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Pseudonyms / fictional authors
Philip José Farmer went trough, as he called it, a 'fictional author phase' (from 1974 till 1978). In this period he used several pseudonyms. The names of these pseudonyms are in fact the names of fictional authors in stories written by other writers or by PJF himself. There are some pseudonyms not connected to fictional authors, three of them are only recently known (Bellman) or discovered (Howller and Corday-Marat).
Phil Farmer: "It's been fun being Trout, Keen, John H. Watson, M.D., Bunny Manders, Paul Chapin, Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor and Somers III. Not to mention Lord Greystoke, otherwise known as Tarzan, and Maxwell Grant, the author of The Shadow stories."
This list is in alphabetical order, on last name.
Stations of the Nightmare

Tom Wode Bellman
1 foreword, in Venus on the Half-Shell and Others, 2008.
1 essay, "To Be, or Not to Be", in Farmerphile No.13, 2008.

I'm convinced that Farmer did not write the two pieces above, published under the byline of Tom Wode Bellman. Most probably they were written by Christopher Paul Carey ("I deny everything!", when asked), maybe with some help by Phil.

Tom Wode Bellman is the protagonist, a science fiction writer, in "The Light-Hog Incident" (Farmerphile Issue No. 7, January 2007) by Philip José Farmer. The story is an excerpt from The Man Who Loved the Great Wizard, an uncompleted semi-autobiographical novel.
See also the announced novel A Wild Weird Clime, originally planned to be published under the byline of Tom Wode Bellman.


Shannon Robicheaux
 
 

Cordwainer Bird
1 story, "The Impotency of Bad Karma", 1977.

Originally this pseudonym had only been used by Harlan Ellison. With Ellison's permission Farmer made Cordwainer Bird a fictional author in the story "The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight" by Jonathan Swift Somers III (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1976) and then wrote a story using this pseudonym, in which Bird himself also appears as a fictional author.



Ed Emsh
 
 

Paul Chapin
1 story, "The Volcano", 1976.

Paul Chapin is a fictional author from the Nero Wolfe novel The League of Frightened Men (1935) by Rex Stout.



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Charlotte Corday-Marat
2 stories, "The Princess of Terra", 2006 , and
"The Many Dooms of Harold Hell", 1965.

The pseudonym is not connected to a fictional author.
Charlotte Corday was the woman who killed Jean-Paul Marat. Farmer had used the pseudonym, as he stated, just for fun.


Keith Howell &
Charles Berlin
 
 

Maxwell Grant
1 story, "Savage Shadow", 1977.

Maxwell Grant is the author (house pseudonym) of nearly all the Shadow novels. Farmer intended to make Grant a fictional author in the next story in the series 'Grant-Robeson Papers' to be written by Kenneth Robeson, the author of the Doc Savage novels.
In this story, "Savage Shadow", Kenneth Robeson has been made a fictional author.
Alas, no further stories have been written in this series.



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Dane Helstrom
1 story, "A Hole in Hell", 1992.

A pseudonym that is not connected to a fictional author.
"A Hole in Hell" is a Riverworld story, published in one of the two Riverworld anthologies Farmer edited, Tales of Riverworld.



Don Ivan Punchatz
 
 

Tim Howller
1 article, "Parables are Pablum: A Reply to Mr. Farmer, A Letter to Mr. Campbell", 1954.

A pseudonym not connected to a fictional author. But the name Tim Howller has been used by Farmer for fictional characters in two of his stories, "After King Kong Fell" (1973) and "The Face that Launched a Thousand Eggs" (2005).
Only with the publication in Farmerphile it became known that Phil Farmer had used this pseudonym to criticize his own article, "White Whales, Raintrees, Flying Saucers", that was published in the same issue of Skyhook (#23, Winter 1954-1955).


Joey Van Massenhoven
 
 

Rod Keen
1 story, "It's the Queen of Darkness, Pal", 1978.

Rod Keen is a fictional author from Richard Brautigan's The Abortion: An Historical Romance 1966 (1971).


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Harry 'Bunny' Manders
1 story, "The Problem of the Sore Bridge - Among Others", 1975.

Harry Manders is a fictional author from the four Raffles novels by E.W. Hornung.



Robert Oswald Moser
 
 

Jeanette Rastignac
1 story, "The First Robot", 2008.

A never actually used pseudonym, but the story was originally written – in the early 1950's – using the penname Jeanette Rastignac, the same name as that of the alien woman on the planet Ozagen from The Lovers. This information came with the first publication of the story in the magazine Farmerphile.

The last name has also been used for a character, Jean-Jacques Rastignac, in one of Farmer's other stories, "Rastignac the Devil".


Joey Van Massenhoven
 
 

Jonathan Swift Somers III
2 stories, "A Scarletin Study", 1975 , and
"The Doge Whose Barque Was Worse Than His Bight", 1976.
Both stories are in the series Ralph von Wau Wau.
Also a letter in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1975.
And an essay, "Trout Masque Rectifier (Now It Can Be Told Differently—The Truth About Trout)" (2012). This piece was actually written by Michael Croteau & Rhys Hughes.

Jonathan Swift Somers III is a fictional author in Venus on the Half-Shell by Kilgore Trout. According to Phil Farmer in his fictional biography, Jonathan Swift Somers III is the son of the fictional author Jonathan Swift Somers II, from the Spoon River Anthology (1915) by Edgar Lee Masters.
The name also has references to Jonathan Swift, the author of Gullifer's Travels.


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Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor
1 story in collaboration with Farmer, "Osiris on Crutches", 1976,
2 essays, "A Whale of a Time" (2008) and "Desires Denied" (2012).

The story, "Osiris on Crutches", is solely written by Philip José Farmer.
The essays "A Whale of a Time" and "Desires Denied" were written by Roger Crombie.

Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor is a fictional sience fiction author in Stations of the Nightmare (1974-1975) by Phil Farmer.
Also in his story "Fundamental Issue" (1976).
The name Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor has references to characters from L. Frank Baum's Oz-series: the Lion, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and Dorothy, as well as from Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick: Queequeg, a South Sea Islander, who is covered with special tattoos.
In some cases the last name is wrongly spelled as Tincrowder.


Greg Theakston
 
 

Kilgore Trout
1 novel, Venus on the Half-Shell, 1975.

Kilgore Trout is a fictional author in the novels by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Trout first appeared in God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), and later also in Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Breakfast of Champions (1973).
Phil Farmer wrote a fictional biography about Kilgore Trout, based on the first two (version 1, 1971) or three novels (version 2, 1973) with Trout, "The Obscure Life and Hard Times of Kilgore Trout".
In later Vonnegut novels, as Jailbird (1979) and Timequake (1997), the character Kilgore Trout got an even more prominent role.
See this webpage with Farmer's story about Kilgore Trout.



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John H. Watson, M.D.
1 novel, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, 1974.

John Watson is a fictional author from the stories about Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle.



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© Zacharias L.A. Nuninga -- Page last updated: 24 Dec 2019