Ask Neil Gaiman 295
A very special "call for questions" today: Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman, a series whose long-awaited resurrection was -- not coincidentally -- announced last week. Neil is also winner of the uncoveted Roblimo's favorite book of the 21st Century so far award for American Gods, and a free speech activist who has concentrated -- again, not coincidentally -- on comic book and graphic novel authors' and vendors' freedoms. Please read this interview, listen to this NPR interview, and check other material about Neil before you ask questions, in order to avoid triteness. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated questions to Neil tomorrow, and post his answers when he gets them back to us.
Creator's rights and copying technologies (Score:5, Interesting)
I greatly enjoyed your chat last night with Art Spiegelman. After listening to both of you talk about the medium of comic books and graphic art, a question came to mind:
Unlike music and video, most people still prefer to read books page-by-page. Copying and downloading books and pictures is easier than doing so for music and video, partially because text and individual pictures are so much smaller. Yet, as of this moment, I haven't heard about a single case of writers and book artists complaining about the copying of their work on the internet.
Why do you think this is? Do you feel that this might change in the future as people become more accustomed to getting their information on a screen? Are you at all worried about the technology of copying in the same way that the music and movie industries are? Why or why not? How does your work as a free speech activist contribute to this debate? Is it a help or a hindrance to "creator's rights" that these copying technologies can allow individuals to control distribution and shake off the major media companies?
Thanks for your time,
New Gods? (Score:2, Interesting)
Shout Out (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Creator's rights and copying technologies (Score:2, Interesting)
You forgot about Stephen King's little foray into the electronic publishing world. He gave it up because people would pay the $SMALLAMOUNT for each chapter.
My question. (Score:3, Interesting)
As a Brit living in the US I feel very aware of... (Score:5, Interesting)
Journal (Score:5, Interesting)
Tattoos and other forms of fan appreciation (Score:4, Interesting)
Did you know that when you signed my girlfriend's lower back (at Vromans Book Store in Pasadena, 1999) that she went to a tattoo parlor right afterward to have the moment made permanent?
How do you deal with this kind of (admittedly deserved) fan appreciation?
Kind regards,
Michael Judge
SurveyComplete
P.S. American Gods and Coraline are fantastic!
Abandoned ideas (Score:5, Interesting)
I vaguely recall from the Neverwhere DVD that the germ of the idea was the homeless of London, but that you were wary of glamorizing something that really is not glamorous. In the Talk of the Nation interview last week, the serial-killer convention was brought up, and I got the feeling you were uncomfortable with something so dark being glamorized.
I wonder if there have been any project ideas that you've left by the roadside because you felt the result would hold something unfortunate up for admiration.
Matrix 'Comic' (Score:5, Interesting)
Terry Pratchett (Score:4, Interesting)
I enjoyed Good Omens tremendously. Is there any possibility of the two of you working on another book?
Cheers,
Ian
The end of Sandman (Score:5, Interesting)
Good Omens movie? (Score:5, Interesting)
Is this still happening, and what do you think of it being made into a film?
Challenges in scripts (Score:5, Interesting)
Coraline and the writing process for YA novels. (Score:5, Interesting)
Was the writing process for Coraline fundamentally different than some of your other works?
How did you control the prose to achieve a balance between richness of language and accessibility to your younger audience?
Small Gods and American Gods (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Tattoos and other forms of fan appreciation (Score:5, Interesting)
Gaiman's response was that a few years ago, a woman asked him to sign her breast. After doing so, she turned around and exclaimed with glee "NOW, you'll ALWAYS remember me!" He said that he didn't have the heart to tell her how many people had already pulled the same stunt with him...
He also admitted that he was a little freaked out by the people who tattooed his signature into their skin.
A decade-old question... (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in March of 1993, some friends and I met you at the Motor City Comic Con. I brought Good Omens with me for you to sign, and one of my friends asked when you were going to get back together with Terry Pratchett to write another book. You mumbled something about the book to her, and signed "Burn this book!" in my copy.
So, for a decade, I've wondered on and off: What your true feelings are about Good Omens and Pratchett? Might we ever see another book from you two?
BTW, you gave me the best piece of advice I ever got about writing: Finish it. Whatever you start, finish it.
I appreciate that advice to this day.
Thanks,
Geoffrey Sperl
Detroit, MI
I know I should be asking about you and your work (Score:5, Interesting)
Religious Beliefs/Philosophy (Score:5, Interesting)
and movie...? (Score:4, Interesting)
3 Quickfire questions (Score:3, Interesting)
#1) Is there any chance of bringing back Sandman on a semi-regular basis (IE: Quarterly)?
#2) Kudos on 1602. Your take on Marvel characters is interesting. I'm very curious as how this story will fit in the Marvel Universe timeline. How did this story come about?
#3) Will we ever see MiracleMan?
Re:Terry Pratchett (Score:3, Interesting)
John
That forgotten god from American Gods.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I believe you even stumped the internet on that one.
Excellent book. BTW.
The Balance of Collaboration (Score:5, Interesting)
The graphic novel medium relies strongly on collaboration. Not only with artists and editors, but also to a limited extent with marketers, trademark lawyers, and even the "past continuity" of what others before you have written. Your persistence in this field seems like it could get to be almost hellish unless you drew very solid boundaries with your collaborators or you really enjoyed such chaos.
As a freelance programmer I struggle trying to find the appropriate balance of collaboration to satisfy and motivate. While your work is in a completely different field, I'm curious what thoughts, anecdotes, or advice you might have on keeping collaboration in balance.
Religious Background (Score:3, Interesting)
It is rumored (one doesn't believe everything one reads on the internet) that you come from a scientoligist (I can type that without gettin sued, right?) background, but you are no longer with the church. What are you feelings on Scientology now?
Delight/Delirium and Merv (Score:2, Interesting)
The state comics industry (Score:5, Interesting)
They've been pinning a lot on the sales of your Endless Nights and 1602 work to bump sales and get readers into shops, but as whole the direct market continues on a slow downward arc- and the great savior graphic novels are grow more in bookstores than comic shops- what can we do to keep comics vital an interesting? To encourage more genre bending work like your own (I'd be happy with more gneres though)?
Re:A decade-old question... (Score:2, Interesting)
Sandman the Movie (Score:5, Interesting)
With the change in attitude toward comics in Hollywood, have you considered pressing the issue again? Also, have you considered talking to Hollywood's most successful comic book geek (Jess Whedon) about his getting behind the project? I would be stunned if he wasn't interested, though I'm sure the Firefly movie is sucking down a good chunk of his time....
Religion (Score:2, Interesting)
In your body of work, you borrow legends, myths, Gods and stories from many different mythos, and you usually bend and mold them to fit into your own tales.
My question is this, do you follow any religion or religious ideal in particular?
Ramadan and Jorge Luis Borges (Score:5, Interesting)
My question relates to another coincidence. The first Sandman comic I read was Ramadan and it still one of my favorites. The thing that really clicked for me was the fact that, on the same day I read Ramadan, I read an essay by Jorge Luis Borges on the Arabian Nights tales (in the collection Seven Nights) and was, and still am, convinced that the Borges essay inspired the Ramadan issue of Sandman.
Is this true, or was the writing of Ramadan just an interesting synchronicity I made up by reading the two at the same time?
I know Mr. Gaiman is an admirer of Borges. The Destiny story in Endless Nights is a great tribute to The Garden of Forking Paths and The Library of Babel.
Re:New Gods? (Score:3, Interesting)
The most puzzling god that was almost completely missing from American Gods was the big one ... you know, the guy that most midwesterners really worship. I'm not a Christian myself, but when reading the book I kept expecting this to be addressed somehow: what happened to Jehovah?
Or, rather, what happened to Jehovah's worshippers?
Dream Collaborations (Score:4, Interesting)
A Question on Games (and a selfish word of thanks) (Score:5, Interesting)
I absolutely loved The Dream Hunters. It was actually my first introduction to your work, and has stuck with me ever since. The final conversation between Dream and Matthew (or their equivalents) still fascinates me.
I'll resist the temptation to trail that comment with the obvious question ("When will you collaborate again?"), though, and move right along to the following:
Do you have any particular thoughts on the stories of modern computer & console games? Is the medium in any way interesting to you? What would you expect to be the potential & notable challenges and/or rewards in working in the medium?
Also, if you don't mind, I'd like to ask what you think your ideal "game" project might be, and what sort of style you'd like to work with (or create), if given the opportunity.
By style, I mean do you imagine that it would be a sit-back-and-watch-the-occasional-cutscene affair (as is Final Fantasy X, or Xenogears, to give examples), a detailed backdrop in which to set gameplay (like, say, Mario Bros., Zelda, or Street Fighter), a more environmental story experience (Half-Life, Halo), or something else entirely?
Apologies for my wordiness in this question; I mainly would just love to hear your musings on the subject, especially if you find the field or medium at all compelling.
(And I would, predictably, very much like to thank you for all of the great work you've produced and shared with us all.)
Thank you.
Trading characters (Score:5, Interesting)
You have worked with a number artists and authors over the years. Do you have any favorites? Anyone you haven't worked with that you would like to collaborate with on a story?
Bonus questions: If you could pick up someone elses character and do a story, who's would it be? What kind of story would you do?
Magic In The Office Place? (Score:4, Interesting)
Mr. Giaman, have you ever considered doing a set of stories or a full novel about the magic in the every day cubical farm? So many of us are highly "deterministic" (there is a logical, objective soultion to any problem presented) but fail to realize how wide and unexplainable and unsolvable the world really is. It would be a double whammy theme!
Miracleman (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Journal (Score:5, Interesting)
Is there a conflict for you between maintaining your journal [neilgaiman.com], and writing fiction? How do you manage your time / ideas / approach, in order to stay active in both?
qualities of an "adult comic" (Score:5, Interesting)
As a designer, I love comics as a medium because they so intricately combine visual style and compelling storylines. Thank you for your efforts to brings comics to an adult audience! But does 'adult audience' necessarily mean kid-unfriendly? Your (wonderful) comics contain violence, nudity, etc. When writing, were these elements considered necessary to appeal to adults, or were they simply side-effects of the storyline?
Do you think that the connection between comics and children/teens is so strong that some kind of shock value must be added as a "this really is for adults" label? Do you think adults would react to comics with an adult-level story, that is kid-friendly as well?
Thanks, and don't stop working to get Good Omens on the big screen! (I vote for David Hyde Pierce as Aziraphale)
-david
Authors' and Readers' Rights (Score:4, Interesting)
Comics can be hard to find. They're a lot harder to find in non-target countries -- countries where the primary language is something other than English. So are TV shows that I would love to watch, but can't receive and even if I could, only overdubbed. But that's straying from the point, that being, that there was only one way I could see Sandman or Neverwhere or Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters: downloading.
They were great. And I've since bought Neverwhere and Wyrd Sisters when I was able to. But I didn't buy them first, and I didn't have to. I could probably find The Wolves in the Walls on USENET and download it tomorrow if I were so inclined.
I won't use Amazon for privacy reasons and getting bookstores here to order English books can be a tortuous process. Had I not downloaded, I might never have known known the films even existed. I also couldn't have read Sandman.
Regardless of whether or not I later bought the works, did I steal from you when I downloaded the Neverwhere series? I'm interested in your answer, not your publishers', whose opinions are terribly clear.
Does it change anything if you know that I've bought an awful lot of your books, from Hitchhiker's Companion to Smoke & Mirrors? Does it change anything that I may have bought the works only after having seen them, making you somewhat a virtual busker?
Waiting until the end of time, if necessary, for a Neverwhere sequel,
Mononoke's Disappointing Box Office (Score:5, Interesting)
I think your question is a bit too open-ended. I was wanting to ask a more specific question:
Mr. Gaiman, after the time, effort, and research you put into the dub of Princess Mononoke [nausicaa.net] , were you disappointed by the film's performance at the US box office? Do you feel that the film was mishandled by Miramax, or were US audiences not quite ready to have their expectations of animation stretched that far?
Pyschological state of "once upon a time" (Score:5, Interesting)
When I read works you've written, I am immediately transported to this dreamland that is fantastic literature, that creates its own world in mind, but seems to use mythic archetypes.
My question: do your words just naturally flow from your mind into this kind of writing, or do you have to work at it? If it just flows, how would you say you view the world such that it just flows? If you have to work at it, what are tricks you use to get into this mindspace?
You and slashdot are friends... (Score:5, Interesting)
In ENDLESS NIGHTS, you make a reference to slashdot (the Destruction story. It's used as a threat. It's pretty funny for those of us who have been using this site for too long). That being said, you're aware of the tech/geek movement as you seem to get a great sum of cash from us. So you read slashdot. Cool. BUT what other sources of tech, science, etc do you read on a regular basis. Any cool magazines we don't know about? Any cool websites, links, etc, that Neil Gaiman checks to see where science is right now?
James Branch Cabell (Score:2, Interesting)
Several articles I've read have listed both you and Robert Heinlein as fans of James Branch Cabell. Since Mr. Heinlein is dead, I was wondering if you have my copy of "Beyond Life" and if so, could I have it back?
Seriously, what do you think of the current state of the language? Are we going to see nothing but Hemingway's curt, journalistic style for everything? Or is there still room in the lexicon for Cabell's florid shibboleths and six dimensional sentence structure?
Re:Creator's rights and copying technologies (Score:3, Interesting)
Brilliant Collaborations and Work Opportunities (Score:1, Interesting)
Of all such collaborations and work opportunites, which surprised you the most in terms of the work generated, and which one is still your favourite in terms of results?
Localization of Princess Mononoke (Score:4, Interesting)
By contrast, your dub directly called them "a Demon God" and suchlike. When watching this version of the film with friends who hadn't seen the traditional dub, I was surprised at how confused they were by the film. The general problem seemed to be that terms like "Deer god" and "Demon god" created confusing concepts in their head, particularly in the religious folks. The idea that a god becomes a demon when consumed by hate was not intuitive in the story.
I wonder, did you consider the other approach? I found that, with simple untranslated names, there were no preconceptions to confuse the viewer.
Is there anything you might have done differently with that work?
Change or Die (Score:2, Interesting)
Pro advice for comic book writers (Score:3, Interesting)
Love your fiction and comics. Thanks.
What happened to Malcom Jones III? (Score:1, Interesting)
Miracle Man (Score:2, Interesting)
Gaiman, McKean, Pixar - how about it? (Score:1, Interesting)
Has Gaiman ever talked to Pixar about doing their first scary movie?
The jaded world at large (Score:3, Interesting)