So Gaiman Goes

Neil Gaiman was in Indianapolis last night to receive the Kurt Vonnegut literature award. It is given by the Indianapolis Marion County Library and has only been around for a few years. The award goes to someone whose "works ... document and define the human condition." The first one was awarded posthumously to Kurt himself and other winners have included Richard Peck and Eric Carle.

Vonnegut and Gaiman are probably the two most mentioned authors in this blog. Vonnegut of course inspired the title of it and Neil Gaiman is just a Rock Star, but I never would have connected them so directly. I always find it odd when what I think fairly different realms of my obsessions collide like that. For example, Warren Zevon had cowritten songs with both Bruce Springsteen and Carl Hiaasen.

My Twitter feed this morning also had a link to a bootleg YouTube posting of a short film written and directed by Neil.



It is silent movie style and stars Bill Nighy and a real Doll, Amanda Fucking Palmer. I wonder who he had to sleep with to get her in the movie.

Gaiman On Colbert

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Neil Gaiman

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor

Rap Battle
NASA Name Contest

I'm such a bad Irishman. I don't have some sort of shamrock encrusted post today. Fortunatately, Mo MoDo (who is much more Irish than I am) does. But last night, Neil Gaiman (Goth Comic Writer Rock Star) was on Colbert last night plugging his Newbery award winning book which is rather generically titled The Graveyard Book. Since I'm three chapters in, I gave it a watch only to have two mini-spoilers revealed. Here there are in yellow on white text (which means you may be out of luck depending on your feedreader):

SPOILERS BELOW

Despite three people being slashed to death just before the book starts, nobody else gets killed by a knife. That's disappointing. It's a good thing so many people in the book are dead already.

The character that can leave the graveyard and only comes out at night is really a vampire. Duh. I already had that figured out.

/END SPOILERS

Oh, and I saw Watchmen in IMax last night. No spoiler to say that plenty of people die. On screen and rather bloodily. For fuller reviews of both Watchmen and Graveyard Book wait until the BooksFirst post in two weeks.

BooksFirst - February 2008

Books Bought
Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome To The Monkeyhouse dramatized by Christopher Sergel
Strip Tease by Carl Hiaasen (signed)
Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen (signed)
An Unfortunate Woman by Richard Brautigan
Dreaming of Babylon by Richard Brautigan
Richard Brautigan: The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writings
Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman
Ridley Walker by Russell Hoban
The Polysyllabic Spree by Nick Hornby
Housekeeping vs The Dirt by Nick Hornby
Florida Roadkill by Tim Dorsey

Books Read
None. Not one. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Comments

The letdown from National Just Read More Novels Month has been tremendous. I didn’t finish any books this month. I think this is the first time in the history of BooksFirst that I have been shut-out. I’ve stretched the deadline a few times, but even that wouldn’t help me this time. On the glass half-full side, I’m primed to finish some off in March.

On the book buying front, my two month drought ended with a vengeance. We were in Atlanta having brunch in Little Five Points and had some time to kill. In meandering through the parking lot trying to avoid the guy that had set up a paylot stand while we were eating, we stumbled past A Capella Books in a little strip center. I begged permission and we wandered in. This place is one of the last real used and rare bookstores. A genuine treasure.

The store was smaller, but was clean, neat, and well organized, words frequently not associated with used bookstores. He also had copious rare and collectible book display cases. The Kurt Vonnegut novels he had were not true first editions so I passed, but he did have this odd little bound play that was a stage adaptation of Welcome To The Monkey House. Since the last few remnants I need to fill out my Vonnegut collection are both rare and expensive, I find myself buying odd little scraps of ephemera like this. Stuff only a true collector would bother paying for.

There is a short list of authors that I have to have hardcovers, and if I can get signed copies so much the better. Someday I will be forced to triage the book collection and a signature may be the only thing saving a book from a quick half.com fate. I had of course read the two Carl Hiaasen novels long ago, but these were signed copies which make the editions I now have expendable.

Anytime I go into a new bookstore, and especially a used one, I check the poetry section for my favorite poemer Richard Brautigan. I am almost inevitably always disappointed, but A Capella had an entire shelf of his stuff, including several books of his I had never heard of, let alone read. I bought a collectible first edition, a paperback of a relatively recent novel and a collection of posthumous works presumably discovered among the detritus after his tragic suicide. That should be enough to keep me in hippie poetry and prose for a while.

Since I came to Gaiman late, I have a lot of catching up to do and while I read his most recent short story collection back in October of 2006, I’ve never picked up his earlier collection Smoke and Mirrors. My copy of Neverwhere (see last month) had a teaser story from it and I’m trying to read more short stories this year, so it seems like a perfect fit.

The inspiration for this monthly post is Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree and its sequel Housekeeping vs. The Dust which is a collection of articles where he chronicles the books he buys and reads every month and using them as a jumping off point for riffs on pop culture. I’ll never hold a candle to Hornby, but it’s a fantastic concept I can only humbly ape.

So I am now seriously backlogged more than even before. Hopefully I can show some progress for March. Until then, keep reading.

BooksFirst - January 2008

Books Bought

None

Books Read

Slam by Nick Hornby
A Slipping Down Life by Anne Tyler
Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

Comments

I’m a winner! By reading three novels in January I am entitled to the Green Badge to proudly display my accomplishment. I’m still taking winner announcements in comments on any post with the NaJuReMoNoMo tag (which includes this one). I will collect a list of winners in the next post or two.

I talked a bit about Slam, Nick Nornby’s foray into youth fiction when I became aware of the hot new babies-having-babies trend in the media. I first discovered Nick Hornby when I picked up a copy of High Fidelity in the now defunct Bibelot chain. Since then I have read most of his other novels, several of which have been made into movies. One of Hornby’s trademarks is the hero who is stuck in an extended adolescent. For Slam he reverses the arc and an actual kid has to learn how to act like an adult while remaining a teenager.

Sam is a skater that talks to his Tony Hawk poster when he needs advice. Tony “talks” back entirely in quotes from his autobiography that ore often oddly relevant. He meets Alicia at a party and they begin fooling around with the inevitable tragic results. Unlike most stories about teen pregnancy, this one takes the point of view of the hapless father to be. The novel is told in the first person which is a stunning stylistic feat.

Anne Tyler has been one of my favorite authors since the mid 80’s when The Acccidental Tourist and Dinner At The Homesick Café were ubiquitous on the reading lists of people I knew. I reviewed Digging To America back in June 2006. A Slipping Down Life is one of her older novels, predating her adoption of Baltimore as her primary story setting location. A teenage girl gets a crush on a local struggling musician and carves his name into her forehead. From this rather disturbing start, a typically unsettling Tyler un-love story emerges.

I’ve never been able to put my finger on exactly what makes an Anne Tyler novel so Tyleresque. These eccentric slices of life are often bittersweet and melancholic and all those elements are here. Evie is chubby insecure student that fall for a self-involved aspiring rock star long on hope but short on drive. Written in the late 60s, some of the dialog sounds dated, but the timeless Tyler themes of dreams deferred and opportunities lost and regained remain as poignant as ever.

Since I first discovered Neil Gaiman as a writer when he was Guest of Honor at Balticon a few years ago, I have been dipping into his works more and more. At first I thought Neverwhere would be a little too dark and macabre for me, but instead it was wonderfully inventive and clever. In the Neverwhereverse, there exists a parallel universe of lost souls in the London Underground. Richard Mayhew, a mildly milquetoasty Londoner, helps an orphan girl and his life changes as he crosses over to the down below. There he gets drawn into a web of intrigue and adventure.

The world Gaiman creates is full of myth and legend, both literary and urban. The world follows its own twisted logic and involves a plot to destroy a noted family with odd navigational powers. The real breakout characters in the novel are Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, a pair of assassins who speak in an odd formality. The novel is an adaptation of a six part BBC series that I am wholly unfamiliar with. Gaiman’s cross-media experiments continue to amaze me with how versatile he is. I hope he returns to London Below someday.

BooksFirst: Travel Edition

Books Bought

None

Books Read

Rainbow’s End by Vernor Vinge
Rough Guide to Beijing
Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

Comments

This is a special edition of my regular BooksFirst post so that I can get back on track with posting at the beginning of the month. One good thing about long plane trips is that you have plenty of time to catch up on your reading, even after factoring in sleeping and watching bad buddy movies.

Vernor Vinge is one of the best science fiction writers nobody has ever heard of. This multiple Hugo-winner is incredibly creative and has continually turned upside down the conventions of traditional hard-sf milieus. On a per book basis, he is perhaps the highest quality writer in the field.

Rainbow’s End is his take on the cyber-punkish near future scenarios pioneered by William Gibson and Neal Stephenson and takes it to the next level. In Vinge’s world, the cyberworld and the realworld overlap with all sorts of multiple levels of virtual projection. It also posits a rapidly changing culture where a few years in a coma leave you’re irreparably lost in the wake of future shock. The rather intricately woven plot centers around three generations of a family of the future. The macguffin of the plot never quite lives up to its potential, but the book throws away more ideas than most novels even have. There are several gizmos and devices in the book that if not already under development need to be patented pronto. I particularly want the self serving refrigerator/kitchen counter combo.

My bible while in China was the Rough Guide to Beijing. When we plan a trip, we go to BigBoxOfBooks and browse all the travel books and pick a few that look useful. Rough Guides are less comprehensive but hipper than the big names. I liked the way it was organized by neighborhood with all the sights described by area. Nothing is worse than having to flip back and forth because shopping, dining, and sightseeing are all in different sections.

Every morning I would get up between 5 and 6 and go walking for a few hours before the scheduled activities began. I took with me my camera and a small backpack with a camcorder, the Rough Guide, and a tourist map I bought for a buck in the hotel gift shop. Between the map and the guide book I found all the interesting attractions to the north and east of the Forbidden City on my own.

Naked Economics is a wittily written primer that makes the dismal science interesting. The many absurd and clever examples illustrate even the most obtuse concept. Charles Wheelan leads the reader down a path of increasingly controversial topics with clarity and perspective. It is hard to read this book and not come away an ardent free trader.

Reading this book while in rapidly developing China was particularly relevant. Everywhere I looked I could see his examples of how education, drive, and human capital could overcome the severest handicaps. The Chinese have taken to capitalism like a gourmand coming off a long diet. The speed with which a dour authoritarian regime can become a neon-glazed temple of consumerism is astounding. Everywhere there were billboards and neon signs. With all the product and food safety scare articles coming out of China right now, maybe the pendulum needs to swing back a little towards increased government regulation and scrutiny.

I got literary goth rock star Neil Gaiman to autograph a hardcover copy of Good Omens, which he cowrote with fellow clever Briton Terry Pratchett, when he was at Balticon last year. To my shame, I had started the book a long time ago but never finished. I used the return flight to start over and finished it before the wheels touched the ground.

The book combines the premises of The Omen with The Importance of Being Ernest. An angel and a demon covertly conspire to keep the anti-Christ from bringing on the Apocalypse. The pace is madcap and the satire is razor sharp. Overall the tone in way more Ankh-Morpork than Neverwhere, still there are small strands of Gaiman darkness struggling to get out. Never has Manichaeism, pre-destination, free will, and the nature versus nurture debate ever been wrapped up so delightfully drolly. Still, the two authors tend to overstuff everything and the book could have been maybe 20% shorter without loosing any of its edge. A great breezy fantasy.

BooksFirst - February 2007

Books Read
Magic Street by Orson Scott Card
Marvel 1602 by Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert
Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! by Bob Harris
Astro City Vol. 4: The Tarnished Angel by Kurt Busiek
Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of TriviaBuffs by Ken Jennings


Books Bought
Dog Days by Ana Marie Cox
Bluebeard by Kurt Vonnegut
The Importance of Being Ernestine by Dorothy Cannell
Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland
The Ernesto "Che" Guevara School for Wayward Girls: A Novel of Politics by William F. Gavin
The CEO of the Sofa by P. J. O'Rourke
Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction by Tom Raabe

Comments

I’ve never included graphic novels on my books read list before. Often times I will kill time at BigBoxOfBooks reading the bound comic book collections. I don’t count these as “books” in the serious sense of the word. However, the two this month qualify as novels in the self-contained story sense of the word For one thing, they were hardbound and in the library. Our little local branch library actually has a pretty good selection of comic book collections and manga as well as full DVD sets of popular television shows.

My dad, who is very frugal, hectors me for actually paying for books. He gets all his books and movies from the library. He will ride his bicycle to his local branch and come back loaded up for the week. The great thing about libraries is that the price is right. One downside is that the instant gratification rush is lower. It’s sometimes harder to find exactly what you want. Also, the deadline of a due date adds pressure to finish something that you may not be in the mood to read right then.

I went to the library early in the month with my wife one evening and really loaded up. Four of five books I read this month came from the library and I still have several on the nightstand to get through that I have already renewed once.

I wasn’t going to buy any books at all this month. Really. What made me fall off the wagon was that my dad sent me a $50 gift card to OtherBigBoxOfBooks® for my birthday. I went on a spree one Friday evening and picked up the first five books on the list. In honor of my father’s thrifty ways, three of the books were from the discount table. I passed on several greatly reduced Michael Moore books because I knew my dad wouldn’t approve of his money being spent that way. The total bill with tax came to $46.14, which left me with enough on my card for an over-priced highly-caffeinated milkshake the next time I visit.

Later the same week, I went along with my wife to a used book store she frequents in Timonium. She runs an elementary school book club and collects money from her students and then orders them at deep discount from this store. They give a better rate to educators than the local BigBoxOfBooks. It also gives her an excuse to rummage through the used romance selection. I often pick up a book or two. This time I found a PJ O’Rourke book that I had never read before and the Biblioholism book which is a humorous look at the unhealthy compulsion to read and buy books. I bought it for sheer ironic value.

The owner of the bookstore also gave my wife the news that the store was closing because the mall and her couldn't come to terms on a lease renewal. Another small independent book store is closing and it feels like a little death in the family.

A popular gimmick in comic books is to set familiar characters in a different place or time. I’ve seen ones with Batman in Victorian times or Superman in the Roman era. Marvel 1602 is set in, of course, 1602 England right after the failed (in our world) colonization of Roanoke. Neil Gaiman made his name with his metaphysical re-imagining of Sandman for DC comics. Here, he takes on the Marvel pantheon. Recognizable heroes include Daredevil, Dr. Strange, and a pre-spider Peter Parker. While Marvel has had better luck in the theaters, I don’t like their heroes as much as the ones in DC. Marvel heroes are grittier and more realistic, which suits the relocation to England. A lot of the re-imagining is clever. The history is well integrated and the language and style of the era is effectively evoked. The X-Men are hunted and tortured as “witch-borne”. Doctor Doom is actually less anachronistic as eastern European despot. The story itself eventually devolves into how this sideworld came about and how the heroes have to save it. One of the cool features in the bound edition is the inclusion of several pages of scripts that Gaiman sent to the illustrator. Writing a comic book is an odd combination of narration and dialog and description. I have no idea how these gorgeous illustrations emerge from these brief descriptions.

The Astro City series is a different twist on the superhero mythos. In these comics, the emphasis is on the normal people that live in a superhero filled world. The Tarnished Angel delves into the underworld of the super villains and tries to see how that works within the real world. The story is part Goodfellas and part 50s noir paperback original as a newly released villain tries to go straight, but gets dragged into trying to figure out who is killing the old criminal masterminds. One of the fun of these meta-comics is figuring out the influences of the characters. Some of these throwaway hero and villain concepts are as imaginative and detailed as the “real” superheroes. The conventions of the superhero genre are stripped bare and revealed in intriguing ways and then goes on to answer even deeper questions. What is a hero and what is a villain? The answers aren't as clear as the comic books would have you think.

Books often get published in clusters as publishers try to cash in on a trend. Ken Jennings record run on Jeopardy! a few years ago has caused a resurgence of interest in this television gameshow. Bob Harris is a comedian and writer that compulsively tried out for the show for years before making the cut. A few lucky breaks later, he is a retired five-time champion that gets invited back to the various tournaments the show runs. The tone of Prisoner of Trebekistan is light and self-deprecating bordering on OCD as he bounces from topic to topic. The narrative is very personal as he describes the way he studies and prepares for his appearances. What looks so easy to us easy-chair trivia show watchers requires an incredible amount of preparation to excel at. In question by question breakdowns of his appearances he recreates the trains of thought that get him the answers and also tells of his massive mind melts.

Ken Jennings is much more of the uber-nerd expected to excel at Jeopardy! He passes the entry test on the first try. Part of his edge is that he played College Bowl and stayed active in the hobby as an adult. His book, Brainiac, delves into much more detail about the history, psychology, and philosophy of trivia and trivia players. While not a professional comedian and writer like Harris, Jennings book has more laugh out-loud funny lines. He interviews other contestants as well as behind the scenes people like question writers and game show producers. Everybody that has ever won a game of Trival Pursuit® thinks they can wipe up the dummies that actually make the show. Both of these books will disabuse you of that notion. The winners, and probably all of the losers, spend weeks brushing up on obscure vice-presidents, operas, and potent potables in an effort to gain an edge. I have a newfound respect for the peoplt that come away from these games a winner. If you have to read just one book about Jeopardy, read Jennings’, but a true trivia buff won’t be able to stop there.

Blatant Comment Whoring™: What is your favorite comic book deconstruction? Or, how well do you think you would do at Jeopardy!?

Update: I’ve discussed the Orson Scott Card book in a separate post here.

BooksFirst - December 2006

Books Bought

The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
R is for Ricochet by Sue Grafton
The Executioners by John D. MacDonald

Books Read

Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen
Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman
Why Things Are, Volume II: The Big Picture by Joel Achenbach

Commentary

The Grafton and MacDonald books were bought at Ace Books in Culpeper, Virginia. Culpeper is an exurban town near Washington, DC that has become a trendy pastoral refuge. The town has a genteel country manor feel and the main street is lined with gourmet restaurants. Lodged over a bicycle shop, Ace Books is a sprawling chaotic used book store of the type that are increasingly hard to find. I collect first editions of both Grafton and MacDonald and while neither book was high on my must-have list, I love browsing and rarely leave a used bookstore empty handed.

I have read about every word of fiction written by Carl Hiaasen and nobody is better at bitterly showcasing the absurdity of Floridian culture and politics. For Nature Girl he has dialed back the sarcastic commentary and focused on his trademarked oddball characters. The titular nature girl is a divorced mom living in a trailer park that executes a revenge fantasy on a sleazy telemarketer. Most of the action takes place on Dismal Key, the most heavily trafficked deserted island in the Everglades. The whacky characters that make landfall include a culturally confused half-breed Seminole, a ditzy FSU co-ed, a crazed stalker, an over-sexed amazon, and the ghost of a drunken tourist.

The book disappointed me because my hopes are always so high for Hiaasen and he seems to have taken the low road. Telemarketers and Indian casinos are fodder for bad stand-up comics, not someone of Hiaasen’s caliber. I expect a deeper cut at the dysfunctional culture that is slowly choking south Florida. Still, mediocre Hiaasen is better than most everything else.

Normally, I don’t buy short story collections, but when I was at Balticon last year, Neil Gaiman read a couple of selections from this as then unpublished book. True to it's title, Fragile Things comes in a thin translucent onion skin book jacket. Gaiman has made his reputation as a dark macabre comics writer, novelist, and blogger. The stories in this book have a lighter more contemplative touch. Frequent themes include melancholic childhood memories and perplexing encounters with strangers. A Sherlock Holmes-H.P. Lovecraft mash-up deserves to be an entire novel. The last story is an American Gods follow-up that is worth the entire book by itself. I ran across a podcast interview where Gaiman talks about this book and other topics as well. His preternatural mastery of words in any medium makes me think he has powers beyond mere mortals.

The last book I read before having to give up non-fiction for NaJuReMoNo Month was a freebie from a Boodle Porching Hour meet-up of Achenblog groupies in early December. Master satirist and unofficial Achenbach liaison, bc, had scared up a case of remainders from Joel’s basement to distribute as door prizes. In his more loquacious days, Joel wrote a column called “Why Things Are”. In typical journalistic repurposing, these columns had been collected into books as a secondary revenue stream. Why Things Are, Volume II is obviously the second of these.

I love light science oriented trivia books. I cut my teeth on everything Asimov I could put my hands on and still have a hard time passing up a Stephen Jay Gould collection. In tone, Why Things Are II (and I assume Volume I as well) most closely resembles the Imponderables series (Do Penguins Have Knees?, et. al.) but has a wider ranging choice of topics. The answers are well-researched and clearly tax the Rolodex of Achenbach. Unfortunately, many answers seem to reduce down to “Because I said so.” Even better than the short answer sections are his longer “special reports” that cover interesting topics like serial killers and the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew. Now I need to hunt down Volume I. Maybe next time I’m in Culpeper I can spend more time treasure hunting at Ace Books.

I can’t promise you a free book if you show up at a Boodle Porching Hour, but the great conversation and cheap happy hour eats can’t be beat.

Balticon Recap

In my last post, I fawned over Neil Gaiman at his Balticon appearance, but there are a lot of other things to do at a science fiction convention, some geekier than others. Hopefully this will be helpful to fans and non-fans alike.

Author Presentations and Signings

The whole point of an author to go to a convention is to get a little recognition and publicity. Because of the strict timetable and scheduling of venues at a SF convention, these are usually separate events. An author will do a reading and then if his or her stature merits, a little later a signing will be scheduled into a smaller room. Neil did two signings and they were both limited in capacity. At the end of his joint talk with Peter Beagle, I raced over to get in line for the signing. The next day I overheard some people complaining about not getting in.

Peter Beagle, whom I am unfamiliar with, was doing a joint signing and had about a third as many people trying to get his autograph. Gene Wolfe was very popular as well. Additionally, lesser known authors will get a table and pigeonhole passerbys to drum up interest in their books.

Panels and Discussions

The measure of a good convention is partly the quality of the guests, but also the number and depth of the panel discussions. These take place in smaller rooms and involve two or more experts in some aspect of the field. The sessions are usually arranged in tracks around common themes such as writing, costuming or science. The sheer number available makes some triage necessary when planning a day as they often interfere with other panels and events.

The Balticon science oriented panels were particularly good. I went to one on the atmosphere of Titan presented by Dr. Tim Livengood from NASA and needless to say, Kurt Vonnegut grossly misled me about the habitability of the place. My son went to one on Quantum Mechanics and claims to have understood at least the first half of it. I also heard good things about Dr. Dinosaur.

The Dealer Room

No trip to a convention is complete without a couple of passes through the dealer room. There is usually at least one new book seller set-up and several people selling used and collectible books. It's nice to hear someone praise an author and then be able to check their books out right away. This is where I picked up two of my signing items before they went out of stock.

The other dealers sell a lot of lifestyle accessories which tends to include leather or weapons. The guy selling these beautiful reasonably priced leather Carnival-style masks warned me about taking pictures without permission. I promised him Mythical Masks a link if I blogged about him. Jewelry and theme apparel are also popular.

My wife collects penguin figurines and found a table with a large assortment of styles she didn’t have. She also bought a rather fancy dice bag. She likes using them as camera holders because they don’t raise the suspicion of security checkers at concerts and the like.

Socializing

With all the line standing and waiting, there are a lot of opportunities for talking with people that will not immediately dismiss you as a dork for being interested in science fiction or gaming or other high geek activities. I was lucky enough in the Neil Gaiman line to be in the middle of a gaggle of women that defied the shampoo-deprived stereotype of female convention attendees.

I mistook one woman's regualr clothes for a costume so that was a slight faux pas. She also had a button that said “Poly, but I would probably rather read a book.” That started a brief conversation with other linestanders that I studiously avoided. Just didn’t want to go there. Another person was a three-time NaNoWriMo participant, so I held my tongue on my opinion about that as well. I also ran into one person I know professionally. At least I wasn't using yellojkt as my ID card nickname.

None of this is particularly unusual and little different from any other event catering to a particular hobby or interest that might be booked into a convention hotel or the subject of a CSI episode. So why do science fiction conventions get such a bad rap? I’ll cover some of that in my next post. Or leave me a comment about what you think the distinction is.

Neil Gaiman, Rock Star

If the science fiction/fantasy/horror genre has a rock star, it’s Neil Gaiman. As some sort of anti-Tom Wolfe, he is always dressed in public in his trademark black tee-shirt and matching motorcycle jacket. Black is his color both sartorially and metaphorically. His writing tends towards the dark if wryly amusing end of the spectrum.

I reviewed his latest novel, Anansi Boys, awhile back. Its predecessor, American Gods, deservedly won the Hugo and Nebula awards. He got his start and early fame as a writer of comic books. His Sandman series is cited as one of the seminal works in the evolution of the graphic novel and DC comics invented the Veritgo line just to have a place for his dark visions so that children wouldn’t mistake his Sandman for the blue and gold Golden Era hero. His version of Death as a goth-clad hottie is started to supplement the traditional image of the Grim Reaper.

In addition to comics and novels, he writes poetry, children’s books, screenplays and song lyrics. His book, Stardust, is being turned into a movie starring Claire Danes, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro. He wrote the script for Beowulf which is being animated Polar Express-style by Robert Zemeckis. Tori Amos cites him as a major influence. There doesn’t seem to be any challenge he’s not up to. Even his personal assistant is in a goth singing duo and has her own line of jewelry.

When I heard that Gaiman was to be the Guest of Honor at Balticon, the Baltimore Science Fiction Convention, I registered the whole yellojkt family for the event. My wife is far from a science fiction fan, but she is at least peripherally aware of what a force of nature he is. Neil flew into Baltimore straight from Australia where he was at the Sydney Writer’s Festival. Despite a half-globe’s worth of jetlag, the Balticon people made him sing for his supper with at least eight public events over the four days.

On Saturday, I caught the back half of his seminar about the collaborative process, then later that day he did a joint interview with Peter Beagle of The Last Unicorn fame. I had to race out of that to make sure I made the line for his autographing session. Other than Anansi Boys, my Gaiman collection consisted of rather battered used paperbacks. Fortunately I found hardcover first editions of American Gods and Good Omens in the dealer’s room.

Stocked with the 3-item limit, I waited about two hours to get my loot signed. He was very pleasant and impressed that I had the white cover version of Good Omens. My wife grabbed a few pictures before security shuffled us off. Well worth the wait.

As a reward for indulging my fandom all day, I took my wife to a very nice nearby upscale Asian restaurant. After dinner, I was surprised to see Neil, leather jacket and all, outside talking on his cell phone. I told him how much I liked his talk, and he acknowledged me with a thanks. That now puts me within three Kevin Bacon degrees of separation with the entire comic book industry and half of Hollywood.

The next day his premiere event was a solo appearance where he read two unpublished short stories and a poem. Since he still had a half hour to go, he spread some Hollywood gossip he vowed to disavow if it were to appear on the internet. The movie moguls don’t like Stardust being described as a cross between Lord Of The Rings and The Princess Bride, since the cult classic tale of Buttercup was a box-office flop. Incon-CEIV-able. He defended the casting of Claire Danes saying that the auditioning process involved about every female actor under thirty, some of which were truly awful. He coughed one name in particular. Let’s just say he doesn't think much of a certain former tween show star.

He also mentioned that Angelina Jolie is horribly typecast as Grendel’s Mother. His dry British wit masked all sense of sarcasm. He does seem particularly amused that Beowulf will, come hell or highwater, open worldwide on November 22, 2007. I know I will be there.

Blatant Comment Whoring: What author would you like to meet?

Anansi And The Boys

As the founder of NaJuReMoNoMo I get to make the rules and they do not require any actual reporting on or about the book read. However, as a self-proclaimed Winner with three Oak Leaf Clusters, I fell a certain obligation to provide my bona fides. Here’s a little synopsis of the first of the four books I read in January.

Anansi Boys by Neil Giaman. This as a sequel to the Hugo Award winning American Gods. The oxymoronic phrase “instant classic” is thrown around a little too easily these days, but American Gods is definitely that. A weird, dark, rambling, and in places, intensely funny, look at mythology and human nature, American Gods is a book that makes you just sit and think for about a week after you finish it. Anansi Boys is less a true pick-up-the-pieces sequel and more of a little sidebar story. Much more humorous in tone than American Gods, and several hundred pages shorter, Anansi Boys is about the sad sack son of one of American Gods’s minor but intriguing diety characters.

Anansi is an African spider legend that serves as the seed kernel for a whole host of contemporary tales most people are totally unaware of. Everything from Song of the South to Bugs Bunny owes a debt to the tales of Anansi. In the book, Anansi’s son, Fat Charley, is lucky in the “bad luck is better than no luck at all” sense. He then finds out his dad has died under unusual circumstances and that he has a brother that he never knew about who seems to live a preternaturally charmed life.

Neil Gaiman uses obscure legends and fables to tell a tale that takes place in a magic realist modern London and Florida as well as in the dream world of forgotten myths. The laws of logic don’t really work here and that is part of the mystical charm.

Neil Gaiman is much better known for his comic book work like the Sandman series, but his written fiction carries a lot of that same blurry water-colored dark spirit. Anansi Boys is a slight book that is charming and doesn’t require any knowledge of the epic events of American Gods other than an awareness that forgotten gods still live and die. Pick it up, but be prepared to be both baffled and amused.