Neil Richard Mackinnon Gaiman (born 10 November 1960) is a contemporary British writer of stories known for his recurring work in the Urban Fantasy genre and extensive use of mythological references and symbolism, often times in "modern" settings.

Some of Gaiman's most famous works include the renowned The Sandman (1989) comic series for DC Comics under their Vertigo imprint. His novels Stardust and Coraline have been made into movies, and American Gods and Good Omens have been made into streaming miniseries. He's also written scripts for other projects, such as MirrorMask by Dave McKean and the Neverwhere TV series. In addition, he worked on the translated script of Princess Mononoke. He also wrote two episodes for Doctor Who, "The Doctor's Wife" in Series 6 and "Nightmare in Silver" in Series 7 and an essay on cities👁 Image
for an Easter Egg in SimCity 2000.

Gaiman married Amanda Palmer of The Dresden Dolls in 2011; they have one son together. The couple announced their divorce👁 Image
in November 2022. He has three grown kids from an earlier marriage who were the inspiration for works like Coraline and his picture books.

He has a Twitter account👁 Image
and a Tumblr blog👁 Image
(inactive since June 2024), as well as a more traditional blog👁 Image
.

In the summer of 2024, Gaiman was accused of various forms of sexual misconduct, including sexual assault, by five different women. This has impacted some productions based on his works, specifically a Disney adaptation of The Graveyard Book, the third season of Good Omens (2019) and a TV series adaptation of The Dead Boy Detectives, the first two of which were paused whilst the third was cancelled after one season. In October, it was announced that the final season of Good Omens would be a 90-minute special instead of a full season, and that it would be done without Gaiman's involvement.

His works include:

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His works provide examples of:

• All Myths Are True: This is the basic premise of American Gods, but it's common in other works.
• Animal Motifs: Used most prominently in Anansi Boys, but ubiquitous throughout his work.
• Apocalypse Cult: Shoggoths Old Peculiar has an (initially) Unfazed Everyman American tourist who visits the picturesque English town of Innsmouth and converses in a pub with the friendly Cthulhu-worshippers who live there. He ends up with a bad hangover and a "feeling of nameless dread" (TM).
• As Himself: In the second Shadow Police novel, The Severed Streets, Neil—with his involvement and permission—appears as a supporting character who has some information regarding the magic of London that the protagonists find useful. He also aids a villain in murdering one of the protagonists. He also appears in "The Original Dr Shade", a short story by Kim Newman.
  • Also his guest appearance on The Simpsons and in The Guild.
  • Gaiman has a small role in the 1980s Star Trek tie-in novel How Much For Just The Planet?
  • Small references in The Case in the Departure of Miss Finch show you that the protagonist of the story is Gaiman himself.
  • Subverted in the Audible short story "The Neil Gaiman At The End of the Universe": It turns out that the man known as Neil Gaiman, who is voiced by Neil, is not actually him. He's a psychologist who was acting his own test subject in an experiment to help astronauts combat the mental effects of isolation.
  • Made a guest appearance as himself in The Big Bang Theory episode "The Comet Polarization".
  • Appears as himself in one episode of the comedy series Staged
• Author Appeal:
  • All Myths Are True, but the one commoning reoccurring is Norse Mythology. Loki and Odin are major characters in both American Gods and The Sandman. Odd and the Frost Giants is based on Norse myths and he even wrote an entire novel acting as a retelling, aptly named Norse Mythology.
  • Tied with the above, Genius Loci and Eldritch Abominations, particularly of the humanoid kind also frequently pop on his works.
• Bantering Baddie Buddies: Many of his works have a pair of bad guys with little characterization outside of being an inseparable antagonistic pair. Examples include Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar; Hastur and Ligur; and Mr. Wood and Mr. Stone.
• Based on a True Story: He confirmed in the collection Smoke and Mirrors that "Queen of Knives" was based on real events, namely his grandmother disappearing. In the case of the poem, the grandmother disappears during a magic trick and the magician refuses to say where she went or what happened to her when the grandfather confronts him. Apparently, the details were so close to the truth that Neil received concerned messages from people who knew the real story.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Due to the frequent use of Eldritch Abomination in his works, they usually have their own morality.
• Commedia dell'Arte: Especially in Mr. Punch and "Harlequin Valentine".
• Creator Thumbprint: His novel protagonists follow a specific pattern: young-ish males who are pretty much completely unfamiliar with the fantasy realm in which they find themselves, who survive and triumph by a combination of luck, compassion, and a lot of help from a more knowledgeable, often female character.
• Dark Fic:
  • "The Problem of Susan" is a harsh account of what happened to Susan after the The Chronicles of Narnia books took place.
  • "Snow, Glass, Apples" is a retelling of Snow White, with Snow White as a vampiric Humanoid Abomination.
  • "A Study in Emerald" takes Sherlock Holmes and crosses it over with Cthulhu Mythos.
  • Inverted with Good Omens, which an Affectionate Parody of the Book of Revelation (and to a lesser extent, The Omen).
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?: It's entirely possible for main characters to meet with a Humanoid Abomination and have a perfectly pleasant time, not even realizing exactly what they were dealing with.
• The Everyman: The hero of his works is often this. Notably, the Anti-Anti-Christ in Good Omens winds up being described as "human incarnate" rather than "demon incarnate" as expected.
• Eye Scream: A recurrent theme.
• Fractured Fairy Tale: Several of his stories and novels play with fairy tales and tropes and fracture them to pieces. "Snow, Glass, Apples" is a dark take on Snow White in which Snow White is a vampire. Meanwhile "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds" mashes up several nursery rhymes into a Private Eye Monologue as Hardboiled Detective Jack Horner tries to solve the murder of Humpty Dumpty. "The Sleeper and the Spindle" features Queen Snow White investigating the familiar curse of Sleeping Beauty, only to discover that the old woman looking after the girl was the princess, who was cursed to stay awake, and the evil sorceress was the one asleep, restoring her youth and power.
• Future Self Reveal: In the short story "Other People", the demon in Hell who tortures and interrogates the damned protagonist turns out to be the man himself, mutilated beyond recognition. Whether or not that means an eventual release for him is left ambiguous.
• High-Class Cannibal: In his short story "Sunbird", when Crusty reveals that a past incarnation of the Epicurean Club had tried human flesh, which was apparently legal at the time it had happened, provided it came from someone sentenced to death in the electric chair, and that it was nothing special and prompted no one to pursue cannibalism regularly, save for one member who was already prone that way.
• Humongous-Headed Hammer: Norse Mythology 2017 is a retelling of classic Norse myth in contemporary language. Thor's hammer, depicted on the cover, is an iron brick with intricate gold inlay, and Thor uses it to do many a One-Hit Kill, particularly on Frost Giants, aka Jotun, and on one occasion an entire wedding party of ogres.
• In Which a Trope Is Described: Used in the novels Stardust and Anansi Boys, the Sandman story arcs Season of Mists and Brief Lives. even the occasional Tweet👁 Image
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• I Was Young and Needed the Money: The reason for his first published book: a biography of Duran Duran.
• Jokers Love Junk Food: His retelling of Norse Mythology paints Thor as a lover of junk in "Freya's Strange Wedding", as Thor, disguised as Freya, eats an entire tray of pastries and "fancies" at a wedding party, to the consternation of the other women there. Loki, by comparison, takes a dainty bite of a single offering. In Gaiman's retelling, Thor is characterized as Dumb Muscle, though no less strong or dangerous for that.
• Light Is Not Good: Several works have villainous angels, and other similar subverted tropes.
• Living Lie: "The Thing About Cassandra" had the narrator, a young man, tell the readers that his mother had just run into his old girlfriend, Cassandra, which was impossible, because Cassandra was a fiction he'd invented to impress his friends and keep his mother from wondering if he was gay. He arranges to meet this impossible woman, only for a huge reversal. Cassandra invented him, for much the same reason, not the other way around. In fact she'd learned as a young child that she could bring her lies to life, with one caveat. If she made physical contact with them they would fade away into nothing, never to return. She wondered if anyone who knew the original narrator would remember or miss him, or if they check he wrote to pay for one of her paintings would even still exist the next morning.
• Old Shame: Invoked in promotions for the Humble Bundle👁 Image
  , a collection of rare stories and books rereleased to raise funds for charity. These include his infamous debut book — a biography of Duran Duran — and a short story, “Manuscript Found in a Milk Bottle"
• Production Posse: He has worked with artist Mark Buckingham on several occasions, notably on his Miracleman series.
• Reference Overdosed: For more information click here👁 Image
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• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: His work usually differentiates about where it lands closer to. However, there are elements of both in all his stories.
• Shared Fate Ultimatum: The short story "The Monarch of the Glen". After Shadow helps save her son, Grendel's mother tells Smith and Mr. Alice that if anything happens to Shadow and she suspects their hand in it, they will meet with quick deaths themselves.

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