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Confused ? Why not delve into
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Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman born 10 November 1960 is an English author
of short fiction, novels, comic books, graphic novels, audio theatre, and
films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels
Stardust, American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. He has won numerous
awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker awards, as well as the
Newbery and Carnegie medals. He is the first author to win both the Newbery and
the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The
Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National
Book Awards
Gaiman was able to read at the age of four. He said, "I was a
reader. I loved reading. Reading things gave me pleasure. I was very good at
most subjects in school, not because I had any particular aptitude in them, but
because normally on the first day of school they'd hand out schoolbooks, and
I'd read them—which would mean that I'd know what was coming up, because I'd
read it." When he was about ten years old, he read his way through the
works of Dennis Wheatley, where especially The Ka of Gifford Hillary and The
Haunting of Toby Jugg made an impact on him. One work that made a particular
impression on him was J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings from his school
library, although it only had the first two volumes of the novel. He
consistently took them out and read them. He would later win the school English
prize and the school reading prize, enabling him to finally acquire the third
volume.
For his seventh birthday, Gaiman received C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles
of Narnia series. He later recalled that "I admired his use of
parenthetical statements to the reader, where he would just talk to you ... I'd
think, 'Oh, my gosh, that is so cool! I want to do that! When I become an
author, I want to be able to do things in parentheses.' I liked the power of
putting things in brackets." Narnia also introduced him to literary
awards, specifically the 1956 Carnegie Medal won by the concluding volume. When
Gaiman won the 2010 Medal himself, the press reported him recalling, "it
had to be the most important literary award there ever was" and observing,
"if you can make yourself aged seven happy, you're really doing well –
it's like writing a letter to yourself aged seven."
Gaiman has said Roger Zelazny was the author who influenced him the
most, with this influence particularly seen in Gaiman's literary style and the
topics he writes about. Other authors Gaiman says "furnished the inside of
my mind and set me to writing" include Moorcock, Ellison, Samuel R.
Delany, Angela Carter, Lafferty and Le Guin.
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. His first
professional short story publication was "Featherquest", a fantasy
story, in Imagine Magazine in May 1984.
When waiting for a train at London's Victoria Station in 1984, Gaiman
noticed a copy of Swamp Thing written by Alan Moore, and carefully read it.
Moore's fresh and vigorous approach to comics had such an impact on Gaiman that
he would later write "that was the final straw, what was left of my
resistance crumbled. I proceeded to make regular and frequent visits to
London's Forbidden Planet shop to buy comics".
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. Even
though Gaiman thought he had done a terrible job, the book's first edition sold
out very quickly. When he went to relinquish his rights to the book, he
discovered the publisher had gone bankrupt. After this, he was offered a job by
Penthouse. He refused the offer.
He also wrote interviews and articles for many British magazines,
including Knave. During this he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms, including
Gerry Musgrave, Richard Grey, and "a couple of house names". Gaiman
has said he ended his journalism career in 1987 because British newspapers
regularly publish untruths as fact. 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 this he wrote the opening
of what would become his collaboration with fellow English author Terry
Pratchett on the comic novel Good Omens, about the impending apocalypse.
...more later
Neverwhere is a radio drama based on the novel Neverwhere by Neil
Gaiman. It was dramatized by Dirk Maggs.
Created by Neil Gaiman
Written by Neil Gaiman,
Dirk Maggs
Directed by Dirk Maggs,
Heather Larmour
Produced by Heather Larmour
Broadcast
On Saturday 16 March 2013, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 4 Extra broadcast
the first, hour-long, episode of Neverwhere. The subsequent five half-hour
episodes were broadcast throughout the following week on Radio 4 Extra and made
available worldwide after broadcast on BBC iPlayer. It was rebroadcast on BBC
Radio 4 starting on Dec 25th 2013 and continuing for 6 days.
Beneath the streets of London there is another London.
A subterranean labyrinth of sewers and abandoned tube stations. A somewhere
that is Neverwhere.
An act of kindness sees Richard Mayhew catapulted from
his ordinary life into a subterranean world under the streets of London.
Stopping to help an injured girl on a London street, Richard is thrust from his
workaday existence into the strange world of London Below.
So begins a curious and mysterious adventure deep
beneath the streets of London, a London of shadows where the tube cry of 'Mind
the Gap' takes on new meaning; for the inhabitants of this murky domain are
those who have fallen through the gaps in society, the dispossessed, the
homeless. Here Richard meets the Earl of Earl's Court, Old Bailey and
Hammersmith, faces a life-threatening ordeal at the hands of the Black Friars,
comes face to face with Great Beast of London, and encounters an Angel. Called
Islington.
Joining the mysterious girl named Door and her
companions, the Marquis de Carabas and the bodyguard, Hunter, Richard embarks
on an extraordinary quest to escape from the clutches of the fiendish assassins
Croup and Vandemar and to discover who ordered them to murder her family. All
the while trying to work out how to get back to his old life in London Above.
A six part adaption of Neil Gaiman's novel adapted by
Dirk Maggs, sees James McAvoy as Richard lead a stellar cast
Cast
Richard Mayhew - James McAvoy
Lady Door - Natalie Dormer
The Marquis de Carabas - David Harewood
Hunter - Sophie Okonedo
The Angel Islington - Benedict Cumberbatch
Mr. Croup - Anthony Head
Mr. Vandemar - David Schofield
Old Bailey - Bernard Cribbins
Lamia - Lucy Cohu
The Abbott - George Harris
The Earl - Sir Christopher Lee
Jessica - Romola Garai
Figgis/The Fop With No Name - Neil Gaiman
Tooley - Andrew Sachs
Fuliginous/Ruislip/Blackfriar - Don Gilet
Sable/Sump/Clarence/Homeless man - Abdul Salis
Gary/Second Guard - Paul Chequer
Anaesthesia/Female Tenant/Match Girl - Yasmin Paige
Lord Ratspeaker - Johnny Vegas
Varney/Homeless man/Letting Agent/First Guard - Stephen Marcus
Sylvia/Old woman/Dream Hawker/Mother - Karen Archer
Lord Portico/Stockton - Jon Glover
Iliaster - Paul Stonehouse
Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere part 2 (mp3 26mb)
02 Earl's Court 28:27
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previously
Neil Gaiman –
Neverwhere 1 London Below (mp3
53mb)
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