"True Names" is a 2008 science fiction story by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum. It was first published in the anthology Fast Forward 2.
Doctorow and Rosenbaum subsequently made the story available under the terms of the Creative Commons license. [1]
Beebe and Demiurge are matrioshka brains, at war with each other as they both try to convert all matter in the universe into computronium.
"True Names" was a finalist for the 2009 Hugo Award for Best Novella. [2]
Strange Horizons praised it as an "exercise in extreme imagination" and a "magnificent display of pre-existing ideas arranged in fabulous geometries and twisted into pleasing, recombinant strategies of exuberance", but nonetheless found it lacking in literary quality, with "stultified" dialogue, and characters whose "behavior comprised more of wide-eyed naivete and sardonic posturing than any real emotion". [3]
The Los Angeles Review of Books observed that "True Names" "obviously pays homage to (Vernor) Vinge's classic story of that title," [4] while the SF Site considered that it "resonate(s) a bit with (Greg) Egan." [5]
Vernor Steffen Vinge is an American science fiction author and retired professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He is the first wide-scale popularizer of the technological singularity concept and perhaps the first to present a fictional "cyberspace". He has won the Hugo Award for his novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), A Deepness in the Sky (1999), Rainbows End (2006), Fast Times at Fairmont High (2002), and The Cookie Monster (2004).
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books. Some common themes of his work include digital rights management, file sharing, and post-scarcity economics.
The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) is a database of bibliographic information on genres considered speculative fiction, including science fiction and related genres such as fantasy fiction and horror fiction. The ISFDB is a volunteer effort, with both the database and wiki being open for editing and user contributions. The ISFDB database and code are available under Creative Commons licensing and there is support within both Wikipedia and ISFDB for interlinking. The data are reused by other organizations, such as Freebase, under the creative commons license.
Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy. Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera. Between 1994 and 2004, he was also an active writer for the magazine Computer Shopper and was responsible for the monthly Linux column. He stopped writing for the magazine to devote more time to novels. However, he continues to publish freelance articles on the Internet.
John Kessel is an American author of science fiction and fantasy. He is a prolific short story writer, and the author of four solo novels, Good News From Outer Space (1989), Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), The Moon and the Other (2017), and Pride and Prometheus (2018), and one novel, Freedom Beach (1985) in collaboration with his friend James Patrick Kelly. Kessel is married to author Therese Anne Fowler.
Ian McDonald is a British science fiction novelist, living in Belfast. His themes include nanotechnology, postcyberpunk settings, and the impact of rapid social and technological change on non-Western societies.
Benjamin Rosenbaum is an American science fiction, fantasy, and literary fiction writer and computer programmer, whose stories have been finalists for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the BSFA award, and the World Fantasy Award.
Strange Horizons is an online speculative fiction magazine. It also features speculative poetry and nonfiction in every issue, including reviews, essays, interviews, and roundtables.
Jim Baen's Universe (JBU) was a bimonthly online fantasy and science fiction magazine created by Jim Baen. It was recognized by the SFWA as a Qualifying Short Fiction Venue. JBU began soliciting materials in January 2006 and launched in June 2006. The magazine contained around 120,000 to 150,000 words per issue. It closed in 2010.
Escape Pod is a science fiction podcast magazine produced by Escape Artists, Inc. It proclaims itself "the world's leading science fiction podcast". The present co-editors are Mur Lafferty and S. B. Divya.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author and puppeteer.
"Oceanic" is a science fiction novella by Australian writer Greg Egan, published in 1998. It won the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Novella.
Wireless: The Essential Charles Stross is an English language collection of science fiction short stories by Charles Stross published by Orbit Books.
"Magic for Beginners" is a fantasy novella by American writer Kelly Link. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in September 2005. It was subsequently published in Link's collection of the same name, as well as in her collection Pretty Monsters, in the 2007 Nebula Award Showcase, and in the John Joseph Adams-edited anthology "Other Worlds Than These".
"The Maiden Flight of McCauley's Bellerophon" is a science fiction/magical realism novella by American writer Elizabeth Hand. It was first published in the Neil Gaiman/Al Sarrantonio-edited anthology Stories: All-New Tales, in 2010, and subsequently republished in Hand's 2012 anthology Errantry: Strange Stories from Small Beer Press.
List of works by or about the British author Ian McDonald.
A Year in the Linear City is a 2002 weird fiction novella by Paul Di Filippo, published by PS Publishing.
"The Blind Geometer" is a 1986 science fiction story by American writer Kim Stanley Robinson. It was published by Asimov's Science Fiction.
"The Wedding Album" is a science fiction short story by David Marusek. It was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction in June 1999.
"Stet" is a science fiction short story by Sarah Gailey, about self-driving cars. It was first published in Fireside Magazine in October 2018.