True Names doesn't appear on a lot of lists and I'm not sure why.

It used to be really really hard to get. It was out of print for years, not available as an ebook and not even widely available second hand.

I read it as a badly scanned version from some dodgy download site.

In general, I find it really annoying I can't find specific short stories/novelettes available for $1-2. Which I guess I consider reasonable for older stories.

I have an older edition of True Names and I didn't realize it was hard to get your hands on. IMO it's the author's best work.

I think a fire upon the deep is his best. You can (logically) read the second chapter (introducing the tines) as a self-contained short-story, and it's brilliant: the way it introduces their issues, the characters and the glorious plot.

I agree about Fire Upon the Deep. Something else in a similar vein is the prologue for Hogan's Code of the Lifemaker which I'd argue is significantly more interesting than the book as a whole.

It's a short story, too, so not publishable by itself really.

I have this book

https://www.amazon.com/True-Names-Opening-Cyberspace-Frontie...

Which has the story among some essays by some computer science luminaries.

It's also in True Names and Other Dangers which has a few other (shorter) stories by the author.