Greats of Science Fiction

Gaiman, Neil

“Stories you read when you're the right age never quite leave you. You may forget who wrote them or what the story was called. Sometimes you'll forget precisely what happened, but if a story touches you it will stay with you, haunting the places in your mind that you rarely ever visit.”

Neil Gaiman is not your typical Science Fiction Writer. He would definitely be described as a Genre Bender, most commonly known for drawing heavily on myths in work closer to Fantasy, Magic Realism, and sometimes verging on Horror. However, whether he’s a pure Science Fiction author or not, it is the case that he is an author whose work you should be reading.

If you need his Science Fiction credentials, it is a fact that the second book he ever published was a biography of Douglas Adams entitled Don’t Panic. He is also close friends with a number of Proper Science Fiction Authors, including the late Ray Bradbury, for whom Neil wrote a very moving short story as a 90th birthday present.

Hard core Science Fiction or not, you should be reading Neil Gaiman because he lends everything he writes a great deal of heart. His fan base is made up of near equal parts women and men, and those fans remain so doggedly dedicated to the man because each one of them can tell you of a time when a Neil Gaiman story moved them to tears, or was the one thing they needed in a dark or trying time.

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

In meatspace (c. Neal Stephenson), Neil Richard Gaiman was born on November 10, 1960 in Portchester, England. He attended a number of lovely and not-so-lovely English schools, was a member of a punk band for a time, never completed University, and found his way into writing professionally through journalism. However, all of that is well documented in Hayley Campbell’s The Art of Neil Gaiman, or, you know, Wikipedia.

“Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”

What is crucial about Neil’s earlier years is the fact that the man had been reading novels, pretty much, since birth. He tells stories of receiving the full set of The Chronicles of Narnia for his 7th birthday and disappearing from the world for a time so he could devour them. He borrowed The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers from his school library, and read them over and over again, not moving on to read The Return of the King until he won the school English prize at 13 and was allowed to request the book as his reward.

“When I was four, I was bitten by a radioactive myth” Neil claims as a way of explaining the cause for his particular brand of writing. However, the culprit could have just as easily been a radioactive book.

Whether myth or book, all those years of reading have left Neil with a beautiful ability to weave existing myths into original stories. The work that saw “Gaiman” become a household name was Sandman, a 75-issue run of comics that Neil created for DC’s mature imprint, Vertigo. The series focuses on the character of Dream, lord of the same and member of a family of supernatural entities (gods?) known as The Endless.

“People think dreams aren't real just because they aren't made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”

Sandman explored all manner of myth and story, from the biblical to the Norse. It has also repeatedly been credited with being one of the first works to bring female patrons into comic shops, due partially to the portrayal of Death, dream’s sister, as a friendly young goth woman.

“I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn't that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you can tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they'll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don't know. She probably didn't even know I was there. But I'll always love her. All my life.”