Neil Gaiman
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Neil Richard Gaiman (IPA: /ˈgeɪmən/)[2] (born November 10, 1960[3]) is an English author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, and films. His notable works include The Sandman comic series, Stardust and American Gods. He lives near Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.,[4][5][6] in an "Addams Family house".[7] He is married to Mary T. McGrath and has two daughters, Holly and Maddy, and a son, Michael.
BiographyEarly lifeGaiman's family is of Polish Jewish origins; after emigrating from the Netherlands in 1916, his grandfather eventually settled in the Hampshire city of Portsmouth on the south coast of England and established a chain of grocery stores.[8] His father, David Bernard Gaiman,[9], worked in the same chain of stores;[8] his mother, Sheila Gaiman (née Goldman), was a pharmacist. He has two younger sisters.[5] The family settled in 1965 in the West Sussex town of East Grinstead when his parents moved there to work for the Church of Scientology, of which his father is a prominent member. Gaiman lived in East Grinstead for many years, from 1965-1980 and again from 1984-1987.[10] Gaiman was educated at several Church of England schools, including Fonthill School (East Grinstead),[10] Ardingly College (1970-74), and Whitgift School (Croydon) (1974-77).[11] Journalism, early writings, and literary influencesAs a child and a teenager, Gaiman grew up reading the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. Le Guin, Lord Dunsany and G. K. Chesterton. He later became a fan of science fiction, reading the works of authors as diverse as Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, Robert A. Heinlein, Harlan Ellison, H. P. Lovecraft, Thorne Smith, and Gene Wolfe. In the early 1980s, Gaiman pursued journalism, conducting interviews and writing book reviews, as a means to learn about the world and to make connections that he hoped would later assist him in getting published. He wrote and reviewed extensively for the British Fantasy Society. [12] His first professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984, when he was 23.[13] In 1984, he wrote his first book, a biography of the band Duran Duran, as well as Ghastly Beyond Belief, a book of quotations, with Kim Newman. He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines, including Knave. In the late 1980s, he wrote Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion in what he calls a "classic English humour" style. Following on from that he wrote the opening of what would become his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.[14] After forming a friendship with comic book writer Alan Moore, Gaiman started writing comics, picking up Miracleman after Moore finished his run on the series. Gaiman and artist Mark Buckingham collaborated on several issues of the series before its publisher, Eclipse Comics, collapsed, leaving the series unfinished. His first published comic strips were four short Future Shocks for 2000 AD in 1986-7. He wrote three graphic novels with his favorite collaborator and long-time friend Dave McKean, Violent Cases, Signal to Noise, and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch. In between, he landed a job with DC Comics, his first work being the limited series Black Orchid. ComicsGaiman has written a plethora of comics for several publishers. His award-winning series The Sandman tells the tale of Morpheus, the anthropomorphic personification of Dream. The series began in 1989 and concluded in 1996: the 75 issues of the regular series, along with a special and a seven issue coda, have been collected into 11 volumes that remain in print. In 1989, Gaiman published The Books of Magic (collected in 1991), a four-part mini-series that provided a tour of the mythological and magical parts of the DC Universe through a frame story about an English teenager who discovers that he is destined to be the world's greatest wizard. The miniseries was popular, and sired an ongoing series written by John Ney Rieber. In the mid-90's, he also created a number of new characters and a setting that was to be featured in a title published by Tekno Comix. The concepts were then altered and split between three titles set in the same continuity: Lady Justice, Mr. Hero the Newmatic Man, and Teknophage.[15] They were later featured in Phage: Shadow Death and Wheel of Worlds. Although Neil Gaiman's name appeared prominently on all titles, he was not involved in writing of any of the above-mentioned books (though he helped plot the zero issue of Wheel of Worlds). Gaiman wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a boy's fascination with Michael Moorcock's anti-hero Elric for Ed Kramer's anthology Tales of the White Wolf. In 1996, Gaiman and Ed Kramer co-edited The Sandman: Book of Dreams. Nominated for the British Fantasy Award, the original fiction anthology featured stories and contributions by Tori Amos, Clive Barker, Gene Wolfe, Tad Williams, and others. Asked why he likes comics more than other forms of storytelling Gaiman said “One of the joys of comics has always been the knowledge that it was, in many ways, untouched ground. It was virgin territory. When I was working on Sandman, I felt a lot of the time that I was actually picking up a machete and heading out into the jungle. I got to write in places and do things that nobody had ever done before. When I’m writing novels I’m painfully aware that I’m working in a medium that people have been writing absolutely jaw-droppingly brilliant things for, you know, three-four thousand years now. You know, you can go back. We have things like The Golden Ass. And you go, well, I don’t know that I’m as good as that and that’s two and a half thousand years old. But with comics I felt like — I can do stuff nobody has ever done. I can do stuff nobody has ever thought of. And I could and it was enormously fun.”[16] Novels and filmGaiman also writes songs, poems, short stories, novels, novellas, and screenplays. He wrote the 1996 BBC dark fantasy television series Neverwhere, which he later adapted into a novel, and cowrote the screenplay for the movie MirrorMask with his old friend Dave McKean for McKean to direct. In addition, he wrote the English language script to the anime movie Princess Mononoke, based on a translation of the Japanese script. He cowrote the script for Robert Zemeckis's Beowulf with Roger Avary, a collaboration that has proved productive for both writers.[17] Gaiman has expressed interest in collaborating on a film adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.[18] He was the only person other than J. Michael Straczynski to write a Babylon 5 script in the last 3 seasons, contributing the season 5 episode "Day of the Dead". In 2005, his novel Anansi Boys was released worldwide. The book deals with Anansi ('Mr. Nancy'), a supporting character in American Gods. Specifically it traces the relationship of his two sons, one semi-divine and the other an unaware Englishman of American origin, as they explore their common heritage. It hit the New York Times bestseller list at number one.[19] See List of works by Neil Gaiman. AdaptationsGaiman has also written at least three drafts of a screenplay adaptation of Nicholson Baker's novel The Fermata for director Robert Zemeckis, although the project was stalled while Zemeckis made The Polar Express and the Gaiman-Roger Avary written Beowulf film. Several of Gaiman's original works have been optioned or greenlighted for film adaptation, most notably Stardust, which premiered in August of 2007 and stars Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes, directed by Matthew Vaughn. A stop-motion version of Coraline is slated for a 2009 release, with Henry Selick directing and Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher in the leading roles. In 2007 Gaiman announced that after ten years in development the feature film of Death: The High Cost of Living would finally begin production with a screenplay by Gaiman that he would direct for Warner Independent. Don Murphy and Susan Montford are the producers, and Guillermo del Toro is the film's executive producer.[20][21] Seeing Ear Theatre performed an audio play of "Snow, Glass, Apples," Gaiman's retelling of Snow White, which was published in the collection Smoke and Mirrors in 1998. BlogIn February 2001, when Gaiman had completed writing American Gods, his publishers set up a promotional web site featuring a weblog in which Gaiman described the day-to-day process of revising, publishing, and promoting the novel. After the novel was published, the web site evolved into a more general Official Neil Gaiman Website.[22] Gaiman generally posts to the blog several times a week, describing the day-to-day process of being Neil Gaiman and writing, revising, publishing, or promoting whatever the current project is. He also posts reader emails and answers questions, which gives him unusually direct and immediate interaction with fans. One of his answers on why he writes the blog is "because writing is, like death, a lonely business."[23] The original American Gods blog was extracted for publication in the NESFA Press collection of Gaiman miscellany, Adventures in the Dream Trade. FriendshipsGaiman maintains friendships with several celebrities outside the comic book and science fiction fields, including:
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