Tag Archives: Neil Gaiman

A June Evening with Neil Gaiman

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Neil Gaiman

Neil Gaiman

Fans are invited to spend “An Evening with Neil Gaiman” – and spend a few bucks for the privilege, but with the price of admission comes a copy of his new novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and you were going to buy that anyway, right?

Gaiman will be interviewed by Entertainment Weekly’s Geoff Boucher at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, CA on June 27 (click here for ticket information.)

Gaiman is one of the field’s most honored writers, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, Newbery Medal, and Carnegie Medal. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008).

Geoff Boucher, an Entertainment Weekly staff writer, has accumulated a wealth of experience covering sf, fantasy, horror and comics. He created the award-winning website Hero Complex for the Los Angeles Times. His past interviews include Dr. Emilio Lizardo (okay, okay, it was really John Lithgow…)  

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

James Bacon: Gaiman, Edwards Animated Short Film

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By James Bacon: The short film, Down Among the Dead Men, is definitely worth watching. Narrated by Neil Gaiman, it has a lovely mix of animation and artwork by Les Edwards. (I have to admit a favourite artist of mine, he did the superb wrap around cover for the Intersection 1995 Worldcon programme, and I have loved his work since.)

Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback is an anthology, a selection of reportage, insights and accounts, that all take a variety of looks at the one incident, “The Death,” a zombie plague that starts in London.

It is the second in the Zombie Apocalypse series, the first released in 2010. The selection of authors was bloody good, but it was the way that then each one was presented in a particular style, relative to that viewpoint, that added to the whole setting, giving the reader a strange and insightful sense of placement, a voyeuristic feeling of proximity to such a disaster. Some of these stories were handwritten, others appeared as reports, emails, or press releases, but each author had their own “look” to their angle on “The Death.”

The second anthology has some seriously good authors, including favourites of mine, such as Michael Marshall Smith,, Paul McAuley, Sarah Pinborough, and the story by Neil Gaiman and Les Edwards that this animated short is based on, which is now available to view on You Tube.

Save The Last Graph For Me

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Neil Gaiman says his next book-signing tour will be his last – when he’ll travel in the U.S., U.K., and elsewhere promoting The Ocean at the End of the Lane, coming in June 2013. Gaiman last did a signing tour in 2005 and explained to readers of his blog the difficulty:

They’re exhausting, on a level that’s hard to believe. I love meeting people, but the sixth hour of signing, for people who have been standing in a line for seven hours, is no fun for anybody. (The last proper US signing I did, it lasted over 7 hours and I signed for over 1000 people. I’d suspect a lot of the signings on this tour will be like that, or bigger.)

In the same post, Gaiman shared details about another project due out this year, Fortunately The Milk:

This is quite possibly the most exciting adventure ever to be written about milk since Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Milk. Also it has aliens, pirates, dinosaurs and wumpires in it (but not the handsome, misunderstood kind), not to mention a Volcano God.

It contains passages like this:

“You are charged with breaking into people’s planets and redecorating them,” said a noble and imposing-looking Tyrannosaurus Rex. “And then with running away and doing it again somewhere else, over and over. You have committed crimes against the inhabitants of eighteen planets, and crimes against good taste.”

“What we did to Rigel Four was art!” argued a globby alien.

“Art? There are people on Rigel Four,” said an Ankylosaurus, “who have to look up, every night, at a moon with three huge plaster ducks flying across it.”

Two Gaiman Plays Coming to Worldcon

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A  theatrical double bill of plays adapted from Neil Gaiman’s stories will be featured at Chicon 7, the 2012 Worldcon. In “Snow, Glass, Apples” Gaiman dissects the disturbing reasons for Snow White’s snow-white skin and blood-red lips, while in “Troll Bridge” he replaces the Three Billy Goats Gruff with a feckless boy named Jack who carelessly trip-traps over the fateful bridge.

The full press release follows the jump.

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Gaiman and Mack Tattoo Design

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Burton Olivier asked Neil Gaiman to write a comic to be tattooed on his back. Gaiman agreed if he could promote the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in the process. And he got David Mack, Olivier’s choice, to draw it.

A photo of Olivier’s tattoo is available at Robot 6.

And the CBDLF is offering a limited number of color prints of the illuminated poem.

The text of Gaiman’s poem reads:

I will write in words of fire. I will write them on your skin. I will write about desire. Write beginnings, write of sin. You’re the book I love the best, your skin only holds my truth, you will be a palimpsest lines of age rewriting youth. You will not burn upon the pyre. Or be buried on the shelf. You’re my letter to desire: And you’ll never read yourself. I will trace each word and comma As the final dusk descends, You’re my tale of dreams and drama, Let us find out how it ends.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

#4 With a Bullet

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When Harlan Ellison learned he was ranked fourth in my list of Top Newsmakers of 2011 he gave me a call.

I was away, so he gave Diana the number and promised “He’s not in trouble.” I don’t believe a science fiction writer has ever said that about me before. Readers of this blog will be amazed one has said it now.

When I returned his call Harlan said he was pleased to have appeared in the list of Top 10 Newsmakers – and told me a great many more things I should have reported about him last year. Very true. And here they are.

In 2011 Harlan was voted his fourth Nebula by the members of SFWA, for “How Interesting: A Tiny Man.” At the age of 77 he is the oldest person ever to win the award. He’s the only author with three Nebula-winning short stories. (Harlan won his other Nebula years ago for a novella, A Boy and His Dog.) He’s also a past recipient of SFWA’s Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award (2006).

Last year one of my favorite writers, Robert Crais, dedicated his latest Joe Pike mystery to him. Harlan says over 200 books have been dedicated to him in his lifetime.

He’s been blessed with a revitalization of his writing after being diagnosed and treated for Clinical Depression – ending a stretch of time when he believed he was simply dying and had announced his last convention appearance.

Last year Harlanbooks.com produced four Ellison projects.

Brain Movies: The Original Teleplays of Harlan Ellison, Volumes One and Two collect his television scripts, which appear exactly as they did when he pulled them from his Olympia manual typewriter, before any alterations by the shows’ producers.

A limited edition of Volume One with special material, signed by Ellison and J. Michael Straczynski (author of the introduction), made over $70K he says.

The second volume of Brain Movies features an introduction by Patton Oswalt and six more Ellison teleplays. Among them are “Mealtime,” an episode of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea that resulted in an ABC censor having his pelvis broken by a model of the Seaview (and was aired under the Cordwainer Bird pseudonym); plus two episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Then there were two “101” books. Harlan 101: Encountering Ellison, which boasts a foreword by Neil Gaiman, is an introduction to Ellison’s work and advice to writers. There are seven essays on the craft of writing and short stories including his latest Nebula winner, “How Interesting: A Tiny Man,” and five Hugo Award winners “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” “The Deathbird,” “Jeffty Is Five,” and “Paladin of the Lost Hour.”

Harlan 101: The Sound of A Scythe and 3 Brilliant Novellas is notable for the reappearance of Ellison’s second novel (The Sound of A Scythe) in a substantially revised and expanded form and using the author’s preferred title (the original publisher renamed it The Man With Nine Lives without Ellison’s consent). It’s 25% longer than in the 1960 edition, which Ace chopped by 40,000 words.

In one week in December he had 5 books come out. One of them, Bugf#ck: The Worthless Wit & Wisdom of Harlan Ellison, has already sold through two printings – something like 70,000 copies. The small-sized hardback book (128 numbered pages with a 4 x 5.5 inch trim size) gathers Harlan’s best bon mots.

There is more on the way in 2012.

Harlan has a story in the forthcoming Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury edited by Sam Weller & Mort Castle. There will be a numbered edition limited to 500 signed by all the contributors except Bradbury, priced at $75, and a lettered edition limited to 26 copies, which is signed by Bradbury, going for $500. For more information and to order, click this link. Among the other contributors are Margaret Atwood, David Eggers, Neil Gaiman, Alice Hoffman, and Joe Hill.

In 2012 Kicks Books of Brooklyn will reissue the gang stories he wrote as Paul Merchant in the late 1950s.

Without a doubt, Harlan’s already hard at work securing a spot at the front of the field of this year’s newsmakers.

Wooster: YouTube Video of the Day
(Featuring Neil Gaiman)

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By Martin Morse Wooster: You should see a YouTube video called “Don’t Mess With Firefly! How Sci Fi Fans Made a Campus Safe for Free Speech!” by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education or FIRE, posted at thefire.org.

Short version:  University of Wisconsin (Stout) theatre professor puts a poster on his door quoting “Firefly” that the campus police chief tears down because of “sensitivity” issues: FIRE (a pro-free speech organization) gets involved, contacts “Firefly” fans; Neil Gaiman tweeted about it and his 1.6 million (!!!) followers began beseiging the university with email; school backs down; free speech wins.

Gaiman’s extensively interviewed in the video.

Gaiman on “Wait, Wait” TV Special

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Neil Gaiman will be a guest on the television debut of Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!. Its “2011 Year in Review” special airs December 23 at 8 p.m. on BBC America.  

Show mainstays, host Peter Sagal, official judge and scorekeeper Carl Kasell, and frequent panelists Paula Poundstone and Alonzo Bodden all join the fun, says The Hollywood Reporter.

NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! reaches 3.2 million listeners weekly, who will get to hear “2011 Year in Review” on NPR stations December 24 and 25.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Gaiman and Palmer Tour Starts on Halloween

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Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer’s 5-date West Coast tour starts in L.A. on October 31. Their coming has already been heralded in social media by the raising of $133,341 on Kickstarter from people who have prepaid to download a digital recording of the event and to receive other goodies.

we’ll have a piano, a ukulele, and maybe some other weird instruments, as well as some unpublished and uncollected Neil Gaiman stories and poems. we’ll both probably switch up what we’re presenting from night to night. we’ll be taking questions from the audience, chat-style, and trying to do special things in each venue, busting out a few surprises, and more or less trying to feel like we’ve connected with you, the people we love and usually only get to talk to directly on twitter & blog-land.

The L.A. Times profiled their marriage in the October 26 edition:

“This was meant to be us doing a gentle road trip, having a chance to be together,” Gaiman says. “We love each other, and the nature of our lives right now is that we are apart as much as we are together. So it seemed like a glorious excuse, working and also having a holiday in each other’s company.”

And Palmer describes their marriage like this:

“I realized one of the deal sealers with Neil in the early days was that he was absolutely willing to have a relationship that didn’t look like any other relationship,” she says. “And so was I. I looked at his life and his situation and his job and my job and who we are and what we value and what we do, and we both said, ‘Whoa, whatever we figure out and whatever we decide to do, it’s not going to be like anything people would even understand.’ To this day we struggle with space and time and attention and energy. But every couple does. So I never think of us as special.”

Besides, the free-spirited, outspoken Palmer — who’s raised eyebrows for lyrics about a victim of date rape having an abortion, not to mention for her own unusually plucked brows — would never fit into traditional matrimony. Gaiman had already tried that route.

“I actually feel like myself, instead of some bizarre pod version of a wife,” she says. “I look at people who hold that 9-to-5 and see each other every night, and I go, ‘Wow, I would kill that person.’”

I noticed that the early commenters on the article weren’t big fans of Amanda Palmer and/or the marriage. Regrettably, every LA Times article collects these social barnacles. I am pleased to see an editor has since come along and scraped off the most offensive.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]

Ellison’s Health Overshadows
Hall of Fame Induction

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Harlan Ellison will be inducted into the SF Hall of Fame tomorrow, June 25. Neil Gaiman will accept on his behalf. Ellison had not been expected to attend, however, a new CNN report says the reasons are dire:

Ellison, who had been extremely ill for several months, said in a telephone interview that he’s in the “last stages of something.”

“And I don’t have a cold,” he sarcastically noted.

Editor Gardner Dozois and artists Vincent Di Fate and Jean “Moebius” Giraud are also being inducted.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]