Tuckerization

Tuckerization (sometimes Tuckerism) is the practice among professional authors of using their friends' names for characters in stories they write. Bob Tucker was a leading exponent and practitioner of this sort of thing, which he originated in 1945 when he used the names of several fans in his novel The Chinese Doll.

Note that this is different than a roman a clef, where the fiction is in some fashion about a real person or the fictional character resembles that person. In a tuckerization, only the name is used — the namesake character isn’t otherwise akin to the real person. It arguably counts as recursive SF if the name is a pro’s.

It is common for writers to donate a tuckerization to convention or fanfund auctions, where they offer to use the name of the highest bidder as a character in an upcoming book.

Tucker himself gave up the habit in his later career, saying "I have largely abandoned my habit of using fan names because I learned that someone who was a friend when a book was published will not necessarily be a friend ten years later" ( Dark Star 2, 1963)

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Fanspeak

1945—

This is a fanspeak page. Please extend it by adding information about when and by whom it was coined, whether it’s still in use, etc.