Neil Gaiman
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. For that matter I barely have an opinion on "slash" fiction (although I still find the idea of Good Omens slash fiction fairly mindboggling) (er, and Knight Rider slash fiction. I think that Knight Rider slash fiction is pretty weird, to be honest).
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
