Spontaneous ∂erivation

I love Neil Gaiman’s work. His writing in combination with Terry Pratchett’s in Good Omens got me interested in two variants of non-stereotypical fantasy (and actually the first types of fantasy I became interested in) and provided a lot of relief from a bad parental situation.

Last night, I reread Endless Nights, seven short comic book stories about the Endless from Sandman, a series which I love.

It was Delirium’s story that made me go “argh, Neil Gaiman, why did you do this?!”

One of the crazy people is a raped girl who’s gone catatonic. Now. I didn’t mind that bit, because mental illness is mental illness whether someone is inserting Unfortunate Implications or not, and I think Gaiman was mostly not, for this part of the story.

No, it was the ending, where she wakes up and says, “I spent enough time there already, I’m done now.”

That was fine. I have felt this very way for years.

And then she says, “I’ll let it go.”

Four words that ruin the story.

It’s okay in one sense, in that even with chronic PTSD, there are things you can choose to do to heal over a long, looong period of time.

But it’s not okay in a lot of other senses. To name just two major ones: (a) that traumatic reactions are just a choice and not, you know, the result of hormones, body chemicals, or the long-term results of evolution/nurture; (b) that the traumatized are, basically, just victimizing themselves when they can just simply choose to let it go.

Dude, man. You for sure know it’s not that simple, right? You know that’s one of the worst examples of Armchair Psychology, almost verging on Family Unfriendly Aesop? Right? Right??

But, I quite liked the rest of the collection. He’s still a good storyteller, and we all make really, really, really stupid mistakes sometimes. There’s no help for it, except to listen when people tell you “I have a problem with this,” and also for people to say so in the first place. Fallibility is what it means to be human.

For any Neil Gaiman apologists, yes, I forgive him. No, I’m not rewriting this.

I’m going back to bed.

Previously we covered the science fiction and fantasy novels on the Locus 2008 Reading List; next up are the first novels and Young Adult novels (both SF and fantasy).

Note: if a Young Adult novel was also the first published novel for the author, it’s usually placed in the first novel category instead. But sometimes it’s not (such as Tender Morsels).

Yes, it would have been simpler to just have Fantasy/Science Fiction, except for all the ones that are between (like An Evil Guest), but then we wouldn’t have recognition of first novels or Y.A. Or something. I don’t know.

I think it would have been better to tag novels as first, Y.A, and/or SF/F, and then list the lot by author last name.

Anyways! Moving on.

First Novels

Young Adult

After this point in the reading list, the books available to read on the Kindle—or indeed, electronically anywhere else—becomes thin on the ground. Out of the next 60 books on the list, equivalent to 4 sections worth of books, (up until “Non-Fiction”), only 10 are available for purchase in the Kindle store or Webscriptions.

So next week we’ll bring you those books plus anything we can scrape up in non-fiction and novellas.

1. From New on Kindle in October-November. [↩]
2. a la Le Guin’s Lavinia, also honored on the reading list for 2008. [↩]
3. From New on Kindle in October. [↩]
4. Which I just realized is also a play on “The Lost Colony,” and Roanoke is a significant word in both the story and history. Ha. [↩]

Kipling in the graveyard with a distinctly Gaiman twist.

I think of Neil Gaiman as a multi-media author these days; not only did he wreak a revolution in comics, but he’s also written best-seller novels for both adult and young-adult (if we must make that distinction), award-winning short stories, a Hugo-winning movie, and also reads his own audio books. These days the Gaiman experience is incomplete without an audio reading of his work, read by him. Not every author reads their work out loud well; Neil Gaiman is a treasure.

So The Graveyard Book thrives in multiple editions: print, multiple eBook formats, and multiple audio formats. I bought the Kindle edition (natch) and the Audible edition, since the Kindle can play audio books with all their chapter stops and saving places.¹ For free, you can listen to the video tour, where he reads each chapter from signing to signing.

The Graveyard Book is Gaiman playing off of Kipling. Some of the early chapters ring closely, though not too closely, to Kipling’s Jungle Book, but midway through the book strikes out entirely on its own. In other words, the story is largely Neil Gaiman being Neil Gaiman. There is a distinct Gaiman touch to anything he does, from the mythologically gothic (distinct from being simply gothic) to the smooth, dark figure of Silas; but each and every work stands out, and this is no exception.

What I love best about Neil Gaiman is that he has a playfulness about his stories. Such a trait adds extra flexibility that doesn’t exist in a writer who takes everything seriously², because being playful means you can even think about something as absurd as a boy being raised by a graveyard, much less bring it to life as well as he does. And that would apply to all of his stories, books and movies and plays and all, even the less successful ones (who remembers The Last Temptation?). This trait is shared by many great writers, but in Gaiman it’s particularly attuned to what may be thought of as urban fantasy, although that’s not quite the right term for it: it’s the fantastical threaded into the real world. This is his gift, and it results in whimsical stories that are so readable to a wide audience because they ply the real and the unreal together, in a down-to-earth way.

His audio books are quite an experience. He has a lovely reading voice and knows how to wield it when telling stories—the pacing, the voices, what tones to use where, etc. It’s not a skill set every author has, even if they’re reading their own work (we hear it clearly in our heads, but that’s different somehow). Coraline and the introduction to Fragile Things still stand out in my mind as the best of his readings, but the rest is not far behind, and his reading of The Graveyard Book is pure quality.

Over at Tor.com there’s a wonderful review of The Graveyard Book written by Bridget McGovern, where she has many things to say about why Neil Gaiman writes children’s books so well.

I wonder if there will be further stories set in this world? The final farewells whisper The Jungle Book, of course, and a sundering of man from the mythical, but in The Jungle Book Mowgli came back when his help was needed. There are echoes of a more grown-up struggle beneath the story, and perhaps that will bear fruit one day.

Ah, Neil Gaiman. I can always count on you to brighten up my day with stories about the dead.

Related links:

• The Graveyard Book, Kindle Edition
• The Graveyard Book, Hardcover
• The Graveyard Book, Audio CDs
• The Graveyard Book, Audible
• The Graveyard Book video tour, a free reading by Gaiman himself
• Tor.com review of The Graveyard Book

1. The initial registration process is awful and requires a Windows machine. Crossover doesn’t cut it; no idea whether VMWare would. However, you never have to do it ever again, and then onward it’s just download-to-Macbook-upload-to-Kindle-and-go. [↩]
2. Insert “why so serious?” joke here. [↩]

Including some early ones I completely missed.

This post may be updated through the day if new stuff appears. Sometimes it’s a complete surprise!

Notable stars: Tobias S. Buckell, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett.

Also: P.C. Cast’s vampyre finishing school.

Updates: 2:19AM PST

Definitions:

Long form dramatic presentation: movie-length or, in some cases, season-length.

Short form dramatic presentation: TV episode short arc length or less.

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