From: Twirlip of Greymist (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 21 1996 - 17:22:05 MDT
On Oct 21, 3:40pm, Lyle Burkhead wrote:
} Where did Vinge write about Perversion attacks?
That depends on what you mean by "write". No formal thesis anywhere,
that I know of. The temporary godlings of "True Names" took over
much of the world, but that's a standard cyberpunk cliche. I think _A
Fire Upon the Deep_ and _Marooned in Realtime_ would have the most
examples of perversion warfare. At the end of _Fire_ prologue the
Blight has no weaponry, but has already perverted the human ship's
computers, so It is able to sabotage the escape internally. And it
perverts lots of Beyonders later. More to the point, Beyonders refuse
to take messages in High Trade languages directly, but translate them
into duller tongues (such as the ones we know) because of the
possibility of perversion through such messages. (Presumably High
Tongues are semi-automatic languages like Java or Word macros, and
nobody wants to deal with Trojans from a Power.) The point being that
it seemed to be a common form of warfare to pervert other's systems.
And the entire climax of _Marooned_ centers on someone having perverted
most of the systems -- and he was a relic from an age where such was
common industrial espionage/warfare.
Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix
To Aphrodite sworn was I,
But how could I a god deny?
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