Neil Gaiman

From The Evection Project

This creator appreciates fanworks, but hasn't promised to be cool about fans making money.

Neil Richard MacKinnon Gaiman, who writes under the name Neil Gaiman, created the The Sandman comic book series, Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett), Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. Gaiman thinks fanworks are perfectly good, but would like for the source material to be attributed, isn't going to look at them, and doesn't allow fans to make money.

Statements

June 26, 2021

I won the 2004 Hugo Award for Best Short Story for an H. P. Lovecraft/Arthur Conan Doyle mashup fiction, so fanfiction had better be legitimate, because I'm not giving the Hugo back.

Or the 2005 Locus Award for Best Novelette. I'm not giving that back either.

November 29, 2017

I won the Hugo Award for a piece of Sherlock Holmes/H. P. Lovecraft fanfiction, so I'm in favour.

December 11, 2008

If you want to write fan fiction, you can. I don't mind. Sequels and prequels and meetings and pairings and what have you. You can put it up on the web. But you can't publish it commercially. You need to stay on the non-commercial side of the street, which means you can't sell it, not even if, like Jane Austen, you're in it for the big bucks. Otherwise bad things would happen, involving lawyers from publishers and lawyers from movie studios, and your week would be ruined. Trust me on this.

November 21, 2004

I think that playing with other people's ideas and work is a perfectly valid way to make art. I also think it's much wiser and safer to do it with ideas and work that are comfortably in the public domain if you want your work to be seen professionally.

June 03, 2004

I don't believe I'll lose my rights to my characters and books if I allow/fail to prevent/turn a blind eye to people writing say Neverwhere fiction, as long as those people aren't, say, trying to sell books with my characters in. I don't read it (and that way no-one has to wonder whether I stole the plot of something from their fanfic).

February 03, 2003

I don't read fanfiction.

I think that all writing is useful for honing writing skills. I think you get better as a writer by writing, ... There have been a few remarkable talents who came out of fan fiction or who did amazing things with fan fiction -- I remember talking, somewhere on this journal about David McDaniel.

But I do think that, in the final analysis, all a writer really has to give is the stuff that only she or he can give the world and no-one else can. That the sooner you sound like you and tell the stories only you can tell, for good or for ill, the better. And from that point of view, I suppose I think of fan-fiction as training wheels. Sooner or later you have to take them off the bike and start wobbling down the street on your own.

April 08, 2002

To be honest, I don't really have much of an opinion on fan fiction. I don't actually have much of an opinion on people using my characters in fan fiction. ... As long as people aren't commercially exploiting characters I've created, and are doing it for each other, I don't see that there's any harm in it, and given how much people enjoy it, it's obviously doing some good. It doesn't bother me. (I can imagine a time and circumstances in which it might. But it doesn't.)

Either way, it's a good place to write while you've still got training wheels on - someone else's character or worlds. I remember, as a nine-year-old, writing a Conan-meets-some-Ken-Bulmer-sword-and-sorcery-characters. And it's fun to head over into someone else's playground: I've written several stories over the years set in other people's worlds (including an episode of Babylon 5); and if I don't miss the deadline, I'm meant to be writing a Sherlock-Holmes-meets-the-Chulhu-mythos story very soon.

I do understand that there are grey areas, and I think of fan fiction as existing in them. I know authors who love fan fiction based on their stuff. I know authors who have formally attempted to stamp it out. I'm just sort of [shrug] about it.

I don't honestly mind if you stick (for example) Shadow or the Marquis De Carabas into a story intended for your friends, and not for commercial exploitation. I'd rather you put a note at the end saying who the characters belonged to, which most fan fiction people seem pretty good about doing anyway. But I'd hope you'd see it as a privilege and not a right.

February 26, 2002

I don't have much of an opinion about fan fiction. And I'm not sure where the line gets drawn -- you could say that any Batman fan writing a Batman comic is writing fan fiction.

As long as nobody's making money from it that should be an author or creator's, I don't mind it. And I think it does a lot of good.

Statement sources

June 26, 2021—https://www.tumblr.com/neil-gaiman/655051316456996864/do-you-consider-fanfiction-legitimate-writing

November 29, 2017—https://x.com/neilhimself/status/936059562863550471

December 11, 2008—https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/i-am-prepared-to-offer-you-deal-if-book.html

November 21, 2004—https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/11/back-again-more-or-less.asp

June 03, 2004—https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/06/how-to-survive-collaboration.asp

February 03, 2003—https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/02/long-occasionally-frustrating.asp

April 08, 2002—https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2002/04/in-relation-to-current-burning-topic.asp

February 26, 2002—https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2002/02/they-just-changed-servers-for-faq-line.asp

Works

  • "Manuscript Found in a Milkbottle" (1985)
  • You're Never Alone with a Phone (1986)
  • Conversation Piece (1986)
  • "I Cthulhu: or What's a Tentacle-Faced Thing Like Me Doing in a Sunken City Like This (Latitude 47°9'S, Longitude 126°43'W)?" (1987)
  • I'm a Believer (1987)
  • What's in a Name? (1987)
  • Judge Hershey: Sweet Justice (1987)
  • Violent Cases (1987)
  • The Book of Judges (1987)
  • Jael and Sisera (1987)
  • Jephitah and His Daughter (1987)
  • Journey to Bethlehem (1987)
  • The Prophet Who Came to Dinner (1987)
  • The Tribe of Benjamin (1987)
  • The Great Cool Challenge (1988)
  • From Homogenous to Honey (1988)
  • Sloth (1989)
  • Villanelle (1989)
  • Redfox #20 (1989)
  • Signal to Noise (1989)
  • The Light Brigade (1989)
  • Heartsprings and Watchstops (1989)
  • Good Omens (1990)
  • "Culprits, or Where are They Now?" (1990)
  • Feeders and Eaters (1990)
  • Babycakes (1990)
  • The Doll's House (1990)
  • "Now we are Sick" (1991)
  • The Comic Relief Comic (1991)
  • Cover Story (1991)
  • Black Orchid (1991)
  • Preludes and Nocturnes (1991)
  • Dream Country (1991)
  • "The Lady and/or the Tiger: I (prologue)" and "The Lady and/or the Tiger: II (epilogue)" (1992)
  • Blood Monster (1992)
  • Sweeney Todd (prologue) (1992)
  • Season of Mists (1992)
  • Angels and Visitations (1993)
  • A Game of You (1993)
  • Fables and Reflections (1993)
  • Death Talks About Life (1993)
  • The Books of Magic (1993)
  • Death: The High Cost of Living (1993)
  • The Children's Crusade #1 (1993)
  • An Honest Answer (1994)
  • Brief Lives (1994)
  • The Children's Crusade #2 (1994)
  • The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch (1994)
  • "Cinnamon" (1995)
  • Worlds' End (1995)
  • Neverwhere (1996)
  • The Court (1996)
  • The Kindly Ones (1996)
  • Death: The Time of Your Life (1996)
  • The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish (1997)
  • The Wake (1997)
  • Dust Covers: The Collected Sandman Covers, 1989–1997 (1997)
  • Smoke and Mirrors (1998)
  • Desire: The Flowers of Romance (1998)
  • Stardust (1998)
  • "Wall: A Prologue" (1999)
  • "Septimus' Triolet" (1999)
  • "Song of the Little Hairy Man" (1999)
  • Neil Gaiman's Midnight Days (1999)
  • Death: A Winter's Tale (1999)
  • The Sandman: The Dream Hunters (1999)
  • "Boys and Girls Together" (2000)
  • Desire: How They Met Themselves (2000)
  • American Gods (2001)
  • Coraline (2002)
  • A Walking Tour of the Shambles (2002)
  • The Wheel (2002)
  • The Wolves in the Walls (2003)
  • "The Scorpio Boys in the City of Lux Sing Their Strange Songs" (2003)
  • The Sandman: Endless Nights (2003)
  • Anansi Boys (2005)
  • Melinda (2005)
  • MirrorMask (2005)
  • Fragile Things (2006)
  • "Poem (I am continually disappointed by nudity)" (2006)
  • InterWorld (2007)
  • M is for Magic (2007)
  • The Graveyard Book (2008)
  • Odd and the Frost Giants (2008)
  • The Dangerous Alphabet (2008)
  • Blueberry Girl (2009)
  • Crazy Hair (2009)
  • Who Killed Amanda Palmer (2009)
  • "The Shadow" (2009)
  • Instructions (2010)
  • "The [Backspace] Merchants" (2010)
  • A Little Gold Book of Ghastly Stuff (2011)
  • "Bloody Sunrise" (2011)
  • "The Song of the Song" (2011)
  • The Silver Dream (2013)
  • The Ocean at the End of the Lane (2013)
  • Chu's Day (2013)
  • Fortunately, the Milk (2013)
  • "House" (2013)
  • Chu's First Day of School (2014)
  • Hansel and Gretel (2014)
  • The Sleeper and the Spindle (2014)
  • "How the Marquis Got His Coat Back" (2014)
  • "Kissing Song" (2014)
  • Eternity's Wheel (2015)
  • Trigger Warning (2015)
  • Chu's Day at the Beach (2016)
  • "The Long Run" (2016)
  • The DC Universe by Neil Gaiman (2016)
  • Norse Mythology (2017)
  • Cinnamon (2017)
  • "Monkey and the Lady" (2017)
  • "The Train of Death" (2017)
  • "Hate for Sale" (2018)
  • "Liverpool Street" (2019)
  • Pirate Stew (2020)
  • "One Virtue, and a Thousand Crimes" (2020)
  • "Fish Out of Water" (2021)
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