Triffids Beard 2 - The Bearded Triffid

The Name of the Game
Not previously published
"What's in a name?" asked Shakespeare, and went on to conclude that there probably wasn't very much
in it at all. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," he told us. Well far be it from me to
contradict the bard, but when it comes to the names of authors, the whole topic assumes a degree of
importance and interest that Shakespeare completely missed out on; probably because he was himself
an almost perfect example of the thesis I want to explore here.
You see it is my contention that you cannot become a really successful writer unless you have a weird
name. People with ordinary names just don't have what it takes. Nobody is going to remember an
ordinary name when they go to the book shop looking for that special book.
I first started thinking along these lines when I realised that the two most famous people in my own
professional field are the plonkingly ordinarily named Ken Thompson and the slightly more oddly named
Dennis Ritchie. They designed the Unix operating system, from which I make my living. Thompson has
never written a book (several research papers, but no books). Ritchie has never written a book in his
own right, but has appeared as a collaborative author on several, usually with his best buddy Brian
Kernighan who has an even odder name still and a very distinctive (and enjoyable) writing style.
Despite Thompson and Ritchie's enormous contribution to the field, the technical books on my shelves
have all been written by other people -- Cricket Liu, Simson Garfinkel, Gene Spafford, Evi Nemeth, Stan
Kelly-Bootle et al. (Kelly-Bootle, a Liverpudlian, is a man of many parts, some public and some private. As
well as producing semi-serious tomes such as Understanding Unix he is the author of the delightfully
cynical Computer Contradictionary and the linguistically challenging Learn Yerself Scouse). I am
also the proud possessor of the strangely titled Understanding and Using COFF by the magnificently
named Gintaras R. Gircys -- which sounds much more like the name of a cocktail than it sounds like the
name of a writer.
I'm not sure that all the novelists we know and love would necessarily always accept the thesis that
strange names maketh the author, but how else do explain away the fact that the very ordinarily named
David John Moore Cornwell chose to write his way to fame and fortune as John Le Carré? Wouldn't you?
Of course, given that he writes espionage novels, was once a spook himself, and seems to have an
inordinate love of the streetcraft of the spy, it could be said that he is merely indulging his vanity. The
nameless hero of Len Deighton's early novels once claimed that there is nothing more authentically
English than a foreign name, and who's to say he's wrong?
Science fiction, as always, takes the trend to inordinate extremes. How many Isaac Asimovs have you
met socially? How many Robert Heinleins? (I once met a Ray Bradbury, but he lived in Birmingham and
so he doesn't count). There can be only one of each because their names are weird and therefore
memorable. Nobody called Jack Williamson could ever be a famous writer, the name is too ordinary.
Ooops! Just blotted my copybook there. But you must admit that Williamson's more oddly named
contemporaries do tend to eclipse him on the bookshelves and I doubt that it is only the vagaries of the
alphabet that puts Frederik Pohl's name first on their collaborations.
Perhaps that is the whole secret. Ken Bulmer sold many more books as Alan Burt Akers and as Tully
Zetford than he ever did under his own name. Take that, Shakespeare! I once heard Bulmer speak at a
convention. He remarked that he had spent his latest honeymoon at a friend's house where he and his
new wife made the interesting discovery that the bed squeaked very loudly. So rather than use it for its
intended purpose, they spent the night taking it in turns to jump up and down on it much to the
consternation of their eavesdropping friend (the noise went on for hours) and their own vast
amusement. It was at this convention that I first began to gain an insight into the mentality of people
who write books.
Many of the science fiction writers with odd names seem also to share a common desire to commit
autobiography. Once again Asimov is the prime example with three enormous volumes of direct