddler's Apprentice" -- Written with his (then) wife Joan Vinge, this is an imaginative time-traveler story with a take I haven't seen elsewhere. Three Stars

"The Ungoverned" - This is a cult classic among libertarians and had even been pointed to me as an argument for anarcho-capitalism. Color me skeptical it would change any minds, but it certainly is memorable and thought-provoking. Five Stars

"Long Shot" - About the odyssey of a space probe, this has a fantastic premise and is among Vinge's best stories--one of the most likely to be found in anthologies or mentioned in lists of best science fiction shorts. Five Stars

[Brad · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick read, and a little dated--but hey, the book is as old as I am--but very interesting to see Vinge's ideas of the potential future of tech back in the 80's. A lot of the concepts here have been used by other authors since this was written and have been well-updated. That being said, I enjoyed this novella (short story?) and its discussion of AI and augmented human capabilities.

Rating: PG

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of these stories EXCEPT the title story are included in his COLLECTED STORIES, which I am currently re-reading (Jan 2023). I'll have to dig out a copy of "True Names" for a separate reread. I think I have a copy around: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.c...

[Jesus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good EARLY (1980) novella about hacking, virtual spaces and artificial intelligence. With a notable afterword by Marvin Minsky, which is a good introduction to his ideas about AI, thinking and Society of Mind.

[Kam Yung Soh · Rating 4 out of 5]

"True Names" is Vernor Vinge's fascinating story that is one of the first to present the concept of a cyberspace and is generally considered one of the first stories in what would become the genre of cyberpunk.

In the story, True Names refer to the actual names of persons who have personas in what Vinge calls the "Other Plane". In the Other Plane, those which hacking skills are the 'Warlocks' and they dominate the Other Plane with what is essentially 'magic' since their hacking skills is akin to casting magical spells on regions in that world (which represents hacking computer systems around the world and in space). Of course, the Warlocks would protect their True Names, as once they are known, they can be forced to do the others bidding so as not suffer a True Death (killed).

The story starts with the True Name of Mr Slippery in the Other Plane being discovered by the government. But the government is more concerned with another person known as the Mailman, who has apparently hacked government and possibly military systems without being detected, and they need his help to discover who is the Mailman.

As the story proceeds, Mr Slippery and another hacker discover that the Mailman might not be another human, and may be about to launch a cyber-driven attack on the world. To stop him, they have to grab control of the resources of the US government systems. But even then, the Mailman is a powerful adversary, and they may not be able to stop him while the Mailman is also trying to stop them by sending them to their True Deaths. Worldwide pandemonium in computer systems ensue. In the end, the real identify of the Mailman is discovered, but the world may never be the same.

The story is fascinating for its portrayal of the Other World, where a virtual world is visualized much like a fantasy land. But the landscape is actually a representation of computer systems from around the world: ponds represent data storage, castles represent defended computer systems, and fantasy creatures are the systems that guard the entries to the system. The warlocks themselves are master hackers, able to break into systems, and the battle with the Mailman is the act of controlling and gathering computer resources to dominate and deny them to your opponent.

The book starts with a series of essays on the influence of the story on various people and computer systems at the time. Some essays examine the issue of computer security and the tension between free speech and privacy, and the US government's desire to gather more information on people. Others look at attempts to produce a cyberworld using networked computer systems. The essays, written in the 1990s, are an interesting look at the time when microcomputers and computer networks are just starting to have an influence on society.

[Prasanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was inspired to read this after reading Finn Brunton's Digital Cash and how it inspired the early Crypto-anarchists, eventually leading to the creation of bitcoin and the vision for anonymous identities. Some of the names seem archaic now but given that this was written in 1981, about 38 years from when I'm reading, I think it holds up pretty well.

The story follows a group of early adopters of a new full-immersion virtual reality technology called the "Other Plane" -- they call themselves "warlocks" in the story. They resemble the curious hacker stereotypes that penetrate computer systems around the world for personal profit or curiosity. They call their cabal, a "coven", and must keep their true identities -- their "True Names" -- secret even to each other and especially the "Great Adversary", the US Government. Those who know a warlock's true name can force him or her to work on their behalf or cause a "True Death" by killing the warlock in real life.

The protagonist is a warlock known as "Mr. Slippery" in the Other Plane. The government learns Mr. Slippery's True Name and forces him to investigate the Mailman, a mysterious new warlock which it suspects of conducting a large-scale subversion of databases and networks. The Mailman has been recruiting others, such as the warlock DON.MAC, by promising great power in the real world, and claims to be responsible for a recent revolution in Venezuela. Because he never appears in the Other Plane, preferring non real-time communication, Mr. Slippery and fellow warlock Erythrina begin to suspect that the Mailman may be an extraterrestrial invader, subverting global databases to gradually conquer the Earth while causing True Deaths of the warlocks he recruits.

Turns out that Mailman was a NSA AI that was left running and grew in power over time. It hid its inability to emulate true human interaction by responding slowly to communications, i.e., non-realtime. Over time Erythrina and Mr. Slippery manage to contain Mailman and certain attributes of Erythrina are imbued to Mailman to stabilize it. The author hints at some beginning of global order because of this and that some part of Erythrina will live even after she's dead.

This is an interesting book not just in its foresight in a lot of things that have happened with technology, Virtual reality, but also the value of privacy and anonymity and how losing that in certain lines of work can mean true death.

[Crowfood · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of some of Vernor Vinge's short stories, with a forward for each story where the author describes what his goals were. Pretty good! I prefer some of his long form classics ( A Fire Upon the Deep, A Deepness in the Sky) but most of these were interesting enough.

I liked how the author was always extrapolating how science and computers might advance in the future, and many of his predictions have since proved to be correct.

The titular story, wherein future specialist hackers, aka "Warlocks" use their "spells" to show their strength online was probably my favorite of the bunch.

[Jacquet · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting to start reading the novel at page 190. Until then there are a series of articles to introduce the theme a set up the mood. I honestly can't tell if I enjoyed the articles more than the novel. The article on remailers was amazing!
Having been in contact the works such as The Matrix, Strange Days, eXistenZ, Tron, etc, the universe presented by True Names doesn't have the wow effect it must have had in 1981. Overall the novel is enjoyable.
I might read another novel by Vernor Vinge. But right now my next cyberspace book is Neuromancer.

[Pete · Rating 4 out of 5]

True Names (1981) by Vernor Vinge is a very early work that depicts cyberspace. It's an excellent novella that was visionary. Before Neuromancer and all the other cyberpunk fiction this was first. The story is also impressively good as well. The characters are good enough for their purpose and the writing is decent. I'd been meaning to read it for years and it lived up to high expectations.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good shorts in here. I have to give it five stars because the title story, True Names, was so fascinating to a computer geek like me. Thank you, Vernor, for introducing me to the Technological Singularity.

[Ramesh · Rating 5 out of 5]

While noticeably dated, this story is still excellent.

[John]

A great classic. A good follow-up to "Ready Player One"

[Vivs L · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books, early exploration of cyberspace before the whole cyberpunk movement really took hold

[T Worwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 1981, Vinge's vision of the future of technology is again amazingly accurate. the story is short and interesting.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

A visionary proto-Cyberpunk work that fleshed out the concept of cyberspace and influenced crypto anarchism.

Warning: spoiler alert!!

Published more than a decade before the internet started to have an impact on people’s lives, True Names is a truly visionary work that paved the way for the at the time nascent Cyberpunk movement, drawing up the battle lines between technocratic surveillance and individual freedom. Vinge’s work has had a lasting influence on Silicon Valley, not least among the more anarchic advocates of cryptography, cryptocurrency, and dark webs.

True Names traces the action of a group of hackers called warlocks, who busy themselves breaking into government and private computers around the world. All this take place in a virtual reality space called the Other Plane, where revealing one’s identity – one’s ‘true name’ – can lead to arrest or worse. When warlock Mr Slippery has his true name revealed, the government forces him to help track down a notorious warlock who goes by the name of Mailman, responsible for large-scale data breaches and subsuming large chunks of data processing power. A series of battles ensue in both the virtual and real world, bringing down the economy in the process, and from first suspecting that Mailman is of extraterrestrial origin – given its immense power and ability to replicate itself – it is only at the end of the story that Mr Slippery learns that the Mailman is a National Security Agency research project gone rogue.

In True Names Vinge envisions an Orwellian scenario where technology is used by the elites to control the masses, a dystopian trope adopted by the Cyberpunk movement. At the same time, Vinge’s warlocks – hacking into government departments, euphorically sifting through data at amazing speed – became a template for Cyberpunk’s console cowboy. It is this euphoric empowerment of the individual that came to influence the more anarchic elements of Silicon Valley. That Vinge’s Other Plane is clearly inspired by Dungeons and Dragons – fleshing out the idea that only the imagination stands in the way of how how data is visualised in a virtual world – has only added to his popular appeal. So it is perhaps no surprise that about a decade later activist Timothy C. May paid homage to Vinge in his influential Crypto Anarchist Manifesto (1988):

“A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy. Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other.”

In other words, cryptography empowers people and undermines state and corporate control. May’s manifesto introduced the basic principles of crypto-anarchism: encrypted exchanges ensuring anonymity, freedom of speech, and freedom of trade. In today’s world crypto anarchism is very much alive in crypto currency circles, the idea being that a currency generated and anonymously secured by peer-to-peer networked devices outside of the banking system unshackles the individual.

In 1993 Vinge delivered a speech at the Department of Mathematical Sciences, San Diego State University, titled The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human. His opening words were:

“Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

With the Mailman’s powers spiraling out of control, a theme Vinge further developed in Marooned in Realtime (1986), Vinge is generally credited with being the first to develop the concept of the AI-driven singularity. While the dangers of a technological singularity were to become major themes in much Cyberpunk literature as well as in Postmodern space opera, it is also integral to today’s public discourse on AI, as evidenced by Oxford University scholar Nick Bostrom’s hugely influential non-fiction book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (2014).

[Patrick Stuart · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Title story by Vernor Vinge is very good.

An interesting part is the 'ascension' bit at the end where two plugged in humans find ways to recruit more and more processing power and to expand their minds into something more like cybernetic gods.

This is a pretty standard trope of Sci Fi (though partly due to this very story), what I found interesting is that Vinge is usually very good at considering the likely applicability of technology and how it might actually scale and function. When discussing 'Cyberspace' he invents a much more subtle, elegant and perhaps ultimately more workable form than that seen in other fictions. While other cybernauts have their vision and touch interrupted by gear and displays, Vinges interfaces directly with the brain. Not special on its own but the _manner_ of the interface is uniquely described.

Instead of simulating an entire virtual world in full and then porting that info into the brain - think of that as dropping the human sensorium into a sphere of complete but illusory information, Vinges simulation uses the minds own of methods of constructing reality, tickling the architecture which by its very nature acts to construct our world around us, producing something much more like a lucid dream than the harsh actinic glare of a computer screen or the heavy disassociation of 3D goggles.

Since Vinge usually thinks through the possibilities of his technology, I wonder how much thought he has given to this 'expanded mind' of his cyber-protagonists in which their ability to recruit more and more different kinds of very fast high-power processing only seems to expand their own minds, leaving their core personalities essentially intact, or holographically replicated on a massive scale.

To what extent might a hypermind actually be like that? Surely the original meat brain would be running much, much slower than the periphery and perhaps the cognitive load of engaging so totally with a different sensorium might start affecting even base functions like heart rate? Would an expanded person experience a kind of cognitive or moral lag between the core personality base and the high-speed periphery? I think the most likely result is that high-speed elements, once they are sure of having enough of themselves securely uploaded, would naturally 'bud off' from the core meat brain, creating essentially a new form of life with a shared history with the original.

...........

Anyway, the rest of the book is made up of essays and articles collected from a variety of thinkers on 'cyberspace'. This is a curious artefact. This version of True Names was published 20 years ago in 2001 but planning for it began long before then, so most of these essays are from the bleeding edge of the mid-90's.

So the book is really as a whole more of an historical document and much of its interest comes from the multiple perspectives of history. Vinge writing in 1980, those influenced by Vinge writing 10 to 20 years later in the 90s and me reading this in 2023.

There are 40 years between Vinges vision and myself, about as many as between the original and WW2.

These people are a little maddening. I feel like the chronicler of a dark future reading rags of predictions written by clever fools in a more optimistic age. All of them were writing before 911, before the Great War on Terror, before Social Media of any kind, before Liftgate, 4Chan and the Great Awokening. Most of the radical libertarians sound bananas. Yes of course they say, unregulated cryptography will be a massive boost to Terrorism and Paedophilia, but do you want the government reading your mail?

Yes. Speaking from 2023 I am much more worried about the Government not reading the right peoples mail closely enough than I am about them reading mine.

John M. Ford blathers. F. Randall Farmer gives an absolutely fascinating report from the very early online community experiments at Lucasarts. Mark Pesce gives a very good essay which is still probably wrong.

[Glass River]

Vinge established himself as a genre leader with this novella. It was, he geekily recalls, ‘the first story I ever wrote with a word processor – a Heathkit LSI 11/03’. Grand claims have been made for True Names. ‘It inspired a generation of computer scientists’, says Mark Pearce (himself a ‘virtual reality pioneer’), ‘to think about life online in new ways.’ It can also be claimed to have created a new map of cyberspace and was one of the stepping stones to ‘social networking’, ‘hacktivism’, and MMORPG gaming (i.e. ‘Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game’). Vinge’s novel was instrumental in laying down the ‘idea’ substratum of the shape of things technological to come. He had a vision. And a Heathkit (self-assembled) computer to write that vision up.
Vernor Vinge, a man as unusual as his name (which looks as if it came from the science-fiction props cupboard), was, by day, a distinguished mathematician. Science fiction was, for him, a mental lab in which mind games could be played. True Names is set in 2014 and takes as its premise Arthur C. Clarke’s paradox that, at its extremes (its cutting edge), technology is indistinguishable from magic. The computer screen and the crystal ball meet in superhuman unison. It opens:
In the once-upon-a-time days of the First Age of Magic, the prudent sorcerer regarded his own true name as his most valued possession but also the greatest threat to his continued good health, for – the stories go – once an enemy, even a weak unskilled enemy, learned the sorcerer’s true name, then routine and widely known spells could destroy or enslave even the most powerful. As times passed, and we graduated to the Age of Reason and thence to the first and second industrial revolutions, such notions were discredited. Now it seems that the Wheel has turned full circle (even if there never really was a First Age) and we are back to worrying about true names again.
As the narrative continues a ‘coven’ of ‘warlocks’ – effectively anarchist hackers – go to war against the ‘Great Adversary’, the American Government. Their protection (their magic cloak, in Hogwartian terms) lies in their pseudonyms. Revelation of their ‘true names’ would be suicidal. They hide behind such noms de guerre cyber as ‘Mr Slippery’. Warlocks are forever finding ways of slipping the nooses of the all-seeing state.
Enter a third player in the cybergame, ‘The Mailman’, a doughtier foe. He, it emerges, is an AI construct. The warlocks now have two adversaries. One is the government; the other the out-of-control machine they themselves operate against the government. Once the Mailman has, vampire-like, sucked in every computer avatar on the web, he – the machine – will rule. Exit humanity – destroyed by humanity’s greatest invention.
True Names, as Vinge recalls, was inspired by a real-life experience in which he and an unknown person were logged into the same computer anonymously and struck up a conversation via its TALK program:
The TALKer claimed some implausible name, and I responded in kind. We chatted for a bit, each trying to figure out the other’s true name. Finally I gave up, and told the other person I had to go – that I was actually a personality simulator, and if I kept talking my artificial nature would become obvious. Afterward, I realised that I had just lived a science-fiction story.
The basic idea in True Names is simplified, and popularised, in the Terminator series of movies. It’s a good place to start and work back to the remarkably prophetic novel. The world we now live in may not be that different from what Vernor foresaw three decades earlier.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story makes me nostalgic for the days when readers and writers tended to assume that making a copy of oneself as a machine simulation was more like cloning than life extension, and that references to it being "immortality" needed some kind of meaningful justifying mechanism or it would be regarded as a metaphorical "immortality" -- leaving one's mark on the world, rather than continuing to live in it.

It's a truly excellent story, pretty much flawless in execution. It's also one of those rare books that helps define standards for really good, meaningful genre treatments and, at the same time, doesn't feel especially dated after a few years. It's up there with stuff like Neuromancer in that regard; pretty timeless so far, more prescient than most about the scale of computing advancement. Of course, that should be no surprise given Vernor Vinge recognizing the significance of the concept of the technological singularity pretty early in the history of singularity fiction. In fact, he was so early to that party that he can claim credit for popularizing the term and the concept; previously, it was an extremely niche notion. Yes, this story does deal in that kind of subject matter.

I have so far tended to find this author's prose more enjoyable in his shorter works (novellas), but he's good overall. This being a novella, it follows that pattern thus far; it's some of the best prose I've seen from him, in terms of continuous reader engagement. In fact, I pretty much read this in one sitting, in part because (with no chapter divisions) I just never felt like there was a good place to stop, and I kept wanting to know what was going to happen next. Only the beginning of the book offered much in the way of resistance, and given the setting conceits the author needed to convey to the reader I'm not sure how one could have avoided that initially less engaging start without undermining much of the value of the story. For one thing, the details of the cyberspace (before the invention of the term "cyberspace"; the author called it the Other Plane) aspects of the setting being as abstruse as they are in some respects are sort of important to the approach it took to avoiding feeling dated in a few years. Those aspects also provide a compelling explanation for the divide in technical superiority between governmental and criminal activity related to the setting's internet.

Overall, it's just a really great read, and a quick read as well. Not a single excuse comes to mind for putting off reading it.

[Mark Cheverton (scifipraxis) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection loosely based around Vinge's early cyberpunk short, True Names, and his concept of the singularity. Some entertaining work, but I find him better in long form.

Bookworm, run! (1966) ⭐⭐

An experimental chimp is connected to a computer containing all of humanity's knowledge. Its intelligence rapidly outstrips humans and, realising the danger it's in, it makes its escape.

An early singularity story written by Vinge when he was young (his second published story), it suffers from weak prose and plotting.

True Names (1981) ⭐⭐⭐

Vinge foresees a virtual cyberspace populated with hackers and infiltrated by AI, laying much of the groundwork for Gibson's Neuromancer. What's different is Vinge's mythic feel — a world of magic and warlocks, more an RPG than the gritty cyberpunk noir which was to come.

Its cyberspace action sequences deliver the 80s style of virtual combat, which took me back to my excitement when first watching the film Hackers. But beyond that, it's now a story mostly interesting for its foresight.

The Peddlers Apprentice (1975) ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

A simple encounter with a travelling Peddler escalates as mysteries compound and the forgotten history of the world is revealed. Great little story.

The Ungoverned (1985) ⭐⭐⭐

Set between his novels The Peace War and Marooned In Realtime, America is split between the Republic and the anarco-capitalist ungoverned. When New Mexico launches an invasion, it's down to the commercial protection services and the preppers to save the day.

Confusing in this short form, where there's not enough time to explain the complicated social and political landscape without the context of the bracketing books.

Long Shot (1972) ⭐⭐⭐⭐

An extinction-level event prompts the launch of an automated 10,000-year mission to Alpha Centauri. Coping with decay and malfunction resulting in the loss of knowledge of its mission, the unmanned ship finds a habitable world and prepares for landfall.

Very beautifully written - you feel the deep time and existential struggle as the little ship tries against the odds to complete its mission.

[Rajiv Chopra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like many science fiction novels, True Names is a prophetic book. However, it is also a short story, a novella, rather than a full-length novel. Vernor Vinge’s narrative focuses primarily on the adventures of two computer hackers–called warlocks–who live and operate in an alternate reality.
As in today’s world, the warlocks have assumed names and personas that express their image of themselves, much like the avatars people adopt today. The two main characters, “Mr. Slippery” and “Erythrina,” must navigate this world without giving up their real names, or else the ‘True Enemy” will force them to work for them. “The Great Enemy” is the US Government in this case.
The FBI discovers the actual name of Mr Slippery, forcing him and Erythrina to investigate a mysterious person called ‘The Mailman.’
I will not reveal more than this because I will give away the plot. While the book has been called a science fiction classic, I find the narrative confusing. The confusing, fluid narrative may reflect how we inhabit the virtual world.
The edition I own has several essays before the novella starts and an essay by Mr. Minsky after the narrative ends. It is critical to remember that the authors wrote these essays in the last decade of the last century when they were speculating on the future. Some of us today may consider the material in the book and the novella humdrum. Still, we must remember that Vernor Vinge wrote this book more than a decade before we even knew about the multiverse, virtual reality, and other such esoteric concepts.
When reading the essays that precede and succeed the main story, it is critical to view them as eerily prescient essays, anticipating both technological progress and societal changes occurring because of technological change.