Your name in lights

Ever wondered why sometimes the names of characters in works of fiction are ... familiar? In the SF field there's a somewhat tongue-in-cheek tradition called Tuckerization (after SF author Wilson Tucker), whereby authors sometimes use the names of friends or acquaintances in their stories.

There's another SF tradition, called the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund, "created in 1953 for the purpose of providing funds to bring well-known and popular members of science fiction fandom familiar to fans on...