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Leo Sauermann, who is working on Gnowsis semantic desktop, has an article "True Names Again" on his blog, talking about books, cyberpunk and semantic web.

There is one thing in particular that catched my attention - and that is cyberpunk science fiction books. I absolutely love William Gibson's books, Pattern Recognition being the last I've read, and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and here is a quote from Leo's blog:

So I am really, really delighted that *True Names* is now back in print. I note that it is now fashionable to write books "explaining" the Net and the near-term future of our society to the layman -- books such as Negroponte's *Being Digital,* Gate's *The Road Ahead*, or Dertouzos' *What Will Be*. These books are a waste of time. If you would like to explore the implications and likely future of the computer revolution, I would recommend three novels, instead: *True Names* (Vernor Vinge), *Snowcrash* (Neal Stephenson), and *Neuromancer* (William Gibson).

Vinge and Stephenson are not only excellent writers, they are trained, competent computer scientists. *Neuromancer* is the best-written of the three; *Snowcrash* is the funniest and hippest; *True Names* -- well, *True Names* is the source.

-"Olin" Shivers

- see the original review in Amazon -

This can mean only one thing - I *must* read "True Names" by Vernor Vinge.

And - as a side note- it may sound strange - but in recent times I have not seen any new science fiction book that was as good as the scifi classics created some time ago. Has there been a ground-breaking book I do not know of?