Many technology executives and startup founders enjoy science fiction, but not many are award-winning science fiction authors. Mark Van Name, CEO of Durham-based marketing and technology assessment firm Principled Technologies Inc., has published five science fiction novels and many SF short stories – several of which include references to Durham and a near-future Research Triangle.

“I do set a lot of stories in places I know,” Van Name says, although he sometimes “morphs them.”

Van Name, 60, in addition to his science fiction, published over a thousand articles in the computer trade press and worked professionally with computer technology for his entire career. He also created and performed three comedy shows.

He and co-founder Bill Catchings, partner and CTO of Principled Technologies, started the company in 2003. The founders lent the company money it has since repaid and, Van Name tells WRAL TechWire, “The company has been in the black from very early in its first year.”

No such thing as a “best product”

Principled Technologies has 84 employees and hired 10 this year. It does custom work, crafting everything around its clients’ needs, he says, projects such as developing assessments of competing products for technology vendors. If the vendor thinks A is better than B, it develops an A-B assessment. That isn’t necessarily as simple as it sounds.

“There is no such thing as a ‘best product.’ There is no ‘best’ car. It depends on what you want and need,” Van Name says. “Each has strengths and weaknesses.”

The Principled Technologies web site says, “Principled isn’t just a word, it’s our philosophy.” Van Name says the company started with the idea that “The best way to sell products is to tell the truth,” so it looks for facts. “We think facts matter,” he says, “So we focus obsessively on presenting facts and the truth in an entertaining way.”

The company’s client list includes many major tech firms, including Acer, Dell, Hp, Intel, Oracle, Symantec, AMD, Cisco, Dropbox, IBM, Microsoft, Packard Bell, Red Hat, Trend Micro, Gateway, EMC, SAS, Lenovo, and Panasonic, among others.

It recently acquired firm Weejee Learning, also in Durham. It specializes in e-learning and mobile learning.

You can see examples of Principle Technologies’ work here: http://www.principledtechnologies.com/portfolio

Drawing on his futurist thinking, Van Name says he sees the Research Triangle area “Increasingly merging into one metroplex and becoming more demographically diverse. The future is really bright for the Triangle. As tech areas go, it’s pretty affordable and we have a lot of growth ahead of us.” Eventually, though, he says the growth may wipe out the affordability.

He believes the area is too spread out for efficient mass transit and thinks car sharing, ride sharing, and electric vehicles are the way to go. He drives a Tesla.

He enjoys reading military science fiction but tells a funny story about writing SF. “I published my first SF novel and it won an award and did well,” he says. But his mother, after reading it, called him up and said, “What did I do wrong that you have all these crazy ideas?”

Here’s a sample from one of his SF stories, “A Clear Signal,” from the 2001 “Foreign Legions” anthology:

“The Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill area of North Carolina had for decades been merging into a single population center, and today almost every major link between the cities showed the typical artifacts of modern American suburban sprawl: well-maintained roads, clumps of fast-food restaurants yelling for your attention, malls spaced so you were never far from one, and the occasional outlet stores claiming unheard-of bargains.

“Every such sprawl also has its darker arteries, where everything takes a step down and the businesses cater to the appetites that every such area inevitably both has and feels obliged to deny. The center of the run along the top of the triangle between Durham and Raleigh was one such route. Here you could still find car lots that would accept cash and forget to report the transaction, restaurants with truly cheap food for those brave enough to eat it, discount gas you’d put only in cars you didn’t plan to keep long, check-cashing places with rates that would embarrass loan sharks and a shotgun always in sight behind the wire mesh, and older ranch homes set back from the road with neon signs noting they were open until two a.m. and offered all-girl companionship.”

For the full story see:

http://hell.pl/szymon/Baen/When%20the%20Tide%20Rises/Foreign%20Legions/0671319906___5.htm

For links to four of his SF short stories see: http://www.freesfonline.de/authors/Mark%20L._Van%20Name.html

For a list of his novels, stories, and SF connections, see this Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_L._Van_Name

Allan Maurer is a freelance writer and co-founder of WRAL TechWire, who can be reached at allan.maurer@gmail.com