Plot Summary
The story follows the progress of a group of disaffected computer wizards (called "warlocks" in the story) who are early adopters of a new full-immersion virtual reality technology, called the "Other Plane". Forming a cabal, they must keep their true identities – their True Names – secret even to each other and to avoid prosecution by their "Great Adversary" – the government of the United States.
The protagonist is one of these warlocks. Known as "Mr. Slippery" in the Other Plane; his True Name is Roger Pollack. When a new warlock arrives in the Other Plane and begins to recruit other warlocks for a scheme in which the domination of cyberspace can be used to exert power in the real world, Mr. Slippery is forced to ally himself with the Great Adversary.
Read more about this topic: True Names
Famous quotes containing the words plot and/or summary:
“There comes a time in every mans education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882)
“Product of a myriad various minds and contending tongues, compact of obscure and minute association, a language has its own abundant and often recondite laws, in the habitual and summary recognition of which scholarship consists.”
—Walter Pater (18391894)