Neil Gaiman Research

Today I will be researching Neil Gaiman, who is an author, comic writer and film director. Gaiman is known for his "Sandman" series of comic books and the novel "American Gods". His books "Coraline" and "Stardust" have been made into successful films, and his book "Neverwhere" was adapted into a BBC2 series. He has recently written an adaptation of Kipling's "The Jungle Book", but set it in a cemetery and renamed it "The Graveyard Book", with the Mowglai character raised by ghosts and a vampire.

Neil Gaiman writes for both adults and children, with Stardust being, as he himself says, 'A fairy tale for adults'.

As a child and a teenager, Gaiman read the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis Carroll, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Allan Poe, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton. He later became a fan of science fiction, reading the works of authors as diverse as Alan Moore, Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, Robert A. Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, H. P. Lovecraft, Thorne Smith, and Gene Wolfe.

In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984, when he was 23.

When waiting for a train at Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman noticed a copy of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it. Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that he would later write; "that was the final straw, what was left of my resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".

In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. Even though Gaiman thought he did a terrible job, the book's first edition sold out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by Penthouse. On one side, it was steady income to support his wife and two kids. On the other, it was an adult magazine. He refused the offer.

He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including Knave. As he was writing for different magazines, some of them competing, and "wrote too many articles", he sometimes went by a number of pseudonyms: Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, "along with a couple of house names". Gaiman ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers can "make up anything they want and publish it as fact.

In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style.Following on from that he wrote the opening of what would become his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.

Publishers


Sandman (1989-1996) Vertigo Comics
Stardust (1998) Avon Books
American Gods (2001) Morrow
Coraline (2002) Bloomsbury (UK) Harper Collins (US)
Anansi Boys (2005) Morrow
Mirrormask (2005) Dark Horse Books
The Graveyard Book (2008) Bloomsbury (UK) Harper Collins (US)

Advertising

Mirrormask
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA1iawlsKLg

Stardust
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6_gBg4XjWk

Coraline
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIdKHN1Bu0M

Reviews
Coraline

‘I think this book will nudge ALICE IN WONDERLAND out of its niche at last. It is the most splendidly original, weird, and frightening book I have read, and yet full of things children will love’
Diana Wynne Jones

‘This book will send a shiver down your spine, out through your shoes and into a taxi to the airport. It has the delicate horror of the finest fairy tales, and it is a masterpiece. And you will never think about buttons in quite the same way again’
Terry Pratchett

Stardust

In prose that dances and dazzles, Gaiman describes the indescribable: the eerie colours, ravishing scents and dangerous laughter of Faerie’ Susanna Clarke

http://bestsellers.about.com/od/fictionreviews/gr/stardust.htm

 Mirrormask


‘One of the most stylish picture books for 5+ ... a strange, cathartic, visually original book about a scary prediction that comes true, and is also classy and cool’
Sunday Times Books of the Year

‘This spectacular book, with its stylish blend of photography, paint, collage and drawing does not look like most children’s picture books. It bypasses the cosy, simplified clichés of child appeal, which makes it absolutely intriguing for youngsters. It is atmospheric, sinister, scary and funny …This is a book for cool kids who will grow up to be fearless’
Sunday Times

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/About_Neil/Biography
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Gaiman
http://www.bloomsbury.com/Coraline/Neil-Gaiman/books/details/9780747594062
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Stardust-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0755322827