Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman is a writer, born 1960.
Gaiman came up in comics. The Sandman ran from 1989 to 1996 and reset what a mainstream American monthly comic was allowed to be, mixing myth, horror and literary allusion, and nearly everything since has extended the same method: take an old story shape, mythology, fairy tale, folk horror, and tell it straight enough that the borrowed bones show on purpose. The novels followed, and the range is unusual for one writer: Good Omens in 1990, Neverwhere as a television series in 1996 and a novel the same year, then Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, Anansi Boys, The Graveyard Book and The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
He is a better short-story writer than novelist, which is a compliment rather than a slight. The collections are where the discipline shows and where his ideas arrive at the length that suits them. His awards include Hugo, Locus and Bram Stoker awards, and he co-created the television versions of Good Omens and The Sandman, which is rare in adaptation: the author was in the room.
Beginning in 2024, news outlets published sexual assault accusations against Gaiman by a number of women, and one accuser has sued him. He has denied the allegations. Production on several adaptations of his work was affected or halted as a result. Any honest account of where his career currently stands has to include that, and this page does not attempt to settle it.
Movies (5)
TV (7)
Books (35)
- Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book (2019)
- 1602 (2003)
- Art matters (2018)
- The Comical Tragedy or Tragical Comedy of Mr Punch (1994)
- The Truth Is a Cave in the Black Mountains (2014)
- The Graveyard Book (Graphic Novel), Volume 1 (2014)
- Crazy hair (2009)
- Death (2012)
- Smoke and Mirrors (1998)
- Women of the night (2007)
- Ink and Daggers (2023)
- Relics, Wrecks and Ruins (2021)
- The Best of Uncanny (2019)
- 2001 (2018)
- Norse Mythology (2017)
- Ghostly (2015)
- Futuredaze 2 (2014)
- Rogues (2014)
- Doctor Who (2013)
- The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013)
- Bedtime stories (2011)
- Teeth (2011)
- Stories (2010)
- Year's Best SF 14 (2009)
- The Graveyard Book (2008)
- Fragile Things (2006)
- Anansi Boys (2005)
- McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (2002)
- Odd and the Frost Giants (2001)
- American Gods (2001)
Where to start with Neil Gaiman
The Graveyard Book is the best single entry point. It is short, it is complete, and it does the trick his whole career runs on, an old story form repurposed without irony, working for a twelve-year-old and a forty-year-old for slightly different reasons. From there, Coraline is the sharpest of the children's books and much colder than people remember.
For adults, American Gods is the big statement and the most argued-over: sprawling, uneven, and worth it for the road-trip Americana rather than the plot mechanics. Neverwhere is the more purely enjoyable of the two. The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the shortest and, for a lot of readers, the one that hits hardest. Good Omens is the funniest thing with his name on it and the least like the rest.
If you want the comics side, 1602 and The Books of Magic show him working in other people's houses, and the television The Sandman is a reasonable way in. Smoke and Mirrors is the collection to start with.
The novels
American Gods is the big one and the most argued about. Neverwhere is the most purely enjoyable. Coraline is short, aimed at children and frightens adults more, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane is the most personal.
The comics
The Sandman is the work that made his name and remains much of the reason comics are shelved in bookshops at all. Mr Punch is the most personal of the shorter comics and the least like anything else he has written.
The adaptations
Gaiman has been unusually involved in adapting his own work, showrunning Good Omens himself. The Sandman took thirty years to reach screen after a long run of abandoned film versions, and Neverwhere started as television before it was a novel.