True Names by Vernor Vinge is on of the first great Internet books. Before Neuromancer was published, Vinge, more than anyone else, created the metaphors and views that were used in the early days of the Internet. Vinge is more of a futurist than a science fiction writer. His greatest strength is seeing the future and how people will interact with it. And in True Names, Vinge started writing about the future event that he would later name The Singularity. So what exactly is True Names about?

Deep in the backwaters of the Other Plane(or cyberspace if you prefer), is where the grand wizards live. These are the people who can rewire the virtual world, but have little power in the real world. Their deepest darkest secret is their real name. If the government can find out the real name of one of these wizards, then the government can destroy their real life. Mr Slippery is one of these wizards and he’s just lost his real name to the government. But they don’t want to destroy his life, yet. They want his help to catch a bigger wizard who’s starting to scare them, The Mailman.

The story proceeds with Mr. Slippery working with fellow wizard Erythrina trying to find and take down The Mailman. Mr. Slippery finds a himself working a deal with the devil, but soon comes to realize that he’s doing the right thing, even if it’s only because he was forced to.

Throughout the book, we see the seeds of a lot of the internet. We have a lot of the fantasy conventions (kings, castles, wizards), privacy (true names, encryption, jumping through hoops to connect) and even pieces of artificial intelligence (bots) and The Singularity (even though it wasn’t called that before). Of course, we now have a chicken and the egg scenario. Did the Internet and Vinge come up with similar metaphors because it makes sense that the people would see the world that way or were the people starting on the internet influenced by Vinge and created the same metaphors because they liked them. Either way, this is an absolutely essential story for science fiction fans and most people would have a hard time guessing that it was originally published in 1981. Highly Recommended.