True Names

"The story is a marvelous mixture of hard-science SF and sword-and-sorcery imagery. Vinge posits that in a direct neurocybernetic interface, the information would be analogized by the brain into symbols it is comfortable with. The "place" in which the Coven "meets," for example, is or seems to be a castle, guarded by a program which manifests itself as a firebreathing dragon, sitting in a magma moat, wearing an asbestos T-shirt. Fail to satisfy it, and it will "kill" you, dumping you back into the real world — a fate most Wizards seem to regard as very little better than death. "Vinge set himself about fifteen challenges in this story, any one of which might have wrecked a lesser writer, and pulled them all off with appalling ease. No point in listing them all — but the most important one to my mind is this: he succeeded in making me feel, for over an hour, what it is like to be more than human. That is one of SF's major challenges, and it is bloody hard to do.

"Do not miss this ingenious and truly original story — it is one of those that, when you're done, you wish the author were present so you could applaud."

Analog Magazine