True Names...and Other Dangers [Mass Market Paperback]

Vernor Vinge (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Baen Books (November 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671653636
• ISBN-13: 978-0671653637
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #543,589 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you read only one SF book EVER..., July 11, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: True Names...and Other Dangers (Mass Market Paperback)

Want to know the future of the human race? A lot of authors explore the future and make it gripping or entertaining; Vinge explores the future and gets it right. True Names is a story of amplified human intelligence.

Intelligence determines the rate of technological progress. Once technology is used to amplify intelligence, a positive-feedback loop of enormous power is created. No mortal can ever write of that future - but Vinge creeps up on the edge of human history and shows that Something lies beyond.

This is the story that introduced the Vingean Singularity of SF legend: "Every time we consider the creation of intelligences greater than our own... extrapolation breaks down and new models must be applied... the world will pass beyond our understanding."

The Singularity is seriously projected, by Ph.D.'d folk, to occur around 2030. And in my opinion, it's that or nuclear war. Choose. Be ready. Read this book.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the story that conceived cyberspace, March 7, 2001

By 

MDA (milwaukee, wi, usa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: True Names...and Other Dangers (Mass Market Paperback)

In 1981, vinge published the book that conceived the cyberworld that exists on the internet today. Software bots, node-hopping, 3D chat rooms, warez, avatars, a hacker underground...they are all here....and were described in this book before IBM sold its first personal computer. I am amazed at Vinge's ability to see the future. ...or, as I believe, he created the future by giving a generation of computer programmers the vision to build what he saw.

True Names is a feast for the imagination. I set the book down many times while my mind reeled with extrapolations of the ideas he wrote into his story. The characters are richly developed. the climax was terrific.

Read this book if you can find it. Remember when it was published (14 years before Neuromancer). I have bought 5 copies. But over the years, friends have 'liberated' 3 of them. This book is a prize.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun mix of cyber hacking, scifi, and sword-and-sorcery, June 25, 2002

By 

Gary Sprandel (Frankfort, Kentucky) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: True Names...and Other Dangers (Mass Market Paperback)

"True names", predates this pseudonymous age, by twenty years, but it seems remarkably current. Vinge, predicts and anticipates a lot of technology, and I am looking forward to neural browsers! Perhaps more important, is the ethical question of whether one that avoids the temptation of self interest, should be trusted .. indefinitely, even if in a non-physical form? There is some talk about making this into a film, so that would be exciting!

The "Apprentice" is perhaps most significant for its collaboration, with then wife, Joan Vinge. The piece "The Ungoverned", is the connection between "The Peace War" and "Marooned in real time" (the "Across realtime" edition includes that story). Vinge's introductions are a delight in themselves, and the way he approaches "the singularity" (a particular state of technological self awareness) from different angles is thought provoking.