Neil Gaiman

Milkshake Duck Status and Rationales

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For my own purposes, a (not comprehensive) list of currently known milkshake ducks in my media libraries, how I’m treating their work in my own consumption habits, and any rationales or justifications for these decisions. You may not agree with any or all of this, and that’s fine. This is kind of an exercise to help me figure out why I’ve made the decisions I have, and perhaps, whether I should rethink or change those.

This is being actively updated as my mind processes, and likely will continue to be updated as I think and if (or, unfortunately, when) more people out themselves as belonging to this category.

  • Scott Adams: General right-wing buffoonery, including sexism, racism, anti-science views, etc.
    Haven’t really paid much attention to him in years anyway, thanks to his eye-roll inducing rants, but do have the very fancy oversized 10-year anniversary collected Dilbert, which was last taken off the shelf to see if it was the right size to prop up part of our couch (it wasn’t). Will probably offload it at some point.
  • Woody Allen: Sexual abuse
    Not watching any new work or supporting by buying old work. Keeping and will occasionally rewatch old favorite films already in the collection. While I certainly don’t wish death upon him, his eventual passing will mean that I’ll be more easily able to justify finding those of his films that I know I enjoy but won’t purchase now.
  • Piers Anthony: Sexism, misogyny, pedophilic themes
    Any of Anthony’s books I had in my collection got booted years ago, after I started re-reading the Xanth series, got through the first two while getting increasingly uncomfortable, and then doing a little research and discovering just how bad it got. I couldn’t imagine having those on my shelves if any of my niblings ever went looking for something to read.
  • Orson Scott Card: Homophobia
    Not buying any new stuff, though I did pick up used copies of the first few Ender’s Game/Speaker for the Dead sequels and read some of them after reading those two Hugo winners (I think I still have some to go). From what I’ve seen, OSC hasn’t been nearly as vocal or influential as he once was, EG/SftD are too foundational to my early SF reading to write them off, and my re-read for this project confirmed just how good they are — and, interestingly, how drastically their message of inclusion contrasts with OSC’s statements. Unlike Anthony, whose beliefs are very obvious in his work, OSC’s work actually doesn’t hint as his personal beliefs, so it’s much easier for me to justify keeping his books on my shelves.
  • Neil Gaiman: Sexual abuse
    Still adjusting to this one. Won’t be buying, reading, or watching any new projects. Keeping books and films already in the collection, but it’ll probably be a while before I feel like re-reading anything (and just decided to skip his two Hugo award winning novels in my Hugo best novel reading project).
  • J.K. Rowling: Transphobia
    Not buying, reading, watching, or otherwise supporting any projects. Haven’t ditched the Potter books or films already in the collection, but not re-reading the books (and just decided to skip her one Hugo-award winning Potter book in my Hugo best novel reading project) or re-watching the films. Stopped subscribing to HBO’s Max streaming service in part because of their decision to move forward with a new Harry Potter series.
  • Dan Simmons: Islamophobia
    The same basic bucket as OSC: Not reading anything that isn’t already in my collection, but the Hyperion cantos was too mind-blowing to entirely ditch.

Cage Match: Gaiman vs. Whedon

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Okay, so no, it’s not really a cage match. What it is is a really good interview in Time with Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon, on the eve of the release of their movies, Mirrormask and Serenity (respectively).

Plenty of good stuff in this interview — I knew I was going to enjoy it right from the start…

TIME: Joss, this is Lev from Time magazine. You’re also in the virtual presence of Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman: I’m not virtual. I’m here.

TIME: Sorry. You’re virtual, Joss. Neil’s real.

Joss Wedon: Okay. I wondered.

TIME: I’m glad we settled that.

Neil on writing, and the drive to avoid repeating yourself:

I saw a lovely analogy recently. Somebody said that writers are like otters. And otters are really hard to train. Dolphins are easy to train. They do a trick, you give them a fish, they do the trick again, you give them a fish. They will keep doing that trick until the end of time. Otters, if they do a trick and you give them a fish, the next time they’ll do a better trick or a different trick because they’d already done that one. And writers tend to be otters. Most of us get pretty bored doing the same trick. We’ve done it, so let’s do something different.

Neil and Joss on their primary fan base:

TIME: Let’s talk about your respective fan bases. A lot of them self-identify as kind of on the geeky side.

NG: I think the fan base is literate. You need to be reasonably bright to get the jokes and to really follow what’s going on. That, by definition, is going to exclude a lot of people who will then get rather irritated at us for being pretentious and silly and putting in things they didn’t quite get. But it’s also going to mean that some of the people who do get the stuff will probably be fairly bright.

JW: Especially, I think, living in any fantasy or science fiction world means really understanding what you’re seeing and reading really densely on a level that a lot of people don’t bother to read. So yes, I think it’s kind of the same thing.

But I also think there’s a bit of misconception with that. Everybody who labels themselves a nerd isn’t some giant person locked in a cubbyhole who’s never seen the opposite sex. Especially with the way the Internet is now, I think that definition is getting a little more diffuse.

On mainstream culture’s growing acceptance of genre work:

TIME: I almost miss the stigma that used to attach to these things. Now everybody’s into Tolkien. And I feel a little like, hey, I’ve been into that stuff my whole life. And in fact, you used to beat me up for it.

JW: I miss a little of that element, the danger of, oh, I’m holding this science fiction magazine that’s got this great cover. There a little bit of something just on the edge that I’m doing this. That’s pretty much gone. Although when I walk into a restaurant with a stack of comic books, I still do get stared at a little bit.

NG: I always loved, most of all with doing comics, the fact that I knew I was in the gutter. I kind of miss that, even these days, whenever people come up and inform me, oh, you do graphic novels. No. I wrote comic books, for heaven’s sake. They’re creepy and I was down in the gutter and you despised me. ‘No, no, we love you! We want to give you awards! You write graphic novels!’ We like it here in the gutter!

JW: We’ve been co-opted by the man.

Neil on “family” films:

…in America, it almost seems like family has become a code word for something that you can put a five-year-old in front of, go out for two hours, and come back secure in the knowledge that your child will not have been exposed to any ideas. I didn’t want to do that. I like the idea of family as something where a seven-year-old would see a film and get stuff out of it, and a fifteen-year-old would get something else out of it, and a 25-year-old would get a different thing out of it.

Joss on his upcoming “Wonder Woman” treatment:

NG: She’s such a character without a definitive story. Or even without a definitive version.

JW: That’s how I feel. I hope to change that because I really feel her. Let’s face it: She’s an Amazon, and she will not be denied.

TIME: I’m really hoping her bustier will slip down a little bit further than it did in the show.

JW: You’re just after a porno, aren’t you?

TIME: Yes.

JW: It’s all about priorities. Yes, it’s very empowering for her to be naked all the time.

(via Pop Astronaut)

March of the Sinister Ducks

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Some nights you just find the most bizarre stuff floating around on the ‘net.

Neil Gaiman had a song bouncing through his head the other day, and mentioned it on his weblog. Several people then wrote in to let him know of the location of an .mp3 of the song. After getting permission from the author, Mr. Alan Moore, Neil has quite kindly made the .mp3 officially available: The Sinister Ducks’ “March of the Sinister Ducks“.

Everyone thinks they’re such sweet little things.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Soft downy feathers and nice little wings.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
But there’s a poison I’d like to administer;
You think they’re cuddly, but I think they’re sinister!
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.

I’d never heard of the Sinister Ducks before, so after grabbing the song for myself (and being quite amused by it, I did a little Googling to see what I could find.

What are they doing at night in the park?
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Think of them waddling about in the dark!
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Sneering and whispering and stealing your cars,
Reading pornography, smoking cigars!
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.

According to this English/Portuguese interview with Alan Moore, it turns out that this was a small side project of Alan, Alex Green, and David J. (of both Bauhaus and Love and Rockets) in the early 1980s, roundabout 1983.

Nasty and small: undeserving of life.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
They’ll sneer at your hairstyle and sleep with your wife.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Dressed in plaid jackets and horrible shoes,
Getting divorces and turning to booze!
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.

I’m now going to have this song bouncing around in my head for the indeterminate future. I urge you to download it and listen to it yourself — both for the amusement factor in the song itself, and so I’ll be happy in the knowledge that I’ve inflicted this upon other poor souls. ;)

Forcing old ladies to throw them some bread.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Who could deny, they’d be better off dead?
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Look closely and you will recoil in surprise
At web-footed fascists with mad little eyes!
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.
Ducks. Ducks. Quack-quack. Quack-quack.

iTunes: “March of the Sinister Ducks” by Sinister Ducks from the album Old Gangsters Never Die (1983, 2:34).

Words, words, words

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I’m so set for reading material for the next few weeks — it’s great!

Prairie just got me started reading an old series from Marion Zimmer Bradley, and I just finished the first book — The Inheritor — this morning. Unfortunately, I won’t have anything else in the series until this weekend.

No worries, though. Amazon just delivered Neil Gaiman’s newest work, Endless Nights, his return to the Sandman series.

And, on top of that, I picked up the latest book from Neal Stephenson, Quicksilver, the first book of a planned trilogy called The Baroque Cycle.

So if my posts are a little less frequent than they sometimes are for a bit…at least you know why. ;)

1602

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I’m not a huge comic book geek, but I do enjoy reading them from time to time. The only two series that have really ever caught my eye have been the original black-and-white issues of The Tick, and Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman series. The Sandman series prompted me to seek out more of Neil Gaiman’s writing, and he’s become one author that I tend to keep an eye out for. Understandable, then, that this information caught my eye today:

1602 is an 8-issue mini, set in a Marvel Universe in which, for reasons which will take a while to uncover, the whole Marvel Universe is starting to occur 500 years early: Sir Nicholas Fury is head of the Queen’s Intelligence, Dr Stephen Strange is her court physician (and magician), the Inquisition is torturing “witchbreed“, many of whom have taken sanctuary in England under the wing of Carlos Javier, and now a mysterious treasure — which may be a weapon of some kind — is being sent from Jerusalem to England by the last of the Templars. Something that may save the world, or destroy it, which has already attracted the attention of such people as Count Otto Von Doom (known as “The Handsome”)…[so] Nicholas Fury sends his top agent, a blind Irish ballad singer named Matthew Murdock, off to bring it back safely.

It’s a race against time in a world in which time is the enemy —

It’s not a What If or an Elseworlds. And it’s really fun…

— ‘1602’ author Neil Gaiman

Emperor of the US

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I first read about Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America in one of the Sandman graphic novels by Neil Gaiman. He was also mentioned in the book I’m reading now, The Schroedinger’s Cat Trilogy, by Robert A. Wilson. Quite the interesting — and very real — character, he declared himself Emperor of the United States in 1859. Lots more information about him in his archives — could make for some very interesting reading.

(via MeFi)

American Gods

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What happens to our gods when we stop believing in them?

Since the dawn of man, we have created gods to explain the universe around us, to worship, and to sacrifice to. As people moved from place to place, their gods came with them, carried along in their thoughts, dreams, and ceremonies. When people started coming to this continent — whether in the cargo holds of slave ships, as settlers immigrating to a new land, or as tribes crossing the ancient land bridges — they brought their gods along, asking for their help as they got started in the new world.

Over time, though, as cultures grew, met, and merged, the old gods found themselves with fewer and fewer believers. Old beliefs and religions became supersitions and stories, as new gods arose in the minds of the people of the new world. Odin and the Norse pantheon, brought here with the Viking explorers; Anasazi who came with the African slaves; even the Hindu god Kali; all found themselves passed by, nearly forgotten, existing only on the few prayers from those who still believed in them.

Meanwhile, the new gods gain in strength, as more and more people worship them, though their worshippers don’t always realize it. Gods of the train, the automobile, the television. Gods of drugs and the internet. New gods, who see the future as their world — and hold those old gods that still scrape by, existing where and how they can, as useless. Relics of ages gone by, doing no more than getting in the way of the future.

And a storm is coming….

Now this is what I was hoping for from Neil Gaiman.

After being less impressed than I hoped after I read Neverwhere, I hedged a bit in the bookstore before deciding to go ahead and pick up American Gods. I’m quite glad I did, though — a much better book than Neverwhere.

Drawing upon mythologies the world over, Gaiman has created a fascinating look at the conflict between old beliefs and new, and the dichtomies created in America when so many cultures and religions come together, clash, mix, and evolve over time. Of Gaiman’s works that I’ve read so far, this is easily my favorite.

Neverwhere

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Neverwhere tells the story of Richard Mayhew, a Londoner who stumbles ‘between the cracks’ of the city to discover London Below, a magical (and none-too-friendly) alternate London hidden beneath the streets.

I first discovered Gaiman through the Sandman series of graphic novels, and later his short story ‘Goliath’ that can be found on the Matrix website. I’d also read Good Omens a while ago and greatly enjoyed it, though at the time I didn’t connect Gaiman’s name with anything. He’s got a wonderful eye for the dark and the bizarre, and I’ve found his work quite good so far — but Neverwhere just didn’t quite grab me as much as his other work has.

I enjoyed it, but not quite as much as I was expecting. It was an extremely quick read (I read it in two days, with my only reading time being on the bus to and from work and at lunch), and was a lot lighter than I expected. I believe it was Gaiman’s first novel after his years of work on the Sandman comics, and I’m wondering if that may have affected his writing style as he got used to stretching away from the necessarily sparce narrative employed in comic work. I’m not at all sure, but that was how it felt to me — just a little rushed, as if there were a lot more details there that weren’t being presented. It also wasn’t quite as literary as I’d been hoping — one of the hallmarks of the Sandman series that sets it above so much other comic work in my mind was the great depth and background to it, drawn upon from myths, legends, and stories of cultures throughout the world. Neverwhere, despite being a novel rather than a series of comics, didn’t have that same expansive feel to it.

Still, an enjoyable, if light, read, and I’ll continue to track down the rest of what I can find from Neil Gaiman.

Neil Gaiman’s ‘Goliath’

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I just wanted to throw this link up really quickly before I crash for the night.

If you enjoyed the movie The Matrix at all, you really should check out the official website. Rather than just using it to promote the movie and its upcoming sequels, they’ve got a whole section of the site devoted to exploring the universe of the Matrix, primarily through online comics, with a few short stories.

There’s a lot of really neat stories in there — while not dealing directly with Neo or the other characters from the movie, all the authors have been given free reign to explore the possible storylines of this fictional universe.

The one I’d like to point out, however, is ‘Goliath’, by Neil Gaiman. Neil Gaiman has in recent years become one of my favorite modern authors — as well as the Sandman comic books (which are just incredible, by the way), he’s written some fiction, both on his own and with other authors (the book Good Omens was written with Terry Pratchett, and is just hilarious). With ‘Goliath’, he contributes his own take on the Matrix with a short story that I find to be one of the best contributions on the Matrix site.

In any case, if you’re at all into The Matrix, Neil Gaiman, or just really well-written short fiction, I highly suggest you take a few minutes and give it a read.