Hmm, that doesn't quite narrow things down.
Author Habits That Annoy You
- Thread starter Captain Dax
- Start date
I did include what I thought the title might be. I'm not sure why you trimmed that part out when you quoted me?
Without knowing what you found weird about it, it would be hard for someone to confirm that yes it's the Final Nexus you're thinking about, or a different book. (I'm not trying to zing you. My only original point was that there is a ton of weird stuff in ST books, broadly defined.)
Stipulated, but I probably read that book over 20 years ago, so unless I stumble across it or do more research than I'm going to do right now (though I can look it up if anyone's that curious), I can't presently narrow it down further.
"Admiral Jefferies" is mentioned onscreen in Enterprise. The Vulcan Tos (played by Thomas Kopache) is a bit of a sly reference too. As are Commander Williams (Shatner), Admiral Leonard (Nimoy), and Admiral Forrest (DeForest Kelley).
So, again, I’m talking about novel authors using Trek production personnel names for their characters. Not actors on TV shows with those same names. An actor playing a character named ‘Admiral Roddenberry’ is fine (although rather silly), because I’m equating the name Roddenberry with whatever actor is playing that character on screen. A character in a book with that name is problematic because the only image that name conjures in my mind is Gene.
Big leap of logic here. One can certainly debate whether such obvious easter eggs are a good idea, and object to them as a reader if they bother you, but how do you get from there to the writer thinking "this is just a job for me"?
Maybe the author included those bits because they thought readers would enjoy them? Or because they had a sincere desire to pay tribute to those who have inspired them? Or some other motive?
Again, one can question the results if one is so inclined, but let's not presume to know what was going through the author's mind when they made that choice. Just because that choice didn't work for you doesnt mean that author wasn't trying to write the best book they could -- and didn't think it was a good idea at the time.
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One thing that kind of bugs me is when the authors don't give any kind of description of what a new alien race looks like until long after they're introduced. I always like to get a clear picture of what I'm reading and it's kind of hard when we're introduced to a new alien race on page 1, but don't find out that they're reptiles until page 200.
They don't need to just give us massive info dump the moment they're introduced, but it's nice to at least get enough information to picture them accurately.
They don't need to just give us massive info dump the moment they're introduced, but it's nice to at least get enough information to picture them accurately.
Of course I don't know what's going through the author's mind with complete certainty, unless I happen to also know them personally and have spoken to them about it. I'm only reading a book that they wrote. But if an author uses his/her fictional universe to start inserting a bunch of obvious call outs to their friends or to other real life, recognizable people (and the book is not part of a satirical series in which that sort of thing is expected), then at some point that author is telling me that he or she did not take this story seriously and neither should I. I don't see how that is distinguishable from telling me that they view the story they are asking me to spend my free time reading (and on which they have, successfully, convinced me to spend my money) is just a job for them, and this is one of the ways they must amuse themselves while performing that job. At that point, I'm within my rights as a reader to reach that conclusion, despite never conducting an interview with them to confirm my suspicions.
If it seems unjust that a reader might feel that way, then perhaps there is all the more reason to avoid those kinds of gimmicks.
That doesn't follow at all. I've inserted plenty of in-jokes and allusions into novels whose creation I took quite seriously. Taking the odd moment to have a little fun with your work is not at all incompatible with taking the work seriously; on the contrary, making serious work more enjoyable helps motivate you to do it better. Just because you take the work seriously in the sense of caring about it and working hard at it doesn't mean you're not allowed to have fun while you do it.
Then I guess you'd better avoid reading any Lewis Carroll: Alice was named after a colleague's daughter. While you're at it, avoid Asimov, as well: he named a character in one of his "Black Widower" mysteries after a reader who had won a contest in which the prize was to be Tuckerized thusly. Robert Bloch and H. P. Lovecraft (neither of whom are exactly my cup of tea) should probably be avoided as well, given that they Tuckerized friends (including each other). And Peter David was also guilty of serial Tuckerization. I have yet to read any Terry Pratchett, but I understand that he put somebody he met at a convention into a Discworld novel, and put up Tuckerizations for sale in charity auctions. You probably ought to avoid any J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter himself was named after her childhood neighbors. Ian Fleming, too: Boothroyd was named after an objector to Bond's original firearm-of-choice (a Beretta 418). And Goldfinger was named after an architect who'd offended Fleming. Oh, and Charles Dickens: Fagin was a Tuckerization.
In my own writings, "Jennifer Christine Schweitzer" (a child prodigy organist who gleefully thumbs her nose at stereotypes) is named after Albert Schweitzer ("Jennifer" because it fit my mental image of her, and "Christine" because somebody opined that "Jennifer Schweitzer" sounded (and despite the punctuation, this is not a direct quote) "too Jewish." And her teacher is named "Gail Clarke": "Gail" after both a math teacher I once had, who was taking organ lessons from her boyfriend (and I confess that I ribbed her mercilessly about it, employing the rather obvious double-entendre), and after a onetime classical disc jockey, Gail Eichenthal, and "Clarke" after English baroque composer Jeremiah Clarke (of "Prince of Denmark's March" fame). And in other writings, I named the "Lozadian" species (heavily inspired by both Sulamids and Kelvans) in my "First Contact Corps" short stories after a classmate named Lozada in a writing class, and in a ST fanfic I wrote in that same class, a "Captain Sulu" sequel to "The Man Trap," I named the Salt Vampire "Sharon," because of a magazine article that got Sandy Gimpel's given name wrong.
Have you ever actually written a work of fiction? Do you have the slightest inkling of how difficult it is to come up with memorable character names that aren't Tuckerizations of either your friends, or of famous people? (It's pretty damn difficult at times, even if you're not actively trying to avoid Tuckerizing anybody!) Or how rewarding it is to name a character after somebody who inspired that character?
God I love this comment!!!
There are other reasons an author does this, too.
Karen Kingsbury donates the naming of a minor character in her books to charity auctions so the winners can honor someone they love (often one who is deceased) with a character based on them. She only does this for a couple of characters per book, however, so it doesn't seem overdone, and tells readers about the real people who inspired the characters in a author's note.
Karen Kingsbury donates the naming of a minor character in her books to charity auctions so the winners can honor someone they love (often one who is deceased) with a character based on them. She only does this for a couple of characters per book, however, so it doesn't seem overdone, and tells readers about the real people who inspired the characters in a author's note.
None of what you go on to say is relevant to my point, as (based on your descriptions) those authors were not trying to call attention to the real world analogues of those characters and vanishingly few (if any) readers would make the connection. (Other that perhaps the contest winners. Were they supposed to be known, and was that announced? If so, yes, I will avoid those stories; thanks for the heads-up). What do I care if John Updike got 'Rabbit Angstrom' from his childhood friend Tom Soderstrom? (I made that up). But if he names some milquetoast county clerk "Philip Roth" as some sort of joke, he's lost a lot of my trust as a reader, and I wonder why I should bother if he didn't.
Dear lord, I never said you can't enjoy the writing process. And if what you are saying is that you reserve the right to name your characters after recognizable real-life individuals that your reader will immediately be thinking about (instead of the fictional world you are otherwise asking them to accept), then fine, you have your prerogatives as a writer, and I have mine as a reader.
Honestly: I'm not sure it does. It's just an author including some of his friends in his works. It's including them in that, what the author does for a living, it's showing them "You're close, near and dear to me." Or just a "Look, these people are cool, I like them". I mean - take a look at the Star Trek: Prometheus-Trilogy ("Fire with Fire", "The Root of All Rage" and "In the Heart of Chaos"). The books are as serious as they can get. You have terrorist-attacks, you have the captain of the Prometheus loosing his niece, you have Xenophobia - and yet, you have little call-outs like "Admiral Markus Rohde", "Captain Hillenbrand" or "Ensign Thomas Richter" - all people, the two authors of the Prometheus-Trilogy knew and liked.
And I honestly doubt, that the two authors were telling me: "Yeah, it's just a harmless, little brithday present for the German Star Trek fans, don't take that seriously". Because if that would've been the case, they'd be doing an exceptionally, spectacularly bad job at writing a satire or a farce.
Of course you do, but your prerogatives decidedly do not include making insulting assumptions about the intentions of people you don't know. You have the right to say "I don't like what you did." You do not have the right to say "I assume you did this because you don't care about your work," because that is defamatory. The only person whose state of mind you're qualified or entitled to speak to is yourself.
I usually don't care if an author uses the name of a friend of theirs in their story, because I don't know that friend and can't form an image in my head as to what that person looks like. But when an author uses the name "Roddenberry" as a character, that's completely different. As I mentioned before, this behavior takes me right out of the story (which I'm sure the author did not intend) all because they wanted to add some cutesy easter egg to an otherwise good story.
Now, my previous mention of the Errand of Fury trilogy was an egregious example of this. It was literally strewn everywhere throughout the books, and if I had to guess, if the books had actually been edited well (which they weren't), then perhaps the editor would have flagged this as being just too over-the-top. Luckily the second set of Ryan's books didn't have this problem and were edited far better.
I also recall another book (the title and author escapes me at the moment), where the writer inserted a scene where he used the characters of Dante and Randal from the Clerks movies in a 24th century setting. While it was humorous, as I'm a fan of those films, it still felt shoehorned in and didn't really have anything to do with the rest of the story. In that case, I think it's a matter of how important it is for an author to have 'fun' with their material, and adding something that feels tacked on just for the sake of adding an easter egg to their more serious story.
Now, my previous mention of the Errand of Fury trilogy was an egregious example of this. It was literally strewn everywhere throughout the books, and if I had to guess, if the books had actually been edited well (which they weren't), then perhaps the editor would have flagged this as being just too over-the-top. Luckily the second set of Ryan's books didn't have this problem and were edited far better.
I also recall another book (the title and author escapes me at the moment), where the writer inserted a scene where he used the characters of Dante and Randal from the Clerks movies in a 24th century setting. While it was humorous, as I'm a fan of those films, it still felt shoehorned in and didn't really have anything to do with the rest of the story. In that case, I think it's a matter of how important it is for an author to have 'fun' with their material, and adding something that feels tacked on just for the sake of adding an easter egg to their more serious story.
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