Now, advertising aside and being as this is a forum for discussions, would you be willing to participate in something like this if you were a Pro?
Would you particpate only if it was for charity? If so, a specific one?
What kind of limitations would you put forth? (For example: in the Stephen King auction the winner gets a character named after them, BUT in order for the character to die the winning name/description must be female)
Could you even start writing the book before the winner was announced?

Wouldn't it be a great twist if these authors started bidding on each other's auctions? Imagine if Stephen King got to have a slobbering monster from the depths of Hell chew the head off of Nora Roberts!

There. That said, I don't really care to pay money to have my name included in someone else's book. It seems pointless to me. And I am now highly leery of any author who is including a real name in his/her book via a contest. As a reader, I would hope they would find a way to work it in smoothly. And if for some reason the real name doesn't match the invented millieu, you have a potential problem that may ruin the entire story for the reader.

My opinion stands... if you use a name that is strongly reminiscent of modern-day culture, you pay the price of interferring with the reader's ability to immerse in the milieu.

Timmy and Lassie have a master/pet relationship (I think, haven't seen any Lassie movies).

The Lone Ranger and Tonto have a superior/inferior relationship?

Bill and Hillary Clinton.. not sure. A reference to low moral values?

Sigfried and Roy.. both born in Germany. Not sure about that either. Was one of them always the brunt of jokes?

Unless the racism accusation itself is a joke?

rcorporon, you might be interested in Godwin's Law. Google it.

Godwin's Law states that in internet discussion groups, as the thread grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. It further states that once this comparison is made, the discussion is essentially over, and the person who has made the comparison has completely lost the argument.

Gratuitous Nazi references are intended simply to disparage, and say far more about the person who uses the term than about the object of the comment.

If your intention is to be incredibly offensive, rcorporon­, you've succeeded nicely. You DO realize, don't you, that Boris and Natasha were CHARACTERS on that TV show? And I'd say there's a fair chance I know more than you do about Russians, having had one live in my home for some time. He didn't seem to think I was a bit racist.

Besides... Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale were not from Russia. They were from Pottsylvania.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_and_Bullwinkle_Show

Nocti, the comparison of "famous couple" names was simply to illustrate that if those names came up in an alternate world fantasy or sci-fi, they would immediately conjure up a mental image of a pop-culture icon that would be difficult to shake each and every time you read the name(s). There was no deeper metaphor intended.

And if one must know, the comment which offends me most is the one accusing me of not being able to spell.

You make an excellent point about Rocky and Bullwinkle. I am not so ignorant as to not be familiar with them, but I cannot recall actually sitting through and watching a single episode of that long-ago cartoon. I grew up with the Smurfs and Looney Tunes and I suppose if someone in a book were to be called Papa Smurf it would be really weird.

Names that don't have standardized spellings are particularly subject to this kind of thing. As are names with words that are commonly misspelled, like if someone on this site were named "GrammarNazi", it would be a piece of cake for someone calling themselves "GrammerNazi" to slip in a post here and there, as long as they deleted them soon afterwards.

Man, I didn't remember OSC using that. I have to check my copy of Ender's Game now. Perhaps that's where it got lodged in a crease in my brain long ago.

I have to laugh. A troll comes in trying to cause grief by impersonating a forum member by way of a dodgy trick and the conversation turns away from his idiocy to story ideas and stories in which such a trick was used. I like this.

Strange.

Except that it preserves anonymity...and perhaps identity.

Let's get back on topic. I remember the first time I ran across a real person's name in a book. The person was Mary Frances Zambreno, and the book was CARDS OF GRIEF by Jane Yolen, if I remember correctly.

I didn't know about "tuckerizing" as some SF writers and fans call it (after Wilson "Bob" Tucker, an earlier SF writer who was known for naming his characters after friends and fans), and seeing the name of someone I had heard of in SF fandom more or less kicked me out of the story at first. I couldn't figure out if it was a huge co-inky-dink* or if it had been on purpose. (The character was a serious--as in not intended to be funny--character.)

Then I went on and finished reading (and that name is the only thing I really remember about the story). Someday I'll have to reread it, to see what else there was in the story. (Since Jane Yolen is a fine writer, I don't have any worries about it being worth rereading.)

I wont apply my morals or philosophy to someone elses business transaction.

That said, I think calling this purchasing immortality is bit of a reach. Given the sheer number of printed works available, distinguishing which ones will even be opened and read a decade from now is a gamble.

Its more like buying 15 minutes of fame.