CHRIS DIBONA: Please mute your
phones for the spectacular
event that is forthcoming.
You should do that, too.
NEIL GAIMAN: Yeah, OK.
[LAUGHTER]
CHRIS DIBONA: It's
a BlackBerry.
That was a Google, sort of
Android joke, there.
[LAUGHTER]
CHRIS DIBONA: Have I not given
you enough Androids?
NEIL GAIMAN: You've
given me wonderful
Androids in the past.
CHRIS DIBONA: You can
still have them.
You want a Nexus 10?
You know, I can--
[LAUGHTER]
CHRIS DIBONA: You know,
I've got one.
I'll have one brought over.
NEIL GAIMAN: Let me talk about
the advantages of the
BlackBerry when it comes
to social media.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Also, the flicking
things around with
your thumb.
I actually like flicking.
CHRIS DIBONA: Yeah,
it's flicky.
NEIL GAIMAN: I like that.
CHRIS DIBONA: So as you know,
Neil came up from Los Angeles
was your last stop?
NEIL GAIMAN: It was, last
night we finished--
I say "we," because there's a
well-oiled machine on either
side of me, pushing books on one
side and putting pens in
and out of my hands
in the other--
and we wrapped at about quarter
to 3:00 in the morning.
CHRIS DIBONA: Wow.
Is that in Los Angeles
time zone?
It's a little different there.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: How far
away are you?
CHRIS DIBONA: Me personally?
No, OK.
So, long bus trip, magical,
through the Coalinga's smell.
Or did you take 101?
NEIL GAIMAN: I slept.
I don't know where
the bus drivers--
there are two of them.
Their names are Charlie and
Paul, and somehow you get in
the bus, you fall asleep, you
wake up in the next place.
CHRIS DIBONA: It's like
teleportation.
NEIL GAIMAN: Its magic.
I think they just roll the world
under the bus wheels.
The bus stays completely
still.
CHRIS DIBONA: Maybe the bus
stays the same, everything
changes around it.
So I'm going to let you do your
reading, and then we'll--
NEIL GAIMAN: Tell
them who I am.
They don't know.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: They're
all sitting here
going who is this person?
Why are we doing this?
CHRIS DIBONA: I'm sorry.
I'd like to introduce
Dan Brown.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
CHRIS DIBONA: I was told the
number one New York Times best
selling author would be on
stage, and I just assumed--
oh no, it's you this
week, right?
Yeah, OK.
So, congratulations.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
CHRIS DIBONA: It's you, Miss.
Evanovich.
It's Neil Gaiman, as you know.
[LAUGHTER]
CHRIS DIBONA: Not really
Janet Evanovich
NEIL GAIMAN: Half the dozen
people [? walking. ?]
CHRIS DIBONA: Or the one
who does the "Z As In
Zebra" crime novels.
She's wrapping it up, too.
I'm sure she'll be number one
at some point, right?
Not Sookie Stackhouse,
but the other one?
NEIL GAIMAN: Dying
here, Chris.
Dying on stage.
CHRIS DIBONA: They're not
here to listen to me!
They here to listen to you.
So we should let you--
you had something you
wanted to read from.
NEIL GAIMAN: I have a
couple of things I
want to read to them.
I have a plan, a secret,
sort of weird plan.
So, plan.
I'll do a little reading, and
then last time I came in and
did a Google Talk, and the time
I came in before that, I
actually got up and just burbled
for a long time, and
then to questions.
Let us assume no burblage.
We will go straight
to questions.
There's a lot of you.
We'll do a bunch of questions,
and then I will read something
else that won't be out for a
while, so you get a sort of
sneak Googly preview.
So that's the plan.
CHRIS DIBONA: OK.
You're being recorded.
You're OK with that?
NEIL GAIMAN: What!
[LAUGHTER]
CHRIS DIBONA: Because I
don't want to ruin the
surprise of a book.
NEIL GAIMAN: Actually,
the last time I did
one of these, I was--
CHRIS DIBONA: A younger man.
NEIL GAIMAN: Younger,
significantly more beautiful,
definitely less gray.
And in a terrible, terribly
weird mood, because as I was
coming in through that door, I
got the email saying, your cat
just bit a kid and that is going
to have to be put down.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Oh, not my cat!
CHRIS DIBONA: I didn't think a
puma was a good choice for a
domestic animal.
NEIL GAIMAN: Just large,
black, and evil.
And actually, having
nine lives, he
escaped that, that doom.
So it's nice to be here at
Google, in the same place
without worrying about
cat death.
Hello.
Go and sit down or something.
CHRIS DIBONA: Yeah, I'm going
to get out of the way.
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
NEIL GAIMAN: Right.
So for any of you who do
not know who I am, my
name is Neil Gaiman.
I'm a writer.
I started out writing comics.
Actually, no, I started
before that.
I was a journalist, and then I
wrote comic books back when
they were still comic
books, before we
called the graphic novels.
And then I started writing book
books, and somewhere in
there, I made some television,
and some films,
and children's books.
Probably the most fun I've had
on this signing tour that I'm
on so far, which is my last
signing tour, is counting the
number of licensed,
as opposed to
unlicensed, Doctor Who t-shirts.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: It's currently
running at 4,000 to 6.
I was amazed to see a licensed
t-shirt last
night in Los Angeles.
So, I wrote a couple of episodes
of "Doctor Who," and
most recently, I wrote
a novel accidentally.
And that's this.
And it's called "The Ocean at
the End of the Lane," and
right now, it's at number one
on the "New York Times"
bestseller list.
And it's getting me the best
reviews of my life, which has
not been a life entirely
devoid of good reviews.
But I've never seen anything
like this.
And the book is completely
and utterly accidental.
It began about 18 months ago
when my wife, Amanda, who is a
musician and performer, went off
to Melbourne, Australia,
to make an album.
And I missed her.
And I discovered that if you
have a wife who's making an
album, she doesn't have
much attention for
anything else in the world.
I would get a daily text saying,
"I love you, making an
album."
And as far as she was concerned,
that was it.
She was doing her duty.
And as far as I was concerned,
it was I miss you, where did
you go, I had a wife, I had a
girlfriend before that, I had
a fiance before that.
Before that I had a girlfriend,
and now I have
somebody making an album.
NEIL GAIMAN: And I
thought, right, I
will write her something.
And the idea of essentially sort
of sending her a short
story was one that seemed
like a really good idea.
She's not actually--
this may seem strange because I
am probably best known as a
writer of the fantastic--
but my wife doesn't really
like fantasy very much.
So I thought, well, OK, I can
dial down the fantasy, and
I'll put in things she likes.
And she likes me.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: So I'll put
some me in there.
And she likes honesty, and
she likes feelings.
And I don't normally do
feelings, because I'm male.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: And English.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: A killer
combination.
But I thought, OK, I'll do a
short story, and it'll have
that stuff.
And I'll set it--
it won't quite be my family,
and it won't actually be
autobiographical, but the kid,
the viewpoint character, is
going to be very much me.
And I will have some fun with
this, and I'll write her a
short story.
And after a few weeks, I went,
you know, I'm really not
writing a short story here.
I'm probably writing
a novelette.
There are about sort of 10,000
to 18,000 words, maybe 10,000
to 14,000 words, something
like that.
And then I thought, OK, well,
a week or so later, I'm
obviously writing a novella.
And I wrote an email to my
editors, and I said I'm
writing a novella.
Don't really know what we'll
do with it, but there is a
novella happening.
And my plan had originally been
to finish the thing and
send it to Amanda in Melbourne,
but she finished
making her album.
And she came back to America,
and she went to Dallas to mix
the album, so I went to
Dallas to be with her.
And every day she'd mix her
album, and every day I would
go to a local coffee shop, and
I finished writing my book on
the first day, and then
I started typing.
And I typed it out.
Every night, I'd
read it to her.
And every morning, I'd say, OK,
where do you remember up
to before you fell asleep?
And she'd tell me, and
I'd read it again.
And when I finished, I did
a would count, because
technology allows you to do that
these days very simply.
And sent a very surprised email,
slightly apologetic
email, to my editors on each
side of the Atlantic saying I
appear to have accidentally
written a novel.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: I'm very sorry.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: And I'd never
written a novel that hadn't
been planned before.
I'd always known that I was
writing something, and I knew
that it was happening.
And here I was with
an extra book.
And didn't actually think that
it was anything other than
this weird, kind of very
personal book.
I'd written things over the
years, mostly short stores, a
few graphic novels--
"Violent Cases," "Mr. Punch"
were both graphic novels--
a few short stories, which would
all be these kind of
peculiar, not really
autobiographical stories, but
using big, chunky
autobiographical elements.
And generally speaking, they got
nice critical response and
sank without trace, were never
really heard of again.
And suddenly I'd written
something, and I'd send it out
to friends to read and give
me their reactions.
And they'd email back saying
it's the best thing you've
written, and I cried.
And I go, OK, it must
be the feelings.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: So, I'm going to
read you just a little bit of
this, because I know we have
limited time, and Chris and I
took up most of it doing
possibly the worst comedy
routine ever seen in this
entire building.
"Nobody came to my seventh
birthday party.
There was a table laid with
jellies and trifles with a
party hat beside each place and
a birthday cake with seven
candles on it in the center
of the table.
The cake had a book drawn
on it in icing.
My mother, who had organized
the party, told me that the
lady at the bakery said they'd
never put a book on a birthday
cake before, and that mostly for
boys, it was footballs or
spaceships.
I was their first book.
When it became obvious that
nobody was coming, my mother
lit the seven candles on the
cake, and I blew them out.
I ate a slice of the cake, as
did my little sister and one
of her friends, both of them
attending the party as
observers, not participants,
before they fled, giggling, to
the garden.
Party games had been prepared
by my mother, but because
nobody was there, not even my
sister, none of the party
games were played.
And I unwrapped the newspaper
around the [? past ?] the
parcel gift myself, revealing a
blue plastic Batman figure.
I was sad that nobody had come
to my party, but happy that I
had a Batman figure, and there
was a birthday present waiting
to be read, a boxed set
of the Narnia books,
which I took upstairs.
I lay on the bed and lost
myself in the stories.
I liked that.
Books were safer than other
people, anyway.
My parents had also given me a
"Best of Gilbert and Sullivan"
LP to add to the two
that I already had.
I'd loved Gilbert and Sullivan
since I was three when my
father's younger sister,
my aunt, took me to see
"Iolanthe" play filled with
loads and fairies.
I found the existence in nature
of the fairies easier
to understand than that
of the lords.
My aunt had died soon after of
pneumonia in the hospital.
That evening, my father arrived
home from work, and he
brought a cardboard
box with him.
In the cardboard box was a
soft-haired, black kitten of
uncertain gender whom I
immediately named Fluffy and
which I loved utterly
and wholeheartedly.
Fluffy slept on my
bed at night.
I talked to it sometimes when
my little sister was not
around, half expecting it to
answer in a human tongue.
It never did.
I did not mind.
The kitten was affectionate,
and interested, and a good
companion for someone who's
seventh birthday party had
consisted of a table with iced
biscuits and a blancmange and
cake and 15 folding chairs.
I do not remember ever asking
any of the other children in
my class at school why they'd
not come to my party.
I did not need to ask them.
They were not my friends,
after all.
They were just the people
I went to school with.
I made friends slowly
when I made them.
I had books, and now
I had my kitten.
We would be Dick Whittington
and his cat, I knew.
Of if Fluffy proved particularly
intelligent, we
would be the Miller's son
and Puss in Boots.
The kitten slept on my pillow,
and it even waited for me to
come home from school sitting on
the driveway in front of my
house by the fence, until a
month later it was run over
the taxi that brought the opal
miner to stay at my house.
I was not there when
it happened.
I got home from school that
day, and my kitten was not
waiting to meet me.
In the kitchen was a tall, rangy
man with tanned skin and
a checked shirt.
He was drinking coffee
at the kitchen table.
I could smell it.
In those days all coffee was
instant coffee, a bitter, dark
brown powder that came
out of a jar.
'I'm afraid I had a little
accident arriving here,' he
told me cheerfully.
'But not to worry.' His accent
was clicked, unfamiliar.
It was the first South African
accent I'd had.
He too had a cardboard box on
the table in front of him.
'The black kitten, was
he yours?' he asked.
'It's called Fluffy,' I said.
'Yeah, like I said, accident
coming here.
Not to worry, disposed
of the corpse.
Don't have to trouble
yourself.
Dealt with the matter.
Open the box.
'What?'
He pointed to the box.
'Open it,' he said.
The opal miner was a tall man.
He wore jeans and checked shirts
every time I saw him
except the last.
He had a thick chain of pale
gold around his neck.
That was gone the last
time I saw him, too.
I did not want to
open his box.
I wanted to go off on my own.
I wanted to cry for my kitten,
but I could not do that if
anyone else was there
and watching me.
I wanted to mourn.
I wanted to bury my friend at
the bottom of the garden, past
the green grass fairy ring into
the rhododendron bush
cave, back past the heap of
grass cuttings where nobody
ever went but me.
The box moved.
'Bought it for you,"
said the man.
'Always pay my debts."
I reached out, lifted the top
flap of the box, wondering if
this was a joke, if my kitten
would be in there.
Instead a ginger face stared
up at me truculently.
The opal miner took the
cat out of the box.
He was a huge, ginger-striped
tomcat missing half an ear.
He glared at me angrily.
This cat had not liked
being put in a box.
He was not used to boxes.
I reached out to stroke his head
feeling unfaithful to the
memory of my kitten, but he
pulled back so I could not
touch him, and he hissed at me,
then stalked off to a far
corner of the room where he sat,
and looked, and hated.
'There you go, cat for a cat,"
said the opal miner, and he
ruffled my hair with
his leathery hand.
Then he walked out into the
hall, leaving me in the
kitchen with a cat that
was not my kitten.
The man put his head back
through the door.
'He's called Monster,'
he said.
It felt like a bad joke.
I propped open the kitchen door
so the cat could get out,
then I went up to the bedroom,
and lay on my bed, and cried
for dead Fluffy.
When my parents got home that
evening, I do not think my
kitten was
even mentioned." [APPLAUSE]
CHRIS DIBONA: So now you wanted
to take some questions?
NEIL GAIMAN: Yeah, why not?
CHRIS DIBONA: So I'm going to
quote Thomas Stoppard--
NEIL GAIMAN: Actually, before we
do, just I would say after
that, things get
much stranger.
There we go.
Now.
CHRIS DIBONA: I'm going to quote
Tom Stoppard quoting
Neil Gaiman, with some
liberties. "A question is a
short interrogative that can
be answered by its victim."
Although he didn't say "victim."
The point is often
people give speeches
here at Google.
NEIL GAIMAN: Nobody at
Google would do that.
CHRIS DIBONA: This is
what I told him.
So if you have a question,
there's a
microphone right there.
Feel free to use it.
I can't believe there's
no questions.
Here we go.
All right, now I'm going
to fade away.
NEIL GAIMAN: Whop
was that man?
Where did he come from?
Where has he gone?
Hello.
AUDIENCE: Hi.
So, I'm just curious if there
are any random moments from
your childhood that have stuck
with you all your life, that
pervade everything you write?
NEIL GAIMAN: You know,
there really aren't.
I mean, strategy the driving
force-- although I was
absolutely willing to pillage
and ransack my childhood
mostly for the moments of
corroborative detail.
The process of writing a novel,
the process of writing
fiction, is really the same
process that you use to
convince a teacher that the
dog really did eat your
homework, and you need to
get the color of the
dog right and stuff.
So for corroborative detail, I
would absolutely go and raid
and pillage my childhood, but
the story itself actually
began much more with fictional
things from my childhood.
One of the things that drives
the book is a family called
the Hempstocks, who are as far
as we can tell pretty much
immortal and have been living
in the farm at the end of my
lane for thousands
upon thousands of
years, if not millions.
I mean, the youngest of them,
who is 11 but has obviously
been 11 for a very, very, very
long time, claims that the
duck pond in her garden is
actually the ocean, and they
came across that ocean
from the old country.
And her mother says that she's
wrong, and actually the old
country sank.
And then old Mrs. Hampstock,
who claims to be able to
remember the Big Bang, says
they're both wrong, and
actually the old country
blow up.
AUDIENCE: When you were writing
"Sandman," did you
have a real view of the overall
story structure and
where the plot was going from
the beginning, or did it
really evolve substantially
over time?
NEIL GAIMAN: When I was doing
"Sandman," I had an idea of a
shape from the very beginning,
but I didn't actually think I
was going to be allowed
to do that shape.
What I thought was going to
happen, because in those days
there was a sort of
weird matter of
honor from comics companies.
They tended to do 12 issues, a
year's run of a comic, and
then cancel it if it wasn't
really selling anything.
And I expected that what I was
doing here was going to be a
minor critical hit and a major
commercial disaster.
So I plotted an eight-issue
storyline because I knew that
issue eight is when they'd
phone you up and say, OK,
you're not selling anything,
and we're canceling it, and
you've got to wrap it up.
And we're going to 12 issues,
and then we're done.
So I thought, OK, it'll be eight
issues, and then I'll do
four short stories,
and we'll be done.
And even though I sort of sowed
the seeds for stuff that
I planned to do if it kept
going, that was what I thought
was going to happen.
Except by issue eight, it was
obvious that we were selling
more than anything like
that had ever sold.
We weren't actually selling
"X-Men" or "Batman" or
"Superman" numbers or anything,
but we were
outselling any comparable for
mature readers thing.
And at that point, I actually
went, OK, now if I do this, I
can do this thing.
And I took the plot, was pretty
sure that by issue 40
it would all be done, and
went off and did it.
And of course, it all took twice
as long as I thought,
and after a while I was saying,
well, it'll probably
wrap up at issue 50,
and then issue 60.
And then I started saying
if I ever get to
issue 75, I'll be surprised.
And then I managed to finish
it at episode 75.
And it's not that I knew
everything, but I knew the
shape of the story.
And I also knew because you're
writing serial fiction, you
don't have to know everything.
You have to have room
for happy accidents.
You have to have room to do
something, and then go, oh my
gosh, that character is great,
and bring them back.
You have to have room for
all that kind of thing.
So there was a lot of that.
AUDIENCE: Hi, my name's Corey.
I work at the Google
Children's Center.
And one of the things that I
believe we at the Google
Children's Center and you have
in common is just this great,
very intense respect for
children and their
perspective.
So I've read, and I watch videos
of you talking about
respect for young children, and
how you write for children
and adults, and I was just
wondering, can you talk a
little bit about how do know, as
you're writing a story, is
this going to be for children?
Is this going to
be for adults?
NEIL GAIMAN: Mostly, you know.
I mean, mostly.
I was in China a few years ago,
and I was talking to my
Chinese publisher.
And I said, why is it that none
of my picture books our
in print in simple Chinese
on the mainland?
My picture books are all in
print from Taiwan and in Hong
Kong, but nothing
on the mainland.
And they said, ah, well, it's
because they show a lack of
respect for the family unit on
the part of the children and a
lack of respect for authority.
And children question authority
in them, and they do
bad things, and they're
not punished.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: And
I thought, OK.
So then it became a point of
honor for me, that I had to do
a story in which all of those
things happened that would get
published in mainland China, and
I decided I would write a
book about a baby panda
who sneezed.
So I did a book called
"Chu's Day."
And at that point, you know
you're writing for children.
You also know that whenever
you're writing for children,
you're writing for adults, and
you're writing for adults that
if a kid likes a book-- if a
little kid likes a book--
it's not that you're going
to have to read
that book once a week.
You may have to read that
book four times a night.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: For eight
months for a year.
There are books that I read my
kids that are imprinted on the
back of my head.
There was one called "Catch the
Red Bus" about a father
bear taking his family with
various colored modes of
transportation to the seaside.
It's not great literature.
I could recite it all
still to this day.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: So you're always
aware of the adult readership.
Sometimes you're writing
things for kids--
what I try and do is write for
me if I'm writing for kids,
and just go what did I like
when I was that age?
And not even what did I like
trying to look back at it, but
what is the seven-year-old
inside me like?
What does the 9-year-old, what
is the 11-year-old like?
And that kind of works, treating
things with that kind
of respect.
I just did a book, which I'll
try and do a reading of-- when
we get to the end of this, I'll
do a little reading--
called "Fortunately the Milk,"
which is ostensibly a kid's
book, but it's probably the
funniest thing and the
silliest thing I've
ever written.
And that I knew it was for
kids, but was absolutely,
happily, and joyfully throwing
in jokes and bits that were
simply for adults, and going
I don't really care.
Adults and go and buy a version
with a respectable
cover or something.
Next question?
AUDIENCE: In "American Gods"
and "The Sandman," you have
this whole idea of gods being
just like people who walk
among us, who just have
normal lives.
I think that's really cool.
I was just wondering
how did that idea
start up in your head?
NEIL GAIMAN: I remember the
exact moment that the plot for
"American Gods" came together,
which was slightly different
to "Sandman." In "Sandman," I
just loved the idea that if I
was going to do a story about an
anthropomorphic incarnation
of the idea of dreaming, that
he'd look human because it's a
comic, and he has to look
like something.
So at that point, when you're
bringing gods on, mostly in
"Sandman" I kept my gods off in
cool, [? godey ?] places,
except for the few that
have retired.
One was working as a travel
agent in there, and he
definitely retired.
In "American Gods," it came from
another sort of thing.
It came from me flying to
Iceland, having a stopover in
Iceland, getting in really early
in the morning, getting
no sleep on the plane, but
going, you know, I'll just
keep going until it gets dark.
And it was July the 3rd.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: I love the fact
that you guys have seen where
this plan goes wrong
way before I did.
And what actually happened in
Iceland was that about 3
o'clock in the morning, it got
a little bit overcast for
about half an hour, and
then the sun was out.
And my body clock was just
going, I don't know
what's going on.
So at 1 o'clock the following
day, I'm wandering the streets
of Reykjavik, and the
world has gone flat.
Everything is flat, everything
is weird, and nothing is open
except for a tourist office.
So I wander into the tourist
office, because there's
nothing else in Reykjavik on
that Sunday, and I see the
travels of Leif Ericson laid
out on a tabletop diorama.
And I look at them, I think,
that's really interesting.
And then I thought, I wonder
if they brought
their gods with them.
And suddenly it was like
everything was there.
I thought, oh, obviously they
did, and then they died out.
And then having died out, the
gods will be just sort of
hanging around, and now they'd
be eking out a living on the
edge of things, pumping
gasoline
and doing minor scams.
We'd have this sad, lonely, blue
collar gods, and I can
say everything I want to say
about the peculiar American
immigrant experience, which is
one that I was going through.
I mean, having been here for
eight years, and going, you
know, it's nothing
like the movies.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: It seems to be a
real place with all sorts of
quirks that are not getting
documented.
So that was the driving
point for that.
AUDIENCE: In "The Ocean at
the End of the Lane," and
hopefully I can keep this
spoiler-free, after the first
cut and stitch, the narrator
says he wants to remember, and
then he's still him.
But at the end of the book, he
doesn't remember anything that
occurred at the farm.
And I was hoping you could
explain your decision
to make that so.
NEIL GAIMAN: God, not without
completely spoilering the
entire book, not only for
everyone here at Google, but
given that this will go up onto
the web, for everybody in
the whole world for all time.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Sidle over
to me at the end and
we'll do two minutes.
But it is a book in which
various strange things are
done with memory, and it is, as
my friend Terry Pratchett
sometimes uses to describe
things, it is a very quantum
sort of a book.
I was actually pleased.
The "New York Times" just
reviewed it, and they did
actually observe something that
I felt when I was writing
it, which is it's probably not
science fiction, except it's
science fiction in the Arthur
C. Clarkian sense of any
sufficiently advanced
technology is
indistinguishable from magic.
So you've got a kid who is
seeing things as magic that
probably, actually aren't.
AUDIENCE: You've spoken about
possibly revisiting London
Below at some point.
Any plans?
NEIL GAIMAN: So did anyone here
catch the BBC adaptation,
the radio adaptation, of
"Neverwhere" recently?
A couple of hands going up.
Wasn't it good?
A couple of hands get waved
enthusiastically.
So BBC Radio 4 did an adaptation
of "Neverwhere, the
world of London Below, with
people like Benedict
Cumberbatch, and James McAvoy,
Sir Christopher Lee, all these
amazing actors.
Anthony Steward Head,
Natalie Dormer.
A fantastic cast.
Bernard Cribbins, which
meant a lot to me.
And I loved listening to it, and
I got so enthused I went,
oh, I miss this place.
And I'd been asked for a short
story by George RR Martin and
Gardner Dozois's for an
anthology they were putting
together called "Rogues."
So I sat down, and I wrote to my
first piece of "Neverwhere"
fiction in 15 years, and it's
a very long short story.
I think probably, it's
technically a novelette.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Called "How the
Marquis Got His Coat Back."
And it'll be published,
I guess, sometime in
2014, and it's fun.
I get to do stuff that have
been in my head about the
"Neverwhere" world for a long
time and had never actually
been written.
So you get to meet the shepherds
of Shepherd's Bush
and the elephant of Elephant
and Castle.
So, yes, more coming.
And then one day, I will
probably do the other
"Neverwhere" novel that I've
been meaning to do, which is
called "The Seven Sisters."
I'm just a really lousy
writer of sequels.
I always mean to.
People say Gaiman does not write
sequels as if there is a
moral imperative there.
I will revisit stuff.
I'm not!
I always mean to.
I'm just somebody who if on the
one hand I have the option
of doing something that I've
done before, know how to do,
that people liked, and that
people are waiting for, and
that a publisher would pay me
a lot of money to do, and on
the other hand I'd have
something that I have no idea
how to do and no idea if people
like or not, I will
tend to go off on this
hand from a kind of
"Oh, shiny," level.
That's where I go.
So I always mean to.
Everything in my head, by the
time I finished it, I know
where I'm going to
go next with it.
Not everything.
There is no "Coraline
II" in my head.
But most things. "Neverwhere,
there's more.
"Stardust," there's more.
"American Gods," there's more.
I'm just rubbish at ever
getting to them.
I go and do different
things instead.
AUDIENCE: So do you have any
advice for someone who would
like to start doing creative
writing but has no idea where
to start whatsoever?
NEIL GAIMAN: Depends.
Are you the kind
of person who--
do you read a lot?
AUDIENCE: I read a lot,
yes, and I write
snarky emails [LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: But that's about it.
I've been told they're
very good.
NEIL GAIMAN: When you say
creative writing, do you want
to write fiction?
Do you want to write
humorous essays?
There's an awful lot--
AUDIENCE: Fiction,
I would think.
NEIL GAIMAN: You want
to do stories?
AUDIENCE: Yes.
NEIL GAIMAN: OK.
So my advice is start
writing stories.
AUDIENCE: Just like, do it?
NEIL GAIMAN: Really, it's almost
as simple as that.
It's start writing, pick
a style, pick a theme.
You're not expected straight out
of the hat to be a brave
and original voice producing
fine and wonderful fiction.
It's much more like the first
pancake on the griddle, which
is going to do this weird,
black, messy thing that you
will either give to your
dog or to a child.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Trying to convince
them, yeah, it's nice.
You write, you finish things,
you start the next thing, you
write that, you finish it.
Somewhere in there, you
get reasonably good.
AUDIENCE: Give these
to people?
Or do you just--
NEIL GAIMAN: Yeah.
The point I always found that
I would always learn more
about what I'd done the moment
I saw it in print, or these
days, probably the
moment you'd see
things up on the web.
Buy, yeah.
Show them to people.
But the most important thing
when you're just starting out
is write the next one.
Assume that you have a million
words inside you that are
absolute rubbish, and you need
to get them out before you get
to the good ones.
And if you get there early,
that's great.
That's really my
biggest advice.
AUDIENCE: All right,
thank you.
NEIL GAIMAN: Read everything
you can, read outside your
comfort zone, and write a lot.
AUDIENCE: One of the things
that I've noticed--
I've been following you
since "Sandman"--
is that you've definitely
tried lots of different
mediums and different
media types.
I've wondered if you've ever
thought about going into any
of the interactive media types
like video games or anything
like that with your writing?
NEIL GAIMAN: Back in the '90s,
I had about four excursions
into the world of video games
and computer games.
There was a "Sandman" game that
was meant to be really
cool, and worked on that
for a long time.
There was several others.
And what would happen is I would
put in a lot of work on
these things.
And normally, contracts would
get signed in there, and
somewhere between contract
signing and the first check
being cut, I would get a sad
phone call explaining that
they were now going out of
business, and it was lovely
working with me.
There was one company who
actually said, OK, they're
coming in to shut us down
this afternoon.
I have the notebook computer
that we were going to send you
on my desk.
I'm putting it in a FedEx
envelope with your name on it,
and then I'm losing
the FedEx slip.
You didn't get it from me.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: And they were
gone that afternoon.
But I went, well, at least
this time I got a
computer out of it.
That's kind of cool.
So somewhere by the end of the
'90s, that sort of went from
'93 through about '99, and
I thought I cannot be
responsible for somehow,
Jonah-like, destroying any
more of these nice start-ups, or
these otherwise apparently
healthy companies.
They show me all the
stuff they've done.
I go this is great, and then
they start with me, and they
lie on their back, and put their
legs in the air, and
move no more.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Very recently I've
started toying with and
playing with and getting a
little bit involved in the
sort of dipping my toe
in kind of territory.
Again, very nervously just
going, well, I like you
people, but I don't want to
drive you out of business.
But we'll see.
If enough time has passed,
maybe things will change.
AUDIENCE: Hello.
My name is Leila, and when
things don't go so well for
me, I try to make good art.
And me and my wife really,
really enjoy your work, and I
know that your wife was the
inspiration behind this book,
as you've mentioned before.
And I really, really enjoy
your wife's work as well.
She's an amazing singer,
an amazing composer.
And I was wondering, has
she ever written
any songs about you?
And if she has, what
are they called?
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: It is a bone of
occasional contention between
us at this point that the song
that I actually show up in as
me the most and for the longest
is a humorous song--
but true--
by my wife about how much
she hates Vegemite.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Mine hates
vegetables.
NEIL GAIMAN: She also
hates Marmite.
I It's this English yeast-based
spread.
Pretty salty, but you can spread
on things, and nobody
except the English and
Australians like, and the
Australians had Marmite, and
the English don't really--
are they different?
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: You just try
getting into Australia now.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Not only are they
different, but I discovered
through extensive Googling
at one point when I got
interested that--
Googling, capital G, obviously,
and whatever TMs
and copyright things need--
through extensive Googling that
New Zealand Marmite is
sugary and sweet, and it's
a completely different--
while they have the name
Marmite, it's actually nothing
like English Marmite.
But she wrote this song which
begins with this whole thing
about how much she loves me, and
then goes rapidly into why
I eat Vegemite, and will
put this evil,
cancerous stuff on my bread.
And it's a heartbreaking
song for me.
For everybody else, they just
think it's really funny, and
I'm going, no, I love you.
Why this song?
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: So that, I think,
is the only song that I
actually really get
to crop in as me.
And she had a very bad
experience with Marmite as a
small girl when the English
neighbors were babysitting,
and the neighbor kid got a large
spoon of Marmite and
told her it was chocolate
spread.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: So her first
experience with Marmite was
every bit as bad as my first
experience with wasabi, which
is another story for
another day.
AUDIENCE: I actually though
wasabi was avocados, so I
popped the whole thing
in my mouth.
NEIL GAIMAN: Ditto.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: I understand,
thank you.
NEIL GAIMAN: There is a moment
where you are suddenly staring
out of your nostrils.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: How this is
physically possible, I don't
know, but you are gazing
on the naked,
screaming face of God.
And in my case, of course, I was
at an incredibly important
dinner with incredibly important
people, had just
done this thing, and then spent
the longest two minutes
of my life waiting for the other
people at the dinner all
to look the other way so I could
get it out of my mouth
and into a napkin.
Yes, let's do one more question,
and then I'm going
to read a little bit
more to you.
AUDIENCE: What are
your feelings or
thoughts about patents?
The reason I ask is [LAUGHING]
two ladies recently--
I don't know how recently-- came
out with an inflatable
bike helmet, and every time I
talk to somebody about it,
they talk about, oh yeah, Neil
Gaiman had that idea in "Snow
Crash."
NEIL GAIMAN: That was actually
Neal Stephenson.
It's the other Neil!
There's two of us.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: It's OK, I love
it when that happens.
He's the other Neil.
He is the bold-bearded Neal
who spells it with a A.
CHRIS DIBONA: Less hair.
NEIL GAIMAN: He has less
hair up there,
more hair down there.
And the best thing about Neal
Stephenson is we have a
photograph of the two of
us with Neil Armstrong.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: Forming the perfect
trifecta of Neils.
I will throw in one
bonus question.
Person in red, come forward.
CHRIS DIBONA: A palate
cleanser.
AUDIENCE: There is obviously a
huge mythological component in
your-- not a component, an
oeuvre in your work--
and especially Hindu mythology
as well, which I was very
surprised to find.
Could you--
what inspires you to include
through so much myth
in all of your work?
NEIL GAIMAN: The question is
what inspires me to put so
myth into my work--
I wish I had an origin story.
I really do.
I would say, well, when I was
four years old, I was bitten
by a radioactive myth.
And people go, ah
ha, that was it.
And I don't.
I do know that when I was
about six years old, I
stumbled upon a copy of Roger
Lancelyn Green's "Tales of the
Norsemen" and just loved all
of the stories of Thor and
Odin and Loki and the giants.
And I just thought these
are fantastic.
And I saved up my own pocket
money, and I went out, and
there was another book by him,
"Myths and Legends of Ancient
Egypt," and I went and bought
that, and just thought this
stuff is amazing.
This is so cool.
This is the best stuff.
So wherever I could after
that, I would read myth.
I discovered very rapidly
that you actually
get the coolest stuff.
And this was hugely important,
I think, when I was a kid and
started realizing that in the
books of myths they told for
kids, they took out the sex
and the violence and the
really weird bits.
But if you went into the adult
section and read the books on
myths, you could get
the completely
brain mashing stuff.
So I would absolutely do that.
But I love methodologies, And
I genuinely love building
them, I love thinking about
them, I love creating them,
and I love playing with them.
And they tend to be
very equal for me.
One of the reasons, I think,
why I had so much fun, and
I've had so much fun, writing my
episodes of "Doctor Who" is
that was the first mythology
I ever really encountered.
I was three years old, and
I discovered the Daleks.
And by the time I was five, I
knew what TARDIS stood for.
And I got my dad to buy me a
copy of "Dalek World" on
Victoria Station, and it was
this amazing hardback, large
format book with comics and
articles about Daleks, and I
learned all this stuff.
I knew the history of Skaro.
I learned that measles
was a Dalek disease.
I discovered that Daleks cannot
see the color red,
which worried me because
there are red Daleks.
[LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: And I would worry
about what they could see.
My God, that was weird, just
some bumps went past.
It's only funny if you like
"Doctor Who." Otherwise, you
can sit there going, I have no
idea what he's talking about.
But you know, I love
mythologies, and I love
building them.
So for me, it's part
of the fun.
And thank you.
AUDIENCE: Thank you for
the [INAUDIBLE].
NEIL GAIMAN: You
are so welcome.
[APPLAUSE]
NEIL GAIMAN: Given that I'm
talking to Google, and given
that you are obviously the
great minds of our
generation--
I know this because my
son is one of you--
I thought it would be really
nice to finish with a reading
from my next book, which has not
come out yet, and will not
come out until September.
And this is a book called
"Fortunately the Milk." that
was actually in peculiar ways
inspired by my son, Mike.
And it's about a dad.
It's about a father who gets
to go off and do one of the
heroic and brave things that
fathers get to do, which is to
say, go out and get the milk
for his children's cereal.
And he takes a long time to get
back, and when asked why,
he starts to explain.
Well, let me tell you in his own
words why he takes a while
to come back with the milk
for their cereal.
"'I bought the milk,'
said my father.
'And I did indeed say a brief
hello to Mr. Ronson from over
the road who was
buying a paper.
I walked out of the corner shop
and heard something odd
that seemed to be coming
from above me.
It was a noise like this.
Thum, thum.
I looked up and saw a huge
silver disk hovering in the
air above Marshall Road.
Hello, I said to myself.
That's not something
you see every day.
And then something
odd happened.'
'That wasn't odd?' I asked.
'Well, something odder,'
said my father.
'The odd thing was the beam of
light that came out of the
disk, a glittery, shimmery beam
of light that was visible
even in the daylight.
And the next thing I
knew, I was being
sucked up into the disk.
Fortunately, I put the milk
into my coat pocket.
The deck of the disk
was metal.
It was as big as a playing
field or bigger.'
'We have come to your planet
form a world very far away,'
said the people in the desk.
I call them people, but they
were a bit green and rather
globby, and they look
very grumpy indeed.
'Now as a representative of your
species we, demand that
you give us ownership
of the whole planet.
We are going to remodel it.'
'I jolly well won't,' I said.
'Then,' it said, 'we will bring
all your enemies and
have them make you miserable
until you agree to sign the
planet over to us.
I was going to point out to them
that I didn't have any
enemies when I noticed a large
metal door with 'Emergency
Exit, do not open for any
reason, this means you' on it.
I opened the door.
'Don't do that,' said a
green, globby person.
'You'll let the space-time
continuum in.' But it was too
late, I had already pushed
open the door.
I jumped.
I was falling.
Fortunately, I'd kept tight hold
of the milk, so when I
splashed into the sea,
I didn't lose it.
'What was that?" said
a woman's voice.
'A big fish?
A mermaid?
Or was it a spy?'
I wanted to say that I wasn't
any of those things, but my
mouth was full of seawater.
I felt myself being a
hauled up onto the
deck of a little ship.
There were a number of men and
a woman on the deck, and they
all looked very cross.
'Who be ye, land lubber?' said
the woman, who had a big hat
on her head and a parrot
on her shoulder.
'He's a spy!
A walrus in a coat, a new
kind of mermaid with
legs,' said the men.
'What are you doing here?"
asked the woman.
'Well,' I said, 'I just set
out to the corner shop for
some milk for my children's
breakfast and for my tea, and
the next thing I knew--'
'He's lying your, majesty!' She
pulled out her cutlass.
'You dare lie to the queen
of the pirates?"
Fortunately I'd kept tight hold
of the milk, and now I
pointed to it.
'If I did not go to the corner
shop to fetch the milk,' I
asked them, 'then where did this
milk come from?' At this,
the pirates were completely
speechless.
'Now,' I said, 'if you could let
me off somewhere near to
my destination, I would be
much obliged to you.'
'And where would that happen
to be?' said the
queen of the pirates.
'On the corner of Marshall Road
and Fletcher Lane,' I
said. 'My children are waiting
for their breakfast.'
'You're o n pirate ship now,
my fine bucko,' said the
pirate queen, 'and you don't
get dropped off anywhere!
There are only two choices.
You can join my pirate crew,
or refuse to join and will
slit your cowardly throat, and
we'll go to the bottom of the
sea where you will
feed the fishes.'
'What about walking the
plank?" I said.
'Never heard of it,"
said the pirates.
'Walking the plank,' I said,
'is what proper pirates do.
Look, I'll show you.
Do have a plank anywhere?'
It took some looking, but we
found the plank, and showed
the pirates where to put it.
We discussed nailing it down,
but the pirate queen decided
it was safer just to have the
two fattest pirates sit
on the end of it.
'Why exactly do you
want to walk the
plank?' the pirate queen.
I edged out onto the plank.
The blue Caribbean water
splashed gently beneath me.
'Well,' I said, 'I've seen lots
of stories with pirates
in them, and it seems to me if
I'm going to be rescued--'
At this, the pirates started
to laugh so hard their
stomachs wobbled, and the parrot
took off into the air
in amazement.
'Rescue?' they said. 'There's
no rescue out here!
We're in the middle
of the sea.
'Nevertheless,' I told them,
'if you're going to be
rescued, it will always be
while walking the plank.'
'Which we don't do," said the
pirate queen. "Here! have a
Spanish doubloon and come and
join us in our piratical
adventures.
It's the 18th century,' she
added, 'and there's always
room for a bright, enthusiastic
pirate."
I caught the doubloon.
'I almost wish that I could,'
I told her, 'but I have
children, and they need
their breakfast.'
'Then you must die.
Walk the plank.'
I edged out to the
end of the plank.
Sharks were circling.
So what piranhas.
And this was where I interrupted
my dad for the
first time.
'Hang on,' I said.
'Piranhas are a
freshwater fish.' [LAUGHTER]
NEIL GAIMAN: "'What were
they doing in the sea?'
'You're right,' said
my father.
'The piranhas were later.
Right.
So, I was out at the end of the
plank facing certain death
when a rope ladder hit my
shoulder and a deep, booming
voice shouted, 'Quickly, climb
up the rope ladder!'
I needed no more encouragement
than this, and I grabbed the
rope ladder with both hands.
Fortunately, the milk was
pushed deep into the
pocket of my coat.
The pirates hurled insults
at me and even discharged
pistols, but neither insults
nor pistol shot found their
targets, and I soon made it to
the top of the rope ladder.
I'd never been in the basket
of a hot air balloon.
It was very peaceful up there.
The person in the balloon basket
said, 'I hope you don't
mind me helping, but it looked
like you were having problems
down there.'
I said, 'You're a
stegosaurus.'"
[LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
