From: utzoo!watmath!gamiddleton
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Title: A Rave Review
Article-I.D.: watmath.3107
Posted: Tue Jul 27 23:27:15 1982
Received: Tue Jul 27 23:56:23 1982

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.