#812 And Weep, Like Alexander- Neil Gaiman

#812 And Weep, Like Alexander- Neil Gaiman

A little man walks into a bar and demands a whisky, because he deserves one. He has been here before but nobody remembers him. It’s an occupational hazard; he is an uninventor. He begins telling his tales of uninventing great technological devices like the jet-pack, flying cars, transporters, etc. The bar is enrapt in his unbelievable story. But why uninvent these potentially world changing advances? The answer lies in the cell phones the entire bar immediately went to after the story, those invented items that include things like the “unofficial Simpson’s Fart App.”

Satire about the too fast changing of technology can get a bit preachy at times, and often tend towards the luddite-shouting–at-the-moon caricature. But this one was just funny. The commentary only came at the end. The whole ride was a bunch of word play on “UN” inventing things:

-Still no use crying over unspilt milk, and you can’t mend an omelette without unbreaking a few eggs.

-It’s all about unpicking probability threads from the fabric of creation. Which is a bit like unpicking a needle from a haystack.

-It’s all been uninvented. There are no more horizons left to undiscover, no more mountains left to unclimb.

That last one leads to the title of this piece: “I shall go home…and weep, like Alexander, because there are no more worlds to unconquer.”

Rating: 8-9-8-8 Total= 33

#698 An Invocation of Incuriosity- Neil Gaiman

#698 An Invocation of Incuriosity- Neil Gaiman

Another fantastic, fantastical tale by Neil Gaiman. This world is coming to an end. The sun is burning out and all will soon be engulfed in nothingness. Farfal the unfortunate—so called because: “He had spent his life in a one-room cottage at the end of time, at the bottom of a small hill, surviving on the food his father could net in the air…”—witnesses the end of all things from his cottage he sometimes shares with his father.

Balthasar the Tardy lives two lives. One with his son Farfal and one in a world a million years in the past where he is known as Balthasar the Cunning because he brings amazing spells and technologies from the future. Farfal is unaware of his father’s second life because he is under a hex, an Invocation of Incuriosity. But when the world ends, he is whisked off to his father’s other life and loses his place at his father’s side.

“I have spared you from death, my boy…I have brought you back in time to a new life. What should it matter that is this life you are not son but servant? Life is life, and it is infinitely better than the alternative.”

In a fun mind experiment, if you could travel back in time and meet your brothers from this time, some of which have been alive less years than you, but who were born a million years in the past—who is older?

His father makes a mess of his duel dimension dealings and is lost to nothingness. No longer unfortunate, Farfal finds a way to a different time, our time, the reader’s time and is telling this story to a kind man he meets while selling ancient carvings at a flea market over a free Denny’s Breakfast. Only Neil Gaiman can make this stuff work.

Rating: 9-9-9-8 Total= 35

#503 Click-Clack the Rattlebag- Neil Gaiman

#503 Click-Clack the Rattlebag- Neil Gaiman

This is a short, well-developed horror story. A child is at home in his family’s large, dark, dusty house. He is being watched by his sister’s new boyfriend. He wants to hear a story before he goes to bed, and asks for a story about Click-Clacks:

-Click-Clacks, said the boy, are the best monsters ever.

-Are they from Television?

-I don’t think so. I don’t thing any people know where they come from. Mostly they come from the dark.

-Good place for a monster to come from.

-Yes.

So the boy and the boyfriend watching him walk down the hallway to the boy’s bedroom while they talk about what makes a good Click-Clack horror story. “Click-Clacks are much scarier than vampires.” “They’re made of dark. And they come in when you don’t pay attention…and they look like what you’re not expecting.”

While they discuss the anatomy of a good horror story, it turns into a horror story. Click-Clack!

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total= 31

#438 Jerusalem- Neil Gaiman

#438 Jerusalem- Neil Gaiman

Morrison wanted to go to Greece for vacation, but his wife convinced him to go instead to Jerusalem to see the biblical sites. It had a big effect on them.

“Jerusalem…was like a deep pool, where time had settled too thickly. It had engulfed him, engulfed both of them, and he could feel the pressure of time pushing him up and out. Like swimming down too deep.”

Their guide told them about Jerusalem Fever, a light affliction that hits tourists at a pretty alarming rate. The weight of the city’s history hits them so strong they wish to exist in the city as it was thousands of years ago. They strip themselves of their modern clothes and don bed sheets as togas and walk the city in a trance. This happened to Morrison’s wife.

“Perhaps, he thought, it isn’t madness. Perhaps the cracks are just deeper there, or the sky is thin enough that you can hear, when God talks to his prophets. But nobody stops to listen any longer.”

The fever always subsides when taken out of the city, but the memory has stuck with Morrison, and he wonders what it is like to feel that strong an emotion to be struck with a faith so absolute.

“Sometimes he wondered what it had felt like inside her head, that day, hearing the voice of God through the golden-colored stones, but truly, he did not want to know. It was better not to.”

Maybe he should stop and listen.

Rating: 9-10-10-9 Total= 38

#417 The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury- Neil Gaiman

#417 The Man Who Forgot Ray Bradbury- Neil Gaiman

This is a brilliant story.  Neil Gaiman can’t remember the name of a friend of his, presumably Ray Bradbury.

“I am losing words, although I am not losing concepts. I hope that I am not losing concepts. If I am losing concepts, I am not aware of it. If I am losing concepts, how would I know?”

So, this whole thing is mental game trying to get his mind to remember that name. Trying to trick his mind with hints, pictures, anything to open that path. He can remember a lot of other things, almost everything else about him, then why not the name of his friend.

“Icarus! It’s not as if I have forgotten all names. I remember Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. In the stories, though, it’s worth it. Always worth it to have tried, even if you fail, even if you fall like a meteor forever. Better to have flamed in the darkness, to have inspired others, to have lived, than to have sat in the darkness, cursing the people who borrowed, but did not return, your candle.”

The mind is a funny thing. In the introduction, Gaimen says that he wrote this piece and gave it to Bradbury for a ninetieth birthday gift. I’m so glad they decided to share it with us. Reading so many stories, I have come to appreciate truly unique styles an concepts. This is just great!

Rating: 9-10-10-9 Total= 38

#390 A Calendar of Tales- Neil Gaiman

#390 A Calendar of Tales- Neil Gaiman

What a tremendous story! This is told is twelve tales, each tale is a month of the year. This could be something out of Grimm’s Fairy tales. It is a battle with time, or a representation of spiritual limbo, a crossing, or it could be something else entirely. Whatever it is, it is what story telling is all about, and with it, Gaiman's creativity is peerless.

The story can turn from the utterly fantastical:

“I slept in my igloo made of books. I was getting hungry. I made a hole in the floor, lowered a fishing line and waited until something bit. I pulled it up: a fish made of books—green-covered vintage Penguin detective stories. I ate it raw, fearing a fire in my igloo.”

To the deeply philosophical:

“I heard distant thunder, and in the night, while we slept, it began to rain, tumbling my igloo of books, washing away the words from the world.”

The tale for October should be it’s own thing, a parable of great simplicity and elegance.

Notable Passage: “She spoke the truth, and the March winds blew madness around them.”

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#369 Orange- Neil Gaiman

#369 Orange- Neil Gaiman

“The way a story is told is as important as the story being told,” Gaiman said in the introduction to this piece. This is written as a questionnaire, where we only see the respondent’s answers, only to guess at the questions. It’s subtitled: “Third Subject’s Responses to Investigator’s Written Questionnaire.”

Jemima Glorfindel Petula Ramsey, a Scottish woman recounts a kind of absurd story about her sister. Think of the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carey. He finds a mask that, when worn, brings out your personality traits and magnifies them to an absurd level. OK, now picture that with a vein teenaged girl that likes to wear too much fake orange tanning cream.

Unlike the Bill Self Story from a few days ago about the car manual, this one was both clever, and laugh-out-loud funny. I’m sure there is satire here about consumerism and vanity, but it’s juts a entertaining story.

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#356 Adventure Story- Neil Gaiman

#356 Adventure Story- Neil Gaiman

This is a fun little piece. The narrator’s mother seems a bit addled, or maybe just extremely naïve. For her, going down the wrong aisle in the super market and running into an old friend would constitute a “full-blown adventure.”

So when her son asks her about his deceased father’s curious trophy he brought back from the war, the tale she tells seem like much more than any grocery-store run-in. Of course the story includes Pterodactyls, Aztecs, a tony race of men and a kidnapped princess, it all seems too fantastical to be real.

Don’t worry about it, just sit back and drink your tea.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#326 The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains- Neil Gaiman

#326 The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains- Neil Gaiman

A dwarf is on a quest. He seeks the help of Calum MacInness to be his guide. Together they will travel to the Misty Isle, if they can find it:

“That is hard to say…For there are some who say it does not exists.”

“The Misty Isle is not as other places. And the mist that surrounds it is not like other mists.”

Travelers to the Misty Isle often seek its gold, but to get that gold they must sacrifice much, give up more than they know. The more gold they take, the more they will give up. The dwarf, is not looking for gold, he is looking for truth and revenge.

“Sometimes I think that truth is a place. In my mind, it is like a city: there can be a hundred roads, a thousand paths, that will all take you, eventually, to the same place. It does not matter where you come from. If you walk toward the truth, you will reach it, whatever path you take.”

OR:

“Truth is a cave in the black mountains. There is one way there, and one only, and that way is treacherous and hard, and if you choose the wrong path you will die alone, on the mountainside.”

What do we give up to gain truth? You come to expect great intricate plot, engaging characters, and meaningful symbolism within a Gaiman story. So far, this is my favorite of the whole collection, Trigger Warning.

Notable Passage: “There are many for whom the lure of gold outweighs the beauty of a rainbow.”

Rating: 10-9-10-9 Total= 38