rating : 4 : passes the time
review : 5 April 1997
A collection of bad lines from SF novels, bad blurbs, bad lines from SF films, and bad advertising slogans. Okay reading while waiting for a train, but done much better, with more wit and acid, in The Silence of the Langford.
(read but not reviewed)
Coraline is rather bored. It's the school holidays, and she has nothing to do, and her parents are rather neglectful, busy with their own lives. So she goes exploring their new house, and finds a strange door which leads to a mirror world, where her "other" mother and father promise to love her and make her happy. But she realises there is something wrong, and returns home. There she finds her real parents have disappeared. She discovers that she will have to brave the "other" house to rescue them.
This received rave reviews when it first came out, so I was expecting something very special. It is certainly well written, and conjures up an effective atmosphere of nastiness and childhood fearfulness. But it's all a bit shallow, really. The task is too easy, there are too few setbacks, and there is no loss accompanying the successful rescue, no price paid for the learning experience. And it has that unsatisfactory Wizard of Oz (film) "return without growth" ending, of discovering that "there's no place like home", and that, despite it being as dull and boring a place as it ever was, the heroine suddenly loves it. (Admittedly, there's a tad more justification here, because home is nicer and more interesting than the "other" world.)
rating : 4 : passes the time
review : 7 November 2017
Welcome to the conversation. Neil Gaiman fled the land of journalism to find truths through storytelling and sanctuary in not needing to get all the facts right. Of course, the real world continued to make up its own stories around him, and he has responded over the years with a wealth of ideas and introductions, dreams and speeches.
The View from the Cheap Seats will draw you in to these exchanges on making good art and Syrian refugees, the power of a single word and playing the kazoo with Stephen King, writing about books, comics and the imagination of friends, being sad at the Oscars and telling lies for a living. Here ‘we can meet the writer full on’ (Stephen Fry) as he opens our minds to the people he admires and the things he believes might just mean something – and makes room for us to join the conversation too.
This is a collection of essays by Gaiman, gathered from a variety of speeches, book introductions, film reviews, music reviews, comics, and more. They cover many person recollections and opinions, overlapping and occasionally contradicting. The overall result is a collage of passionate calls for Good Art.
The great Norse Myths, which have inspired so much modem fiction, are dazzlingly retold by Neil Gaiman. Tales of dwarfs and frost giants, of treasure and magic, and of Asgard, home to the gods: Odin the all-father, highest and oldest of the Aesir; his mighty son Thor, Whose hammer Mjollnir makes the mountain giants tremble; Loki, wily and handsome, reliably unreliable in his lusts; and Freya, more beautiful than the sun or the moon, who spurns those who seek to control her.
From the dawn of the world to the twilight of the gods, this is a thrilling, vivid retelling of the Norse myths from the award-winning, bestselling Neil Gaiman.
The annotated script of the wonderful Babylon 5 episode. The annotations add a little (mainly noting where the script as written differs from the show as aired), but not a lot. But it's good just to have a copy of the script. I'm not sure how much someone who hasn't seen the episode would get from it, but if you have, and so can supply the visuals, it's good fun, and also has some of those great "foreshadowings" that made B5 such a great show.
[novelisation of his BBC TV fantasy series]
And it was unquestionably his.
Preludes & Nocturnes collects issues #1–8 of the original run of The Sandman, beginning an epic saga unique in graphic literature and introducing readers to a dark and enchanting world of dreams and nightmares—the home of Morpheus, the King of Dreams, and his kin, the Endless.
Collecting issues #9–16 of the original run of the series, The Doll’s House follows a young woman named Rose Walker as she discovers the singular nature of her identity. Rose’s journey is watched closely by the King of Dreams, for whom she becomes both an intriguing mystery and a deadly threat.
Four unique episodes form the tapestry of Dream Country: “Calliope,” “A Dream of a Thousand Cats,” “Facade” and the acclaimed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”—the only comic book story ever to win the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction. Also included is Gaiman’s original script to “Calliope,” with annotations from both the writer and the artist.
[Collects issues #17–20]
Ten thousand years ago, the King of Dreams condemned a woman who loved him to eternal damnation. In Season of Mists, the other members of his immortal family, the Endless, convince him that this was an injustice. To correct it, he must journey to Hell and rescue his banished love. But Lucifer, the Lord of Hell, has sworn to destroy him – and Lucifer’s plans are subtle…
[Collects issues #21–28]
In A Game of You, the imagined landscapes of childhood are transformed into the battleground for a deadly contest of wills. As cracks appear in the wall that separates the waking world from the Dreaming, a group of young New Yorkers are drawn inexorably through the gaps into a long-forgotten corner of the Dream King's realm—a setting that is both eerily familiar and disturbingly malignant.
[Collects issues #32–37]
Fables and Reflections follows the Lord of the Dreaming on a winding journey through time and space as he touches the lives of nine remarkable dreamers. In these haunting tales, kings and spies, emperors and actors, ravens and werewolves all share their secret stories—dreams of life and love, power and darkness.
[Collects issues #29–31, #38–40, #50, Special #1]
In Brief Lives, Delirium, youngest of the extended family known as the Endless, prevails upon her brother Dream to help find their missing sibling, Destruction. Their subsequent odyssey through the waking world, and their final confrontation with Destruction—as well as the resolution of Dream’s painful relationship with his son, Orpheus—will change the Endless forever.
[Collects issues #41–49]
In Worlds’ End, wayfarers from throughout time, myth and imagination seek shelter from the fury of a reality storm in the welcoming halls of a mysterious inn. As they wait out the tempest raging around them, the travelers share stories of the places they have been, the things they have seen…and those that they have dreamed.
[Collects issues #51–56]
The Kindly Ones have many names: The Erinyes. The Eumenides. The Dirae. The Furies. Agents of vengeance, implacable and unstoppable, they do not rest until the crimes they seek to punish are washed clean with blood. It is to them that Lyta Hall turns when her baby Daniel is taken from her, and it is Dream of the Endless who becomes their target. But behind a mother’s grief and unyielding rage, there are darker forces at work, and what they set in motion will eventually demand a sacrifice greater than any the Dreaming has yet known.
[Collects issues #57–69]
In The Wake, ancient gods, old friends and enemies alike gather to pay tribute to the fallen King of Dreams, bringing to a close the long story of Morpheus of the Endless. In the aftermath, echoes of Morpheus reverberate, touching a man who refuses to die, a Chinese sage lost in a desert of dreams and an aging William Shakespeare, who must fulfill one last obligation to the Sandman in his own twilight years.
[Collects issues #70–75]
Endless Nights returns to the realm of the Dreaming with seven remarkable stories—one for each member of the otherworldly Endless family—illustrated by an international roster of artists drawn from the ranks of comics’ greatest talents. By turns haunting, bittersweet, erotic and nightmarish, these provocative tales range across space and time to reveal strange secrets and surprising truths about the immortal siblings Death, Desire, Dream, Despair, Delirium, Destruction and Destiny.
In The Dream Hunters, Gaiman and acclaimed artist Yoshitaka Amano collaborate to reveal a haunting new aspect of the Dream King. Words and paintings combine in this illuminated fable of ancient Japan, spinning an ageless story of a humble young monk and the magical fox who falls in love with him. Threatened by a dark prophecy, the fox and the monk each call for aid from the Mikado of All Night’s Dreaming, whose intervention transports their tale of love and sacrifice into the immortal realm of the Endless.
In The Dream Hunters, legendary artist P. Craig Russell returns to the world of the Dreaming to adapt Neil Gaiman and Yoshitaka Amano’s original illustrated novella into a mesmerizing new comics interpretation. Retelling Gaiman’s celebrated story of a humble young monk and the magical fox who falls in love with him, Russell beautifully brings to life every aspect of the richly evocative world set down in this timeless fable of desire, sacrifice and love that was never meant to be.
Overture brings Gaiman’s mesmerizing saga of the Sandman full circle, serving as both a prequel and coda to the groundbreaking original series. Lushly illustrated by acclaimed artist J. H. Williams III, this stunning tale follows the King of Dreams as he travels across the universe—and into realms unbounded by time and space—on a fateful mission to prevent all of reality from unraveling.
[Collects issues Overture #1–6]
