Tuckerization (or tuckerism) is the act of using a person's name (and sometimes other characteristics) in an original story as an in-joke. The term is derived from Wilson Tucker, a pioneering American science fiction writer, fan and fanzine editor, who made a practice of using his friends' names for minor characters in his stories. For example, Tucker named a character after Lee Hoffman in his novel The Long Loud Silence, and after Walt Willis in Wild Talent. In most cases, tuckerization is used for "bit parts" (minor characters), an opportunity for the author to create an homage to a friend or respected colleague. However, an author sometimes attaches a friend's name, description, or identifiable characteristics to a major character, and in some novels, nearly all characters represent friends, colleagues, or prominent persons the author knows. When that happens, tuckerization can rise to the level of a roman à clef. Tuckerization is generally for wink-and-nod homages: characters with suspiciously similar names or features. It should not be confused with the direct inclusion of real people in fiction, a form of story that is usually called biographical fiction when it is the main focus. Notable examples H. P. Lovecraft's acquaintance Robert Bloch published "The Shambler from the Stars", in the September 1935 Weird Tales; its unnamed, doomed protagonist is a weird-fiction author closely resembling Lovecraft. As a genial return, Lovecraft's "The Haunter of the Dark", published in the December 1936 Weird Tales, introduces Robert Harrison Blake, who shares Bloch's Milwaukee street address and is killed off in an equally horrible fashion. Bloch wrote a third story after Lovecraft's death, "The Shadow from the Steeple" (1950), in which the events of the first two stories are further explored. Evelyn Waugh featured absurd, preposterous or dishonest characters named Cruttwell, after C. R. M. F. Cruttwell, the dean of Hertford College when Waugh was a student and Waugh's tutor, who tried to get Waugh to fulfil the conditions of his scholarship and study. It was only after Cruttwell suffered a mental breakdown in 1939 and his death in 1941 that his name disappeared from Waugh's works. In his novels up to The Anti-Death League, Kingsley Amis featured characters named Caton, after R.A. Caton of the Fortune Press, who published Amis's first book of poems, Bright November, but did not promote it properly, in Amis's view. More mercifully than Waugh, in The Anti-Death League, Caton dies