gamiddleton (07/28/82)
So you liked Shockwave Rider, did you? So you like fantasy, right? Fantasy and 'hard', high-tech SF are incompatible, right? Wrong! Remember Clarke's Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic", and read "True Names" by Vernor Vinge. This sadly underpublished story (it has appeared in Binary Star #5, and nowhere else. The Binary Star series has been discontinued, and its publisher, Dell, no longer puts out any SF) is a superb melding of the technological and the fantastic. Its protagonist is a 'warlock', in the 'Other Plane' of the computer networks. He and his cohorts perpetrate vast pranks and crimes, all in the guise of their network identities, never revealing their True Names (their name in real life, as mine is Guy A. Middleton (78165124, 466 368 174, M4136-31916-10419, 92622248) as opposed to watmath!gamiddleton. One's True Name is kept secret, and knowledge of another's True Name puts him/her in your power. The Second Age of Magic is upon us.
mclure@sri-unix (07/29/82)
I'll second that. "True Names" is one of the best novellas I've read in recent years. Vinge knows his stuff.