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 and fanzine editor, who made a practice
of using his friends' names for minor characters in his
stories. For example,
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. 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.
Many
science fiction authors
auction off tuckerizations at
science fiction conventions with
the proceeds going to charity.
In most cases, tuckerization is used for bit parts, 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.
One of the earliest tuckerizations was between
Robert Bloch and his mentor
H. P.
Lovecraft: Bloch's story "The
Shambler From The Stars" (1935) featured a Lovecraft-inspired
character, who was gruesomely killed off. Lovecraft replied in kind
with "
The Haunter of the
Dark" (1936), whose characters included one
Robert Harrison Blake (who had the
same address as Bloch), whom Lovecraft killed off in an equally
horrible fashion. After Lovecraft's death, Bloch wrote a third
segment, "The Shadow From the Steeple" (1950), in which the events
of the first two stories are further explored. 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 (eg Birmingham gets it in FOX HUNT).
Related to it is
redshirting,
where the character named after the real person is killed in some
way. Many authors consider tuckerization and redshirting
interchangeable; 'redshirted' characters do not necessarily
die.
Tuckerization should not be confused with the inclusion of living
or deceased real persons in fiction, either as major or minor
characters (
Chelsea Quinn
Yarbro in
Warday,
Forrest J Ackerman in various novels,
etc.).
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