Creator / Neil Gaiman

Neil Richard Mackinnon Gaiman (born 10 November 1960) is a contemporary British writer of stories.

He is famous for his Urban Fantasy works, including the renowned The Sandman comic series, which was the only work in its medium to win a World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story. (To prevent it happening again, they changed the rules so that comic books had to be relegated to their own special category, and couldn't be judged alongside prose works.) Two of his novels, Stardust and Coraline, have been made into movies. He's also written scripts for other projects, such as MirrorMask by Dave McKean and the Neverwhere TV series. In addition, he worked on the translated script of Princess Mononoke. His young adult work The Graveyard Book became the first book to win both the Newbery Medal and the Carnegie Medal. He also wrote two episodes for Doctor Who, "The Doctor's Wife" in Series 6 and "Nightmare in Silver" in Series 7.

His works are marked by extensive use of mythological references and symbolism, often times in "modern" settings. Stephen King thinks Neil may well be the greatest storyteller alive today.

He's married to Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls. He has a Twitter account and a Tumblr blog, as well as a more traditional blog (it was originally created to document his promotion tour for American Gods back in 2001, and it took off from there). He's also been known to dispense writing advice to fans (often via Tumblr).

He is also a part-time professor at Bard College.

His works include:

Tropes of which Neil Gaiman is an example:

• As Himself: In the second Shadow Police novel, The Severed Streets, Neil—with his involvement and permission—appears as a supporting character who has some information regarding the magic of London that the protagonists find useful. He also aids a villain in murdering one of the protagonists. He also appears in "The Original Dr Shade", a short story by Kim Newman.
  • Also his guest appearance on The Simpsons in 2011 where he claims he Never Learned to Read despite being a famous author. Ditto his appearance in The Guild.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Terry Pratchett. Gaiman is visibly upset and fighting back tears in the documentary Back in Black made after Terrys death, saying "I miss him so much".
• Limited Wardrobe: He dresses all in black in all public appearances. Until a few years ago he wore a black leather jacket in public appearances too. He used to claim to own the world's largest collection of black t-shirts, too.
• Messy Hair: In all his author photos, he sports an untidy dark mop. This is probably the inspiration for the looks of several characters he's written, including The Sandman, Richard Mayhew, and Tristran Thorn, not to mention the picture book Crazy Hair. One of his "about the author" notes includes the sentence, "He thanks you for the offer of a comb, but doubts that it would do any good."
• Older Than They Look: He's pretty youthful for a guy born in 1960.
• "Sesame Street" Cred: He guest starred as himself in an episode of Arthur.

Tropes common in his work:

• All Myths Are True: This is the basic premise of American Gods, but it's common in other works.
• Animal Motifs: Used most prominently in Anansi Boys, but ubiquitous throughout his work.
• Apocalypse Cult: Shoggoths Old Peculiar has an (initially) Unfazed Everyman American tourist who visits the picturesque English town of Innsmouth and converses in a pub with the friendly Cthulhu-worshippers who live there. He ends up with a bad hangover and a "feeling of nameless dread" (TM).
• Author Appeal: All Myths Are True, but the one Gaiman finds the most interesting is Norse Mythology. Loki and Odin are major characters in both American Gods and The Sandman.
• Blue and Orange Morality: Due to the frequent use of Eldritch Abomination in his works, they usually have their own morality.
• Canon Defilement: Gaiman hoped Snow, Glass, Apples (a Perspective Flip of "Snow White") would prevent the reader from ever experiencing the original innocently again. His External Retcon of Beowulf pulls a similar trick. The Problem of Susan riffs off of Susan's exile from Narnia: her embrace of adolescence means that, retroactively, she experienced the original adventure as a Darker and Edgier pagan allegory.
• Commedia dell'Arte: Especially in Mr. Punch and "Harlequin Valentine".
• Contemptible Cover: Ghastly Beyond Belief certainly has a lurid cover. However, the book was something of an Affectionate Parody, so this may be what the authors were hoping for.
• Continuity Porn: He can reach Don Rosa levels of this, especially when he's writing for DC. The Books of Magic ties together almost every magic-based character in the DCU circa 1991^note A notable exception being Wonder Woman, who was undergoing a rather messy Crisis Crossover at the time, with the last Book even cameoing sci-fi characters like Tommy Tomorrow, The Legion Of Super Heroes, and Flash villain Abra Kadabra.
• Creator Thumbprint: His novel protagonists follow a specific pattern: young-ish males who are pretty much completely unfamiliar with the fantasy realm in which they find themselves, who survive and triumph by a combination of luck, compassion, and a lot of help from a more knowledgeable, often female character.
• Dark Fic:
  • The Problem of Susan is a harsh account of what happened to Susan after the The Chronicles of Narnia books took place.
  • Snow, Glass, Apples, is a retelling of Snow White, with Snow White as a vampiric Humanoid Abomination.
  • A Study in Emerald takes Sherlock Holmes and crosses it over with Cthulhu Mythos.
  • Inverted with Good Omens, which an Affectionate Parody of the Book of Revelation.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: It's entirely possible for main characters to meet with a Humanoid Abomination and have a perfectly pleasant time, not even realizing exactly what they were dealing with.
• The Everyman: The hero of his works is often this. Notably, the Anti Anti Christ in Good Omens winds up being described as "human incarnate" rather than "demon incarnate" as expected.
• Eye Scream: A recurrent theme.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Several of his stories and novels play with fairy tales and tropes and fracture them to pieces. "Snow, Glass, Apples" is a dark take on Snow White in which Snow White is a vampire. Meanwhile "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds" mashes up several nursery rhymes into a Private Eye Monologue as Hardboiled Detective Jack Horner tries to solve the murder of Humpty Dumpty. "The Sleeper and the Spindle" features Queen Snow White investigating the familiar curse of Sleeping Beauty, only to discover that the old woman looking after the girl was the princess, who was cursed to stay awake, and the evil sorceress was the one asleep, restoring her youth and power.
• In Which a Trope Is Described: Used in the novels Stardust and Anansi Boys, the Sandman story arcs Season of Mists and Brief Lives. even the occasional Tweet.
• Light Is Not Good: Several works have villainous angels, and other similar subverted tropes.
• Old Shame: Invoked in promotions for the Humble Bundle, a collection of rare stories and books rereleased to raise funds for charity. These include his infamous debut book — a biography of Duran Duran — and a short story, “Manuscript Found in a Milk Bottle", which Gaiman claims "is so bad I've never let it be reprinted. Not even to give young writers hope that if I was that awful once, there is hope for all of them."
• Political Correctness Gone Mad: Somehow, he manages to deconstruct the idea itself. In a blog post, he proposed replacing the polarizing term "Politically Correct" with the phrase "Treating Other People With Respect", likely with the point of making people uncomfortable regarding the implications.
  • He is however against the desire for censorship sometimes implicit in the PC movement, as discussed here
• Reference Overdosed: For more information click here.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: His work usually differentiates about where it lands closer to. However, there are elements of both in all his stories.
• Surreal Horror: This can't be stressed enough. The guy made buttons scary, for crying out loud. And, that's among the least of the screwy, nightmare, weirdly juxtapositioned tomfoolery he pulls on you. It's almost a relief when you get to see it upfront and in-your-face in such places as Delirium's realm, rather than sneaking up to randomly grab you from "normal" environments... like say, in Neverwhere. Or American Gods. Or anything else.
• Those Two Bad Guys: Many of his works have a pair of bad guys with little characterization outside of being an inseparable antagonistic pair. Examples include Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar; Hastur and Ligur; and Mr. World and Mr. Stone.