What's in a Name?

“Paul Dale Anders…son,” the women sang. They broke my name up into two stanzas of two syllables each, placing the emphasis on the second syllable.

“Paul Dale,” they sang. “Anders Son. Paul Dale. Anders son. Paul Dale. Anders son.”


It became a magical chant. So rhythmic. So hypnotic. So simple.
Louisa and Virginia were my two partners in crime on the Faking it in Fandom panel at Windycon, the Chicago-area science fiction and fantasy convention November 10-12 in Lombard, Illinois.

It turns out they were also heads of the programming committee who made panel assignments. When they came across my name, they didn’t know what to do with it.

It was much too long to fit on name placards.

So they shortened it to Paul Anderson.

And it became simply P. Anderson in places on the printed program.

Anyway, they sang my name. They claimed my name was musical, and they really made it sound like music.

Paul Dale. Anders Son. Paul Dale. Anders Son.

One of the reasons I used to use pen names was the unwieldy length of my full name. I needed to include Dale to differentiate myself from authors like Poul Anderson and Paul Michael Anderson. That made my name too long to fit easily on book covers or spines and on convention badges and placards.

And one of the reasons I’m not better known in the sf community is because my name often gets truncated on programs, name badges and placards.

“You’re who?” people ask.

“Paul Dale Anderson.”

“Never heard of you.”

“Try singing it. Break it down into syllables so you’ll remember.”

Paul Dale. Anders Son.

My father was Paul Anders Anderson, and I really am Paul Anders’ son.

I lived the first twelve years of my life as Dale Anderson. My parents, relatives, and friends all called me Dale to differentiate me from my dad. Some of my friends still call me Dale.

Because editors found it difficult to include my full name on book and magazine covers, you can find some of my novels with only Paul Anderson on the spine. I used Dale Anders as a pen name for a while. It proved useful for contemporary romances and erotica. My first story in The Horror Show bore the Dale Anderson by-line.

But I prefer to use my full birth name for fantasy and horror.

Maybe Paul Dale Anderson doesn’t sound as scary as Stephen King or Dean Koontz. Try punctuating it. Paul Dale. Anders Son.

Yeah. That’s scary.

A. R. Morlan 1958-2016

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, would by any other name smell as sweet.” Romeo and Juliet, Act II, scene 2.

A. R. Morlan died this week. Ana was a writer, someone whose stories appeared often beside mine in magazines or anthologies. We were friends of sorts because we both wrote horrific tales, both lived in the Great Midwest (Morlan in Wisconsin and I in Illinois), and we both loved cats.

A. R. Morlan and I corresponded in the 1980s and 1990s when we still wrote everything by typewriter and sent mail via the post office (I began to also use a computer in 1988, but Morlan—not unlike Jerry Williamson—never felt comfortable with an electronic keyboard and continued to use a manual typewriter exclusively). The first novels to bear our by-lines appeared in print about the same time, and we kept busy writing our third and fourth novels while churning out short stories right and left. God was in His heaven, and all was right with the world. Then tragedies began befalling both of us.

For some strange reasons, Morlan began calling me Paul Dean (I think she confused me with Dean Koontz or C. Dean Andersson) and I began calling her Arlene. Arlene Campbell, for those of you who have not yet read A. R. Morlan’s The Amulet, was “dutchess of the Dumpsters, queen of Ewert Avenue, and the dowager of debris.” That, in retrospect, is probably an accurate description of A. R. Morlan.

When I learned of Morlan’s suicide and the mysterious disappearance of her mother and Ana’s subsequent legal difficulties, I began putting two and two together until an entire Fibonacci sequence unfolded before my eyes. There were clues in many of Morlan’s Ewerton stories that foretold the tragedy of her life and death. I reread Morlan’s letters and Christmas cards, reread The Amulet and Dark Journey, and reread selected stories. Her entire life is there, spelled out in graphic detail, hidden among the names she chose for her characters.

I wish I had known A. R. Morlan better during her lifetime. She was a complex person whose stories were her life.

So goodbye Ana, Anna, Arlene, Arlette, Renee, and all the other names you chose to write under or become. Thanks for the nightmares.