Introduction
I SOME THINGS I BELIEVE Credo
Why Our Future Depends on Libraries, Reading and Daydreaming: The Reading Agency Lecture, 2013
Telling Lies for a Living . . . and Why We Do It: The Newbery Medal Speech, 2009
Four Bookshops
Three Authors: On Lewis, Tolkien and Chesterton; The MythCon 35 Guest of Honor Speech
The Pornography of Genre, or the Genre of Pornography
Ghosts in the Machines: Some Hallowe’en Thoughts
Some Reflections on Myth (with Several Digressions onto Gardening, Comics and Fairy Tales)
How Dare You: On America, and Writing About It
All Books Have Genders
The PEN Awards and Charlie Hebdo
What the [Very Bad Swearword] Is a Children’s Book, Anyway? The Zena Sutherland Lecture
II SOME PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN These Are Not Our Faces
Reflections: On Diana Wynne Jones
Terry Pratchett: An Appreciation
On Dave McKean
How to Read Gene Wolfe
Remembering Douglas Adams
Harlan Ellison: The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World
Banging the Drum for Harlan Ellison
On Stephen King, for the Sunday Times
Geoff Notkin: Meteorite Man
About Kim Newman, with Notes on the Creation and Eventual Dissolution of the Peace and Love Corporation
Gumshoe: A Book Review
SIMCITY
Six to Six
III INTRODUCTIONS AND MUSINGS: SCIENCE FICTION Fritz Leiber: The Short Stories
Hothouse
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 and What Science Fiction Is and Does
Of Time, and Gully Foyle: Alfred Bester and The Stars My Destination
Samuel R. Delany and The Einstein Intersection
On the Fortieth Anniversary of the Nebula Awards: A Speech, 2005
IV FILMS AND MOVIES AND ME The Bride of Frankenstein
MirrorMask: An Introduction
MirrorMask: A Sundance Diary
The Nature of the Infection: Some Thoughts on Doctor Who
On Comics and Films: 2006
V ON COMICS AND SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE THEM Good Comics and Tulips: A Speech
A Speech to Professionals Contemplating Alternative Employment, Given at PROCON, April 1997
“But What Has That to Do with Bacchus?” Eddie Campbell and Deadface
Confessions: On Astro City and Kurt Busiek
Batman: Cover to Cover
Bone: An Introduction, and Some Subsequent Thoughts
Jack Kirby: King of Comics
The Simon and Kirby Superheroes
The Spirit of Seventy-Five
The Best of the Spirit
Will Eisner: New York Stories
The Keynote Speech for the 2003 Eisner Awards
2004 Harvey Awards Speech
The Best American Comics, 2010
VI INTRODUCTIONS AND CONTRADICTIONS Some Strangeness in the Proportion: The Exquisite Beauties of Edgar Allan Poe
On The New Annotated Dracula
Rudyard Kipling’s Tales of Horror and Fantasy
From the Days of Future Past: The Country of the Blind and Other Stories, by H. G. Wells
Business as Usual, During Alterations: Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free, by Cory Doctorow
The Mystery of G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown
Concerning Dreams and Nightmares: The Dream Stories of H. P. Lovecraft
On The 13 Clocks by James Thurber
Votan and Other Novels by John James
On Viriconium: Some Notes Toward an Introduction
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish: An Introduction
Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones
Voice of the Fire by Alan Moore
Art and Artifice by Jim Steinmeyer
The Moth: An Introduction
VII MUSIC AND THE PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT Hi, by the Way: Tori Amos
Curious Wine: Tori Amos II
Flood: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition, They Might Be Giants
Lou Reed, in Memoriam: “The Soundtrack to My Life”
Waiting for the Man: Lou Reed
Afterword Afterword: Evelyn Evelyn
Who Killed Amanda Palmer
VIII ON STARDUST AND FAIRY TALES Once Upon a Time
Several Things About Charles Vess
The King of Elfland’s Daughter, Lord Dunsany
Lud-in-the-Mist
The Thing of It Is: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
On Richard Dadd’s The Fairy-Feller’s Master-Stroke
IX MAKE GOOD ART Make Good Art
X THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS: REAL THINGS The View from the Cheap Seats
A Wilderness of Mirrors
The Dresden Dolls: Hallowe’en 2010
Eight Views of Mount Fuji: Beloved Demons and Anthony Martignetti
So Many Ways to Die in Syria Now: May 2014
A Slip of the Keyboard: Terry Pratchett
Credits
Index
About the Author
Also by Neil Gaiman
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
I fled, or at least, backed awkwardly away from journalism because I wanted the freedom to make things up. I did not want to be nailed to the truth; or to be more accurate, I wanted to be able to tell the truth without ever needing to worry about the facts.
And now, as I type this, I am very aware of a huge pile of paper on the table beside me, with words written by me on every sheet of the paper, all written after my exit from journalism, in which I try very hard to get my facts as right as I can.
I fail sometimes. For example, I am assured by the Internet that it is not actually true that the illiteracy rates of ten- and eleven-year-olds are used as a measure by which future prison cells are built, but it is definitely true that I was told this at an event at which the then–head of education in New York assured us that this was the case. And this morning, listening to the BBC news, I learned that half of all prisoners in the UK have the reading age of an eleven-year-old, or below.
This book contains speeches, essays and introductions. Some of the introductions made it into this volume because I love the author or the book in question, and I hope my love will be contagious. Others are here because, somewhere in that introduction, I did my best to explain something that I believe to be true, something that might even be important.
The authors from whom I learned my craft, over the years, were often evangelists. Peter S. Beagle wrote an essay called “Tolkien’s Magic Ring,” which I read as a small boy and which gave me Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings. A few years later H. P. Lovecraft, in a long essay, and after him Stephen King, in a short book, both told me about authors and stories that had shaped horror, and without whom my life would be incomplete. Ursula K. Le Guin wrote essays, and I would track down the books she talked about to illustrate her ideas. Harlan Ellison was a generous writer, and in his essays and collections he pointed me at so many authors. The idea that writers could enjoy books, sometimes even be influenced by them, and point other people at the works that they had loved, seemed to me to make absolute sense. Literature does not occur in a vacuum. It cannot be a monologue. It has to be a conversation, and new people, new readers, need to be brought into the conversation too.
I hope that, somewhere in here, I will talk about a creator or their work—a book, perhaps, or even a film or a piece of music—that will intrigue you.