True Names is a cyberpunk story, published before the term ‘cyberspace’ even existed.

This 1981 novella tells the tale of Roger Pollack a.k.a. Mr Slippery. Pollack takes the reader along on his trips to the Other Plane — the first representation of cyberspace in print.

The technology is a new full-immersion virtual reality, which uses wire attachments to connect the user’s brain to a powerful computer interface. The level of imagination and detail provided by Vinge beggars belief considering this is what computers looked like in 1981.

In cyberspace, Mr. Slippery forms a gang with other ‘wizards’ who wish to keep their true names secret to avoid persecution from the US government.

After his identity is uncovered by US agents, Pollack is forced to go undercover in the Other Plane to root out the most powerful wizard — the Mailman.

In cyberspace, users’ minds can process what they see much faster, and all the complex processes and access to data are presented symbolically as doorways, monsters, castles, animals, and so on.

In order to complete his mission and avoid the slammer, Mr Slippery partners up with another member of the gang, Erythrina, and together, they trawl through the waves of data that control the world.

“…they were experiencing what no human had ever known before, a sensory bandwidth thousands of times normal. For seconds that seemed without end, their minds were filled with a jumble verging on pain, data that was not information, and information that was not knowledge. To hear ten million simultaneous phone conversations, and to see the continent’s entire video output, should have been a white noise. Instead it was a tidal wave of detail rammed through the tiny aperture of their minds. The pain increased, and Mr. Slippery panicked. This could be the True Death, some kind of sensory burnout —“

True Names by Vernor Vinge and the Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier, edited by James Frenkel, Tor, 2001, paperback edition, page 285

The presentations of this previously unimagined world are vivid and affecting. They help us get a handle on just how impossible to comprehend exponential technology advances are. And remember, we are +40 years from the publication of this novella.

Roger Pollack is permanently changed by the war for control of the universe with the Mailman. He feels god-like after looking directly into the workings of everything. He struggles to separate ‘real’ life from the virtual and attempts to uncover Erythrina’s identity.

With these names and the many images of castles, creatures and great battles, the book straddles the fantasy and sci-fi genres. In fact, Vinge credits the Earthsea series of Ursula Le Guin as inspiration for the story.

This book is the first (and possibly still the best) presentation of a virtual world. It’s a world that we all have at least one foot in now.

If you’d like to understand the real-world implications of immersion in the Other Plane, you should read it.