I am a passenger. I am moving through your dreams.

June 1, 2003 11:53 AM

If you're a fan of Neil Gaiman then maybe you liked The Sandman. If you were a big fan of The Sandman then perhaps you stumbled upon The Sandman annotations, a comprehensive resource covering the historical, folkloric and religious/mythological references - page by page, panel by panel - found within the storyline. From Chaucer to Dante to the Eumenides, Gaiman created a fabulous story that inspired young and old alike to dream again (one of my personal favorites is A Dream of a Thousand Cats).some mefi sandman-related artifacts can be found here and here.
posted by poopy (7 comments total)

Right on both counts! I'm both a fan and I've found the annotations, which were pretty great for spotting references and things I would never have gotten myself.

As a sort of geekish anecdote for those who have read the second book, A Doll's House - I remember grumbling about how very coincidental it was that all this important stuff was happening around Rose Walker - until the annotations noted that she was a vortex of dream and it only made sense that important dream-related things would be drawn to her.

My personal favorite stories, by the by, are Men of Good Fortune, Soft Places, and Ramadan.
posted by Monster_Zero at 4:58 PM on June 1, 2003

This is great poopy! Thanks a million!

Me ... I loved all of The Kindly Ones.

Lyta Hall is the most tortured superheroine ever :-)
posted by WolfDaddy at 5:01 PM on June 1, 2003

Any fan of the series that hasn't read (and re-read and re-re-read) Hy Bender's EXCELLENT Sandman Companion is doing themselves a diservice; your appreciation of the genius behind the stories will increase exponentially!

p.s. favorites include Ramadan & the chapter from Season of Mists set at the haunted boarding school.
posted by jonson at 6:33 PM on June 1, 2003

*grumble* My copy of Seasons of Mists got lost somewhere in storage and I can't find a copy here, making my Sandman collection incomplete. *grumble*

poopy, great post. As a side note, I wouldn't mind an annotation of American Gods, if only for the various shadowy descriptions of gods at the climax. And I chuckled at Delirium's little cameo in the book.
posted by romakimmy at 8:45 PM on June 1, 2003

Neverwhere was such an incredible book. I read it in two days.
posted by shadow45 at 9:28 PM on June 1, 2003

I do not know of a reference for skooky birds either. But this is good.
posted by Foosnark at 9:28 AM on June 2, 2003

Man, a Neil Gaiman post and it has to happen while I'm away on vacation w/no access to Mefi! Crapola! I looooove his comic books (Sandman, Books of Magic, Stardust) but don't like his novels nearly as much. Not a Terry Pratchett fan, so Good Omens was lost on me. Didn't particularly like American Gods or Coraline either. The scripts for Neverwhere were great but the actual show sucked - didn't bother reading the book. But the new Sandman collection on the other hand... *drools*
posted by widdershins at 1:28 PM on June 4, 2003