Private Mars Rocket II

There is a well-known phenomenon in SF writing called tuckerization. It's named after the (Illinois-born-and-raised) author Wilson Tucker, and consists of deliberately using real people's names as characters in fictional works. It's something I do quite frequently.

For example, in the current work in progress, I needed to have my police inspector meet a scientist for to get some research done. As it happens, the day I after I wrote that scene, I was planning to meet a fellow Rotarian, Halil Avci, at his office in a building in Argonne National Labs. Since reality intruded, Halil made it into my book. When I mentioned this fact during my real-life meeting, the real Halil smiled.

Now, the character is a "good guy" and (alas) a minor character. I had a similar situation in a previous book, except the character to be met was providing forged documents. In that case, I used Jackie Powers, a member of my writing group, as the character. She cackled delightedly, saying that she "always wanted to be morally depraved."

Both of these Tuckerizations happened for a reason - I am horrible with names! I forget the names of both real people and my characters, and for my characters I have a cheat sheet I keep by the computer to refresh my memory. As I've stated before, I man's got to know his limitations, and names are one of mine.