Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman
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Prince of Stories: The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman
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Overview
Over the past twenty years, Neil Gaiman has developed into the premier fantasist of his generation, achieving that rarest of combinations—unrivaled critical respect and extraordinary commercial success. From the landmark comic book series The Sandman to novels such as the New York Times bestselling American Gods and Anansi Boys, from children's literature like Coraline to screenplays for such films as Beowulf, Gaiman work has garnered him an enthusiastic and fiercely loyal, global following. To comic book fans, he is Zeus in the pantheon of creative gods, having changed that industry forever. For discerning readers, he bridges the vast gap that traditionally divides lovers of "literary" and "genre" fiction. Gaiman is truly a pop culture phenomenon, an artist with a magic touch whose work has won almost universal acclaim.
Now, for the first time ever, Prince of Stories chronicles the history and impact of the complete works of Neil Gaiman in film, fiction, music, comic books, and beyond. Containing hours of exclusive interviews with Gaiman and conversations with his collaborators, as well as wonderful nuggets of his work such as the beginning of an unpublished novel, a rare comic and never-before-seen essay, this is a treasure trove of all things Gaiman. In addition to providing in depth information and commentary on Gaiman's myriad works, the book also includes rare photographs, book covers, artwork, and related trivia and minutiae, making it both an insightful introduction to his work, and a true "must-have" for his ever growing legion of fans.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781429961783 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 10/28/2008 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 560 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
HANK WAGNER's reviews and interviews have appeared in Mystery Scene, Cemetery Dance, Hellnotes, and The New York Review of Science Fiction. Wagner is a co-author of The Complete Stephen King Universe.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN is the award-winning, bestselling author of numerous novels, of which there are 8 million copies in print. His non-fiction work includes The Complete Stephen King Universe and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Watcher's Guide.
STEPHEN R. BISSETTE is a cartoonist, writer, editor, and publisher. He is best-known for Saga of the Swamp Thing, Taboo, '1963,' Tyrant, and co-creating John Constantine. Bissette also illustrates books and has authored fiction and non-fiction.
Hank Wagner is a respected critic and journalist. Among the many publications in which his work regularly appears are Cemetery Dance and Mystery Scene.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN (he/him) is the New York Times bestselling and Bram Stoker award-winning author of Ararat, Snowblind, Dead Ringers, and Of Saints and Shadows, among many other novels. With Mike Mignola, he is the co-creator of two cult favorite comic book series, Baltimore and Joe Golem: Occult Detective. Golden is also the editor of such anthologies as Seize the Night, The New Dead, and Dark Cities, and the co-host of the popular podcast "Three Guys with Beards." He lives in Massachusetts.
Stephen R. Bissette is a cartoonist, writer, editor, and publisher. He is best-known for Saga of the Swamp Thing, Taboo, '1963,' Tyrant, and co-creating John Constantine. Bissette also illustrates books and has authored fiction and non-fiction.
Read an Excerpt
Prince of Stories
The Many Worlds of Neil Gaiman
By Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, Stephen R. Bissette
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2008 Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. BissetteAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-6178-3
CHAPTER 1
PART ONE THE EARLY YEARS
The Gaiman family roots lay in Poland, but Neil's childhood was spent entirely in England, the country to which Gaiman's grandfather emigrated from the Netherlands in 1916. His grandfather opened a grocery store on the southern coast of England, in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth, eventually expanding this business venture into a grocery store chain, where Neil's father, David Bernard Gaiman, worked. David met pharmacist Sheila Goldman, and they were wed. Neil was born November 10, 1960, in Porchester, Hampshire, and was followed by two sisters, necessitating the family move to larger quarters. They settled in 1965 in the West Sussex town of East Grinstead, where Neil lived for all but four years of his youth (1980–84).
Neil attended several Church of England schools, including his home village's Fonthill School, Ardingly College (1970–74), and Whitgift School in Croydon (1974–77). Throughout his formative years, Gaiman was a tireless reader, gravitating to the works of fantasists like James Branch Cabell, Lord Dunsany, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton. In his teenage years he cultivated a great love for science fiction: novels and short stories by Samuel R. Delany, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, Harlan Ellison, H. P. Lovecraft, Thorne Smith, and Gene Wolfe were among his personal favorites, along with the challenging works of Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas Adams's innovative and satiric radio serial The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the countless comic books he devoured with a passion. Gaiman's own nascent writings emerged from this steady diet of fantasy and science fiction, though it must be noted he read all genres and fields.
Once he was out of school and entering his early twenties, in the early to mid-1980s, Gaiman cut his teeth as a journalist and critic, selling many interviews, articles, and book and movie reviews to any available venue, building his professional connections and credentials as he did so. His reviews were plentiful, spanning venues from the slick newsstand UK Penthouse to Stefan Jaworzyn's underground Shock Xpress horror fanzine. Via interviews and articles, Gaiman made his first links with other writers, including novelists Ramsey Campbell (interviewed by Gaiman for the UK Penthouse, May 1985) and James Herbert (for Publishing News and the 1988 World Fantasy Convention book Gaslight & Ghosts). His interviews with writers, musicians, and artists also graced the pages of Space Voyager, Time Out, Reflex, American Fantasy, Fantasy Empire, the British Fantasy Society, and other magazines, along with collaborative pieces for these and others, such as The Truth, and Interzone.
Gaiman struck up friendships with then rising stars such as Alan Moore (in pieces for Knave, American Fantasy, and The Comics Journal) and Clive Barker (see Gaiman's article "King of the Gory Tellers: Clive Barker" for Today, October 19, 1986, as well as his 1985 Barker interview in the UK Penthouse). His Time Out pieces included an article on "The Comics Explosion" (Time Out, 1986), and Gaiman's interviews with comics creators such as the Hernandez Brothers (Love & Rockets) and Dave Gibbons for other publications were critical to his future path.
Gaiman's key freelance writing venue during this period was the long popular UK adult newsstand magazine Knave (Galaxy Publications), which had published short fiction by Harlan Ellison, Henry Slesar, and others since the 1950s. Gaiman began freelancing for Knave in 1984, and his byline appeared on numerous book reviews, articles, and celebrity interviews, including interviews with popular actors like Patrick Macnee (The Avengers), Denholm Elliott, Divine (Pink Flamingos), TV comedians Rik Mayall (The Young Ones), Terry Jones (Monty Python), Rocky Horror Picture Show creator Richard O'Brien, cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, and science fiction authors Arthur C. Clarke, Frank Herbert, Harry Harrison, William Gibson, and Douglas Adams.
Gaiman's first professional short story sale was "Featherquest" for the short-lived advanced Dungeons and Dragons magazine Imagine (May 1984), for which he'd also written film reviews and subsequently another short story, "How to Sell the Ponti Bridge" (March 1985; reprinted in the Gaiman anthology M is for Magic). He also contributed three short stories to Knave — "We Can Get Them for You Wholesale" and "The Case of the Four & Twenty Blackbirds" (both 1984) and "Manuscript Found in a Milkbottle" (1985) — before leaving the magazine in 1986 due to an editorial change of the guard (ushering Knave into a more explicitly pornographic era) and into the greener pastures Gaiman had been cultivating outside of the adult magazine market.
In 1984, he wrote his first book, Duran Duran: The First Four Years of the Fab Five for Proteus. Gaiman delivered the definitive 126-page trade paperback volume on the English pop group, at the time the most commercially successful of the MTV-fueled (and fueling) eighties British postpunk scene bands. Written in the fifth year of the band's existence, at which point Duran Duran had sold over ten million records, the book covered the particulars of the band members — founders Nick Rhodes and John Taylor of Hollywood, Birmingham, Roger Taylor (no relation to John), Andy Taylor (ditto), and lead vocalist Simon Le Bon — and their meteoric rise. The band's hit singles of the time included "Girls on Film," "Rio," "Hungry Like the Wolf," and "The Reflex," all popularized by their videos, which played endlessly on MTV and in other venues.
Gaiman wrote in the acknowledgments, "While researching this book I discovered over seven completely wrong explanations, all of them different, for the origin of the name Duran Duran. Having checked it firsthand, I can vouch for the one given here (though the spelling is open to question)." The source? "Duran Duran took their name from the missing scientist in Barbarella," the 1968 Roger Vadim film based on the internationally renowned French comics series by Jean-Claude Forest (which debuted in 1962); the scientist's name was actually Durand Durand — hence, Gaiman's parenthetical note.
Such genre trivia played a bigger role in Gaiman's next book, Ghastly Beyond Belief: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of Quotations, an amusing paperback collection of absurd and simply awful dialogue and passages from science fiction, fantasy, and horror literature and movies co-authored with Kim Newman. As previously noted, Gaiman often collaborated with others on various magazine articles, and fellow journalist, critic, and novelist Kim Newman was primary among them. Born July 31, 1959, in London and growing up in Aller, Somerset, Newman's defining interest remains cinema history and horror fiction, though his own novels have struck out their own vivid strain of alternative historical fantasy. Ghastly Beyond Belief was Newman's first book; his second, a solo, was Nightmare Movies: A Critical History of the Horror Film, 1968–88 (1988), an intensive history of horror films. Fellow young genre writers like Newman, Stephen Jones, and Philip Nutman were among Gaiman's circle of friends and associates, as were writers Eugene Byrne (a frequent collaborator with Gaiman and Newman on articles for The Truth), and Stefan Jaworzyn. With Stephen Jones, Gaiman cowrote the poem "Now We Are Sick," springboarding a satiric poetry anthology edited by Gaiman and Jones, which was published as a "sampler" in 1986, and in hardcover as Now We Are Sick: An Anthology of Nasty Verse in 1991. Other poets in the book include longtime Gaiman friends Kim Newman, Jo Fletcher, Terry Pratchett, Gene Wolfe, and John M. Ford. The title is a play on A. A. Milne's poetry collection Now We Are Six (1927). (See Gaiman's comments about A. A. Milne in his interview in this volume.)
Inspired by his ongoing comic book reading and his friendship with Alan Moore, Gaiman also began writing comics in earnest. Gaiman's first published comic scripts were four short pieces (1986–87) for the Future Shocks series for 2000 AD, a popular weekly science fiction comic published by IPC/Fleetway which debuted in 1977 and scored with its dystopian Judge Dredd character. Future Shocks took its title from the Alvin Toffler nonfiction bestseller of the mid-seventies, and it began in 2000 AD issue 25 as "Tharg's Future Shocks," launched by writer Steve Moore. Moore created a new format: two-to-four-page self-contained stories, usually involving time or interdimensional travel, with a twist in the tale's tail. The series proved to be popular with the readers, and has provided an ideal testing ground for new talent over the years, including Alan Moore, Peter Milligan, Alan Davis, Grant Morrison, Dave Gibbons — and Gaiman.
Two of Gaiman's 2000 AD stories appeared in 1986 — "You're Never Alone with a Phone!" in number 488 and "Conversation Piece!" in issue 489. Two others — "I'm a Believer" in issue 536 and "What's In a Name?" in issue 538 — made their debuts the following year.
During this early period Neil also took part in a graphic novel anthology from Knockabout Publications entitled Outrageous Tales from the Old Testament. Simultaneously funny and appalling, the stories illustrate the violence and depravity inherent in many biblical tales. The cover alone promised human sacrifice, murder, the wrath of God, and "enormous boils." In addition to Gaiman, the book featured such comics superstars as Alan Moore, Dave McKean, and Dave Gibbons. Gaiman contributed six of the fourteen stories, and was the only writer to have more than one, making him the primary creative force behind this twisted bit of fun. His stories were "The Book of Judges," illustrated by Mike Matthews; "Jael and Sisera," illustrated by Julie Hollings; "Jephthah and His Daughter," illustrated by Peter Rigg; "Journey to Bethlehem," illustrated by Steve Gibson; "The Tribe of Benjamin," illustrated by Mike Matthews; and "The Prophet Who Came to Dinner," illustrated by Dave McKean.
With his pro debut in Future Shocks, Gaiman had entered the comics field, and soon grew eager to stretch his wings. The first of three original graphic novels written for his longtime friend and favorite artist, Dave McKean, Violent Cases (1987) soon followed. This work and the other two, Signal to Noise and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch, are discussed elsewhere in this book, as is their collaborative limited series for DC Comics, Black Orchid.
During this period Gaiman also wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion (1988), his first book to be published simultaneously in the United States and the UK. Gaiman had interviewed and written about Douglas Adams for Knave, the UK Penthouse, Time Out (1988), and other venues, and Don't Panic was written very much in Adams's dry tongue-in-cheek style. Subsequent editions featured additional material by other writers: Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1993) had new text by David K. Dickson, and Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (2002) featured still more new material, by M. J. Simpson. A fourth edition, the definitive North American one, was published by Titan Books in 2003. In any case, Don't Panic was Gaiman's final nonfiction book project. Thereafter, his own fantasies were his focus. Everything changed after his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on the comical apocalyptic novel Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (1990).
Of course, throughout these years, young Neil had been working as a journalist. We're pleased to be able to present two early examples of that work.
THE QUOTABLE GAIMAN
As far as I'm concerned, the entire reason for becoming a writer is not having to get up in the morning. It's not writing when you don't want to, and writing late at night if you want to. I'm a fairly undisciplined writer. I'm the kind of writer who, if a deadline is looming and I'm not there yet, will go off and take a room for a couple of weeks in a cheap hotel somewhere that I don't know anybody, and do nothing but put my head down and finish the book or the project.
— Writers Write, The Internet Writing Journal (writerswrite.com), March 1999
On his memories of Douglas Adams:
Well he was incredibly tall. And incredibly baffled. Not baffled in the Simon Jones or Arthur Dent way though: "I'm English and I'm truly baffled." Douglas was a combination of bafflement and bemusement, not really quite understanding how it had all happened. Which was always kind of fun. It made him very, very charming. He was a brilliant man. Completely brilliant.
— Writers Write, The Internet Writing Journal (writeswrite.com), July 2001
FANTASYTIME AT THE NEW IMPERIAL1
BIRMINGHAM: 14TH TO 16TH OCTOBER: FANTASYCON VIII BY NEIL GAIMAN
Last week I attended my first convention. It was Fantasycon VIII, the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society. Conventions are a fairly new development in this country, although they've been big in the U.S. for many years. I was there to interview A Very Famous SF Writer for A Leading Men's Magazine, and felt somewhat out of place.
Outside it was raining like you wouldn't believe, and inside Ms. Jo Fletcher, cochairperson of the convention, explained what I could expect to see: "A lot of talking. And a lot of drinking, mainly. You won't find people playing all day long, games of Dungeons and Dragons, or War Gaming on the stairs, or dressed up as their favourite fantasy characters. Nobody swinging a light sword in the bar. We are not," she emphasizes, "that sort of a convention!"
That's a relief. I was worried that it might be de rigueur to arrive at the bar dressed as Red Sonja or Gandalf the Grey in order to be served.
"So this is a respectable convention, then?"
She giggled. "No. There's still too much fun for it to be a seminar. It's respected — I don't think it's respectable.
"People who are interested in the books, the films, the art-work, rather than those into games or role playing. Most people here are pros or semi pros, working in the field in one way or other.
"People who are interested aren't the sort that buy a fantasy book a year from W. H. Smiths. They are people who go to the specialist bookshops. People who dream. People who wonder. People who still live to read fairy tales. SF may be a new development," she points out, "but fantasy has been around since the world of legends began."
Isn't there, I ask nervously, something just a little odd or immature about taking so seriously what, after all, are simply fairy tales?
"NO! Absolutely not! Fairy tales are bloody and gory and ... well, perhaps there's something immature about the people who dress up and play games. I don't go to those sort of things, so I wouldn't know. But if you just want to meet the people whose books you read and talk to the people whose films you watch, and if it happens to be in an atmosphere of booze and jollity and book covers ... well, what's wrong with that?
"It's a gathering of like-minded people. About every aspect of fantasy. And it's very easy to become addicted to it."
With that she hands me:
1 programme
2 Spacehunter balloons
1 Spacehunter badge (3D!)
1 Spacehunter preview ticket
1 raffle ticket
5 assorted film/book/posters and fliers
"You've missed the Monster Club film, but it's the Cthulhu mythos panel through there in a few minutes." I nod gratefully, and, clutching my pile of free-bies, I wander into the lecture room. I look at my programme. I've missed the panel on "Why Critics Revile the Sword and Sorcery Genre," and another on "What is the difference between Fantasy and Science Fiction?" (Other, I suppose, than my own rule of thumb, which I will offer here: If the book has a spaceship on the cover it's Science Fiction; if it's got someone holding a sword or a unicorn on the cover it's Fantasy. Voila!)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Prince of Stories by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, Stephen R. Bissette. Copyright © 2008 Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,A Slightly Worn but Still Quite Lovely Foreword by Terry Pratchett,
Introduction: Exploring the In-Between,
PART ONE THE EARLY YEARS,
PART TWO THE SANDMAN,
PART THREE THE GRAPHIC NOVELS,
PART FOUR THE COMICS,
PART FIVE THE NOVELS,
PART SIX THE CHILDREN'S BOOKS,
PART SEVEN THE SHORT STORIES,
PART EIGHT THE POEMS AND SONGS,
PART NINE THE SCRIPTS,
PART TEN THE ODDITIES,
PART ELEVEN THE WORLD OF NEIL GAIMAN,
PART TWELVE THE APPENDICES,
Index,