You’ve probably read something like this after the copyright in every fiction book you’ve read: “This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.” Something to that effect, at least. The publisher or author might add something about settings and products, if real, are only used in a fictional context.

Such statements are made by authors and publishers to protect them against lawsuits for libel and/or slander for the most part. Most characters are well-tempered amalgams of people the author knows, of course, accentuating certain traits here and diminishing them there. Same for places of business, products, and so forth. Authors do this unconsciously, and there’s usually no problem. Below I’ll focus on the characters, but most of what I say also applies to things.

Some authors often don’t understand that they can write real people into their books. That’s obvious for biographies and autobiographies. Even memoirs, if there’s evidence for anything negative you say about other people (consult a lawyer?). Historical fiction usually has a mix. But can genre fiction use real people and stay out of legal trouble?

I’m no legal scholar, but the answer to the last question is yes! I worried about this when I was writing Aristocrats and Assassins. Many of the aristocrats are real. I didn’t use their real names, opting instead for Shakespeare’s solution of calling them Denmark and so forth (not really Shakespearean, simply a reflection of old royal tradition—the king or queen IS the state!). There were two reasons for that: it wouldn’t be clear who I’m referring to exactly, and it wouldn’t date the novel (the two reasons are related, of course). You can make a guess about the person because the Chen and Castilblanco novels are linearly ordered in time, but that timeline is fictional if you consider that the events in The Midas Bomb supposedly took place in 2014. (Maybe they did, and the government just didn’t tell us about them? They certainly involved Mr. Obama.)

As I neared the end of the novel writing marathon with Aristocrats and Assassins and after further thought, I realized that I didn’t need to worry. Clancy had used Prince Charles in Clear and Present Danger, and, as far as I know, received no blow-back from the British royal’s lawyers. You might know about other cases involving books in the mystery and thriller genres.

You can use real people if they have no reason to sue you, i.e. you show them in a good light. Clancy did that with Prince Charles. I did it for all the real royals in my novel (the fake ones had some questionable character traits, but don’t come off too badly either). In fact, some of the royals in my novel performed the role of hero in various parts of the tale.

In that sense, I could categorize Aristocrats and Assassins as historical fiction, but it’s set in a fictional future! Beyond mystery and thriller, that’s a good way to describe it (illustrating once again that genre labels nowadays can be nothing more than keywords). And that probably makes the novel unusual enough that I’m surprised other authors haven’t jumped on that bandwagon. It might even make a good movie. Nah! Hollywood would probably destroy it, just like they have the Jack Reacher stories.

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Comments are welcome!

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