I’ve been reading the SANDMAN series, and I continue to wonder at how brilliantly creative this guy is.

If you don’t know who Neil Gaiman is, then you probably aren’t that interested in science fiction, fantasy, comics, or YA literature.  He’s been a big name in these areas for some years now.  Perhaps you’ve heard of the guy, but you’re not a fan.  If you aren’t a fan, I would encourage you to branch out into one of his other areas of work.  I’ve been doing that a bit lately, and I’m quite impressed.  Heck, I started listening to several of his wife’s songs, and I’m even a fan of his wife’s music.  (Not everything she does is awesome, in my humble opinion, the way that her husband is a creative genius.  But she can write a catchy tune, and I think it’s worth checking out.)

What do I mean by “checking out” his various and diverse work?

Well, it started for me with AMERICAN GODS.  It was a brilliant book about Americanism, and it mixed mythology, American history, and all kinds of humor and horror into a beautiful brew of mystery and wonder.  I loved it.  I decided to check out other books by this guy.  I read STARDUST, which was quite different.  And quite good.  I read NEVERWHERE, which was much more British to me, and it was also very good.  Then I dove into his YA fiction.  CORALINE was fun and scary – at the same time.  I didn’t love THE GRAVEYARD BOOK as much as his other works, but it was still quite good.

My fascination with Gaiman continued, and perhaps deepened, after reading the strange – and short – novella THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE.  This also coincided with my marathon DOCTOR WHO summer, two episodes of which Gaiman wrote.

At some point, recently, I began reading THE SANDMAN.

I think it’s here that Gaiman’s peculiar genius is most clear.  I just finished reading the ninth book-collection, THE KINDLY ONES, and it’s a monster.  The previous book collection (WORLD’S END) is a pile of stories told at some isolated, unworldly inn, populated by a strange collection of beings from a variety of universes and times.  I thought that eighth book was brilliant.  The ninth book was brilliant, sad, tragic, and beautiful.  And strange.

I’m having a hard time grasping how one guy could be so full of strange and different stories.  Even Stephen King, one of my writing heroes, hasn’t quite produced this diverse a body of work.  While I’ve been reading through this ninth book, I’ve been listening to ANANSI BOYS in the car, a kind of AMERICAN GODS precursor story that felt too much like the book I’d already read to bother with.  It’s a different kind of story, though I see some common threads.  It’s a cool juxtaposition, though, to be hearing ANANSI BOYS in the car and reading THE SANDMAN at home.

I can’t quite articulate all of the things that make him so awesome.  I think it has something to do with the way that he makes these mythical beings seem substantial.  I think he’s also good at the menacing, strange surprise.  Spider suddenly appears, and he has the power to force people to do his bidding, in ANANSI BOYS.  The Corinthian, one of the evil nightmares that Morpheus created (and re-created), has these creepy mouth-eyes with teeth in them that freak me out every time he shows them.  And so on.  He also has a gift for blending the humorous with the horrible.  I think that was one of the brilliant parts of CORALINE – those button-eyes make me shiver.  And while there were truly disgusting parts of SANDMAN – cringeworthy stuff – it doesn’t sink into the really gratuitous nastiness that I remember from other horror writers.

In other words, I haven’t quite figured out where this guy gets his brilliant ideas.  And I’m not entirely clear on how he brings these ideas to fruition.  But I know that he has a lot of great work, and I know that I’ll be jumping at anything else he creates.  Perhaps a men’s clothing line?  Or architecture?