Tuckerization

Tuckerization is the act of using a person's name in an original story as an in-joke. The term is derived from Wilson Tucker, a pioneering American science fiction writer, fan and fanzine editor, who made a practice of using his friends' names for minor characters in his stories.^[1][2] For example, Tucker named a character after Lee Hoffman in his novel The Long Loud Silence, and after Walt Willis in Wild Talent.^[3]

Notable examples

H. P. Lovecraft's acquaintance Robert Bloch published "The Shambler from the Stars," in the September 1935 Weird Tales; its unnamed, doomed protagonist is a weird-fiction author closely resembling Lovecraft. As a genial return, Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark," published in the December 1936 Weird Tales, introduces Robert Harrison Blake, who shares Bloch's Milwaukee street address and is killed off in an equally horrible fashion.^[4] Bloch wrote a third story after Lovecraft's death, "The Shadow from the Steeple" (1950), in which the events of the first two stories are further explored.

Harry Harrison's To the Stars character: "Old Lundwall, who commands the Sverige, should have retired a decade ago, but he is still the best there is." Sam J Lundwall is a well-known Swedish science fiction publisher and writer, as well as the godfather of Harrison's daughter, and Sverige is the Swedish word for Sweden.

A tuckerization can also be the use of a person's character or personal attributes with a new name as an in-joke, such as Ian Arnstein in S.M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time trilogy, clearly modeled on his good friend Harry Turtledove, albeit an alternate history Turtledove.

In most cases, tuckerization is used for "bit parts" (minor characters), an opportunity for the author to create an homage to a friend or respected colleague. But sometimes an author will attach a friend's name, description, or identifiable characteristics to a major character, and in some novels nearly all the characters represent friends, colleagues, or prominent persons the author knows. When this happens, tuckerization can rise to the level of a roman à clef. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle have done this at least twice:

• Inferno, in which about half the people the main character meets are famous people.
• Fallen Angels, nearly everybody who assists the effort to return the "angels" (astronauts) to orbit is either a well-known fan (Jenny Trout = filksinger, author, and political activist Leslie Fish), a friend of Niven & Pournelle (Dan Forrester = Dan Alderson), or somebody who paid (through donation to a fan charity) for the privilege of appearing in the book. In this case, it can be argued that the first and second categories are not true tuckerizations, since the individual's real names are not used (however recognizable many of them may be).

A similar effect is seen in Niven's collaboration with David Gerrold, The Flying Sorcerers; all the gods are well known science fiction or media personalities (Ouells = H. G. Wells, Rotn'bair = Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry), etc.

In the early 1930s, before Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster created the comic-book superhero Superman, they wrote and illustrated a fanzine story, "The Reign of the Superman," featuring a super-powered villain. This story includes one of the very first tuckerizations: a character named after Forrest J Ackerman.

More recent examples include the many science fiction and military novelists whose names are borrowed in the Axis of Time by John Birmingham, and the Lachlan Fox thriller series by James Clancy Phelan. Philip K. Dick employed tuckerization in his short story "Waterspider", in which he sent fellow author Poul Anderson ahead in time to a future where science fiction authors were seen as having precognitive abilities.^[5] Fiona Kelleghan, a science fiction critic, has been tuckerized a few times by authors whom she wrote about: in Corrupting Dr. Nice by John Kessel, in Galveston by Sean Stewart, in Run by Douglas E. Winter, twice in the WWW Trilogy by Robert J. Sawyer (once as a character under her maiden name, "Feehan," and once as her real-world self), and in Spondulix by Paul Di Filippo.

In a lengthy, commutative quid pro quo, novelist Henry Sutton of Norwich, England (b. 1963),^[6] tuckerizes David R. Slavitt for his protagonist, "a genial crime writer trying to boost his sales,"^[7] in his novel My Criminal World (2013).^[8] The in-joke is that Slavitt used to use the pseudonym Henry Sutton to write erotic, science fiction and/or thriller and crime novels.

Legacy

Many science fiction authors auction off tuckerizations at science fiction conventions with the proceeds going to charity.^[9][10]

Tuckerization contra Biographical Fiction

Tuckerization should not be confused with the inclusion of living or deceased real persons in fiction, either as major or minor characters. This form of story is called biographical fiction. Some examples include:

• Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter is a 2010 biographical action horror novel by Seth Grahame-Smith. The story includes such historical characters as Abraham Lincoln, his first love Ann Rutledge, his wife Mary Todd Lincoln, his son William Wallace Lincoln, vampire hunters Edgar Allan Poe and William H. Seward, and Stephen A. Douglas.
• Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, in the 1984 novel Warday by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka, appears as a friend of Whitley; Streiber and Kunetka are themselves on a scientific journey.
• "Walt and Emily," a novella about Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, is a story in Paul Di Filippo's 1995 collection The Steampunk Trilogy. The two previous novels of the collection likewise include Queen Victoria in the first, "Victoria", and Louis Agassiz in the second, "Hottentots."
• The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) is a biographical novel of Michelangelo written by American author Irving Stone. An earlier novel, Lust for Life (1934), is a biographical novel written by Irving Stone based on the famous Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh, and his hardships.^[11]
• Forrest J. Ackerman in various novels, etc.

References