Customer Reviews

True Names: And the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When I was starting out as a PhD student in Artificial Intelligence at Carnegie Mellon, it was made known to us first-year students that an unofficial but necessary part of our education was to locate and read a copy of an obscure science-fiction novella called *True Names*. Since you couldn't find it in bookstores, older grad students and professors would directly mail order sets of ten and set up informal lending libraries -- you would go, for example, to Hans Moravec's office, and sign one out from a little cardboard box over in the corner of his office. This was 1983 -- the Internet was a toy reserved for American academics, "virtual reality" was not a popular topic, and the term "cyberpunk" had not been coined. One by one, we all tracked down copies, and all had the tops of our heads blown off by Vinge's incredible book.

*True Names* remains to this day one of the four or five most seminal science-fiction novels ever written, just in terms of the ideas it presents, and the world it paints. It laid out the ideas that have been subsequently worked over so successfully by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. *And* it's well written. *And* it's fun.

In my grad student days, we loved to sit around and discuss the implications of Vernor's ideas. Sixteen years later, I do research at MIT, and it's still fun to sit around and talk about how Vernor's ideas are coming to be.

(Amazingly enough, Vinge has done this not once, but twice: *Marooned in Realtime* contains ideas even more interesting than *True Names* -- all in the setting of a murder mystery that takes place 50 million years in the future.)

Vinge has subsequently written other, very popular and enjoyable books, such as *A Fire Upon the Deep* and his just-published *A Deepness in the Sky*. However, it's always been very frustrating to me that *True Names* has been essentially impossible to find. It's always out of print, and you have to know one of the elect who snapped up copies back when it was marginally possible -- and these copies are now jealously guarded. I won't let people read mine outside of my home. (The same goes for *Marooned in Realtime* -- seminal work; out of print.)

So I am really, really delighted that *True Names* is now back in print. I note that it is now fashionable to write books "explaining" the Net and the near-term future of our society to the layman -- books such as Negroponte's *Being Digital,* Gate's *The Road Ahead*, or Dertouzos' *What Will Be*. These books are a waste of time. If you would like to explore the implications and likely future of the computer revolution, I would recommend three novels, instead: *True Names* (Vernor Vinge), *Snowcrash* (Neal Stephenson), and *Neuromancer* (William Gibson).

Vinge and Stephenson are not only excellent writers, they are trained, competent computer scientists. *Neuromancer* is the best-written of the three; *Snowcrash* is the funniest and hippest; *True Names* -- well, *True Names* is the source.

-Olin

Vernor Vinge, a professor at San Diego State University (Math Sciences) has the most fertile imagination conceivable; I could hardly agree more with the reviewer below [shivers@ai.mit.edu from Cambridge, Mass.] that Vernor Vinge, Neal Stephenson, and William Gibson are the science fiction prodigies of the end of the last millennium -- and those to watch at the start of this one.

*True Names* is something I stumbled on in a ratty paperback that, for some odd reason, had been rebound and inserted in my university library (I think because we had an acquisitions librarian with a taste for the singular). Reading the story in 1990 was a revelation, and it will be to anyone who finds it in this collection, blessedly supposed to be re-released (again) in March 2001 (though that too has been much delayed). A great deal of "classic" science fiction (though this would as readily stand as fiction, or just good writing) has disappeared from print; the market appears to be otherwise. But with J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter, Ursula LeGuin's novels, and other such such fare rising to the top, let's hope that the best science fiction work can be showcased -- as this appears to be.

The main story, a novella, treats the relationship of a variety of figures in a role-playing and networked world. It's also a story with a great ending, a great middle and start, and genuine surprises, even in its form: the abbreviated (and underappreciated) novella. Let's hope it stays in print, and that many step forward and buy!

Incidentally, Vernor Vinge does project a remarkably apt (and well-done) geographical sensibility -- he's the son of a geography professor (Michigan State University), and the inheritance has run true. That's mentioned as a not-incidental detail -- if I remember aright, Neal Stephenson was also a geography undergraduate student. It can matter.

Having read Vernor Vinge's "A Fire upon the deep", I was very eager to read something else of his. I've heard about "True Names" a few years ago and was really intrigued, however, I could not find this book anywhere. Therefore, I was delighted to see that it's out again - I didn't check what else is on the
book, however, it would probably not have made a difference.

"True Names" is basically a medium sized story which was (apparently) groundbreaking at the time it was written (1981). In addition to this story, the book contains many articles by known figures in related areas.
So what is "True Names" about ? Roger Pollack, aka Mr. Slippery, is what is called a warlock. However, he's not the type of warlock of fantasy worlds, he is a warlock of "The Other Plane" (the name Vinge uses for Cyberspace.. simply because Cyberspace has not been coined at the time the book was written). There are a lot of similarities between the two types of warlocks, Mr. Slippery has special powers because of his great knowledge of The Other Plane. Mr. Slippery also is a member of a coven of warlocks, the greatest one in The Other Plane. These people are generally good natured, but are known to cause mischief every now on then. Roger's world crumbles around him when the FBI finds his true name (they discover his secret identity). The offer him a chance to get a reduced sentence by exposing his coven, or more specifically, expose a specific member, The Mailman, whom they believe is trying to take over the world. But the FBI does not know how much they are right, and how much the situation is more dangerous than they think.. only Mr. Slippery and Erythrina, another witch from his coven, have any chance of stopping this danger before it is too late.

I'm sure this story sounds great to you - well it is! I really enjoyed reading it, and it was interesting to see how many of Vinge's predictions have come true.

In addition, there are many articles in the book: among them
* Tim May's LONG article about Cryptography. Very interesting article, however, its relevance to the story is fairly small, and it is way too long.
* Pattie Maes' article about the future of intelligent software. Short article, yet very interesting
* Richard Stallman's very short story and commentary about free reading and software. Very interesting article.
* Chip Morningstar and Randall Farmer's article about Habitat, the first online multi-user game. Fascinatting! So interesting to see the great ancestor of EverQuest and Muds. Also very relevant to "True Names". and there were more..

To summarize: while the articles were interesting, they were not interesting enough to buy without the actual story, and some were simply just barely related to "True Names" which was frustrating, because it made me think this was just an excuse to fill up pages. Nonetheless, the entire book is worth it because "True Names" is an excellent story, and the articles are still interesting. Just don't be embarrased to skip something if it bores you, because there are quite a lot of articles and a fairly short story in between...

Try to remember back to the days when computers were giant things located inside even larger buildings, when access to them was jealously guarded by a high priesthood of computer scientists, and the results you got from them, after many days of painstaking labor, was as likely to be absolute rubbish as it was to be useful answers. This was the way the world was when Vinge wrote this remarkably prescient novella, a story of a world dominated by computer access to information, commonly available to everyone, where virtual reality and your avatar are more 'real' than your physical body. In fact, the story was so far ahead of its time that several of the ideas presented in it became the blueprint for how to continue to develop the way computers work and how people interface with them.

It's a fairly good story in pure fictional terms, also. Vinge does not stint on developing his characters while letting us wander in his (at the time he wrote it) fairyland. The conflicts and problems his protagonist faces are very real problems, and Vinge's resolution of the story rings as true as his title.

The title is significant: in today's world when many wander the net known only by a self-chosen moniker, and jealously guard access to any information about their real selves, but have, never-the-less, a large amount of information held in many databases about their real selves (driver's license, social security number, credit reports), obtaining their 'true names' would be equivalent to forcing them to stand naked on a stage. It is this aspect of today's information dominated society that is the subject of several of the essays that accompany this story, many of which advocate methods for maintaining absolute secrecy of communications on the web. This is a large subject rife with many opinions pro and con, especially after the events of 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Several of the essays are well written, although they do seem to come prepared with an axe already ground, and are well worth reading.

But like most collections of essays, the quality is very uneven. Safely skippable are 'Intelligent Software', 'True Magic', and 'A Time of Transition'. Those deserving of a close read are 'Eventful History: Version 1.0x', 'Cryptography and the Politics of True Names', and most especially the original afterword to True Names written by Marvin Minsky, which is not only an excellent essay about the role of computers in society, it is also a very insightful look at all the various things that are going on inside Vinge's story that may not be readily apparent to the casual reader.

Some of the impact of Vinge's story may have been lost in the intervening years since its writing, as many of his imagined items have become reality, but it would be very hard to find a science fiction story that has predicted the future as well as this one.

--- Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

This collections of essays and stories is rather uneven. Some of the essays are rather monotonous and superflous, especially since the long essay by Tim May touches on many of the issues discussed in other essays. The longest portions of the collection - Tim May's essay on Crypto Anarchy, Chip Morningstar and F. Randall Farmer's reports on Habitat, and the eponymous novella by Vernor Vinge - are all excellent and together are worth the price of this volume.

The Habitat reports are probably the most amazing portion of this book, since they are based on a real implementation of some of the concepts discussed in other essays in the book. Habitat was a mid 1980s graphical massively-multiplayer game produced by Lucasfilms. Amazingly, the frontend ran on the Commodore 64 and the connection was over a 300 baud modem. The three essays presented in the book are available online, along with a couple of other pieces on Habitat (including one about the happenings on the Japanese version, which is wonderfully interesting).

"True Names" itself is a good novella and it reads like it could have been written in the past few years. Whether or not this was the first presentation of "cyberspace" is irrelevant to the quality of the story.

True Names is not a short story. It was a well-reasoned, extraordinarily original prediction, wrapped in a short story. And it came true. Vernor Vinge is not just a writer. He saw that online identity and privacy would be central issues in 1979. It's still opaque to me how this was even remotely possible to do.

I think I was born ten years too late. I was a child when strong crypto was a rallying cry. I didn't even know how to program -- and my abilities are still primitive today. But all I can say is I wish I had been there. I wish I had been there. I wish I could have *helped.*

"Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty
Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;
Were called upon to exercise their skill,
Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,
Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
But in the very world, which is the world
Of all of us,--the place where in the end
We find our happiness, or not at all! "
--Wordsworth

Vinge's novella would have been worth reprinting on its own, but this package offers a bit more than just a good story. "Truenames", like several other stories mentioned in the introduction of this book (and in the other reviews here), presented an eerily insightful prediction of the cyber-world we have today. Perhaps due to Vinge's familiarity with the technology, however, he was able to pinpoint a number of important issues and sticky points quite specifically, and well ahead of his time. The essays included were well-selected and each serves to highlight these areas and their importance to us today- and these essays comprise the bulk of this volume. Because they cover such diverse topics, and because they are fairly approachable even for a novice, they can provide a beginner with a fairly well-rounded introduction to some of the fundamental issues and challenges of the information superhighway. Timothy May's essay, in particular, is outstanding.

Unfortunately this book stands on somewhat awkward ground. The readers it is going to attract are unlikely to be completely new to the subject - they're probably going to know a bit about one aspect or another. As a result, they're going to be bored by at least some (or many) of the essays in the book. Some of the essays are quite dated as well, though the editor made sure that none were actually irrelevant.

All in all it was quite satisfactory. It's worth rating at 4 stars for a reader who is interested in but unfamiliar with this material.

Just picked this up and finished it the same day. True names was a re-read for me, and is an awesome story. It certainly presages much, in my opinion. The other articles are included mostly because they reference the novella, but their inclusion is logical and well built. The piece by May is very good.

The emphasis of this collection built around Vinge's 1981 story is exploring how the Internet has evolved in the 20 years since, and how it might change in the future, as well as its impact on society. The deepest essays in the book concern cryptography, which seems appropriate since the hero of "True Names" gets into trouble because the government finds out who he is (in the first three pages!). Still, four or five essays on cryptography, how we can use it to free ourselves from government control, and how governments and corporations want to use it (or ban it) to control us makes the book feel like a one trick pony after a little while. Tim May's article on cryptography says most of what needs to be said on the subject in this context.

The essays otherwise are short on exploring how the net has changed our lives in other ways: Social contact, economic infrastructure, the boost to (and fall in) the economy due to the sheer volume of hardware and software needed to support the net's growth, and so forth. The article on the virtual reality "Habitat" fills some of this void, but it seems woefully outdated considering that MUDs, Instant Messaging and the like have all been popularized since Habitat's heyday.

As for Vinge's story itself, it still holds up well today as an enjoyable read, although the things that bothered me about it ten years ago (the handwaving about how the human mind interprets the net as a fantasy world, the ineptitude of the police to deal with problems in an off-net manner) are still problematic today. But it's certainly a rousing adventure, and touches on several points which are entirely worthwhile today (privacy, secrecy, the value of increased computing power, the Turing Test, how peoples' on-line personas can be entirely different from their true selves). Admittedly, I've always found virtual reality-based stories hard to swallow, so I'm a hard sell in this regard.

Hard-core Vinge fans (such as myself) should certainly pick this up, as "True Names" is an essential developmental story in Vinge's writing career. Those interested in cryptography or some case studies of the history of the Internet should also find it interesting. But all-in-all I think I'd have preferred to see "True Names" included in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge and found some other place to present the essays.

Vinge and Al Gore apparantly have something in common, they both invented cyberspace. Outside of the pompous attitude the novella is decent. (Although he admitting cites Shockwave Runner in the preface.) The essasy by Tim May is excellent, the rest are somewhat dry. If you've never read True Names this is one way to get it.