From Authors and Artists for Young Adults. Vols. 7-26. Gale
Research, 1992-99.

Neil Gaiman

Also known as: Neil (Richard) Gaiman, Neil Richard Gaiman
Nationality: English

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY To describe British author Neil Gaiman
as a "comic book writer" is to do scant justice to the author of
what Frank McConnell calls in Commonweal "the best piece of
fiction being done these days." As the author of the
popular "The Sandman" illustrated prose epic, Gaiman has
developed a strong and devoted following in both his native
Great Britain and the United States; his fantasy-based graphic
novels, as well as his novels and shorter fiction, are eagerly
sought out everywhere from bookstores to independent comic
shops, many of which devote a small corner solely to his works.
Locus writer Edward Bryant distills the reason for Gaiman's
transcendent popularity: His work "can intrigue and satisfy dyed-
in-the-wool prose chauvinists."

Indeed, the term "comic book" seems inadequate in describing the
format in which Gaiman writes. The scripts he composes for his
illustrated fantasies transcend the genre; many reviewers have
compared them to the work of postmodernist writers like William
Burroughs and Thomas Pynchon. Even when viewed within the limits
of the graphic novel genre, Gaiman's haunting mythological
fictions break molds, shatter assumptions, surprise, startle,
and reflect upon their reader a totally new perspective. The
central focus throughout each of his works is the relationship
between people and story, especially the universal power of
myth. "Anyone deploring the lack of innovation in speculative
fiction today would be well-advised to seek out Gaiman's work,"
remarks Elizabeth Hand in the Washington Post Book World.

Finds a New Niche in Comic Books

A voracious reader of comics until the age of sixteen, Gaiman
grew disillusioned with a genre he felt he had outgrown. The
year was 1977, he recalled in an interview with Pamela Shelton
for Authors and Artists for Young Adults (AAYA), "and it was
coincident ... with the loss of the writers whose work I liked
no longer working in comics. There weren't really many comics
being written for people who'd outgrown superheroes and kid-
sized supernatural fantasies, which of course is something that
there is today. These days if you outgrow Spiderman, there's
other stuff you can go on to, but there really wasn't back
then." Although he continued to reread the work of Will Eisner,
a comic writer/illustrator whose Spirit comics had been popular
during the 1940s, it wasn't until 1983 that Gaiman discovered
the works of an English writer named Alan Moore. "Moore's work
convinced me that you really could do work in comics that had
the same amount of intelligence, the same amount of passion, the
same amount of quality that you could put in any other medium."

In his first comic work, a forty-eight-page story called Violent
Cases, Gaiman explores a young boy's imaginative recreation of
the world of Depression-era gangster Al Capone. An adult
narrator recounts his memories of the early 1960s; as a boy of
four, his arm is accidentally fractured by his father. The boy
finds himself in the office of an elderly osteopath who tells
the impressionable child vivid stories of treating notorious
gangland leader Al Capone. For the boy the 1960s and the Chicago
of the 1920s begin to intermesh.

Violent Cases was followed by Black Orchid, the first of Gaiman's
comics scripts to be released by DC Comics. "It was in a lot of
ways less of a story and more of a reaction against stories,"
Gaiman explains of the three- part graphic novel. "I looked at
all the things I didn't like in stories and didn't do them."
Gaiman didn't care for the normal depiction of women in comics:
in Black Orchid the heroine is a female character who is
completely unique to comics: "vaguely feminist, ecological,
essentially nonviolent. I liked the fact that at the end she
doesn't get mad and start hitting people. There is an integrity
to the story that I really am very proud of."

The Birth of Sandman, Lord of Dreams

In December 1988, almost a year after the release of Black
Orchid, came "The Sandman." The epic series, which after eight
years would ultimately number seventy-five issues and over a
million words of script, details the cosmic duties of a family
of seven immortals, anthropomorphic representations of the
categories of human experience through which we attempt to
harness the chaos in which we live: Dream, Desire, Despair,
Destiny, Delirium (formerly Delight), Destruction, and Death.
Among these "Endless" is the pivotal character, the
Sandman,alias Dream, Morpheus, god of sleep, Master of Story. As
each of the layered "Sandman" stories unfolds, Gaiman seduces
his readers into entering a world of myth, magic, the nexpected,
and the previously unexplored.

The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes introduces the reader to the
ageless Sandman/Dream/Morpheus, who was imprisoned by a malignant
English magician in the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane
in 1916. Finally freeing himself seventy-two years later, Dream
returns home to find his palace in ruins and his powers
diminished. While on a quest to recover his three tools--a pouch
of sand, a helm, and a ruby dreamstone--from mankind, Dream
begins to realize that it is more than a lack of tools that has
caused his new weakness. As McConnell explains, he "find[s] that
he has become somehow tainted--spoiled--altered--by his
captivity. Humanized in fact." It is through a character
burdened with the knowledge of his own ultimate demise that we
enter the world of "The Sandman."

In The Sandman: A Doll's House, Dream travels across America
searching for the Arcana--stray dreams and nightmares of the
twentieth century that have taken on human form. Child abusers
and mass murderers people much of this story, and sister Death
is never far away. The Sandman: Dream Country collects several
shorter tales, and characters like Shakespeare and Calliope are
featured alongside Morpheus and the other Endless. In The
Sandman: Season of Mists, Lucifer, having decided to step down
as the ruler of Hell, leaves the choice of a successor to
Morpheus, who is also determined to rescue his lost love, Nada,
from the land of the Dark where he previously condemned her.

In the fifth story, The Sandman: A Game of You, Gaiman puts a
female in the role of protagonist, giving her the unlikely name
of Barbie. Drawn back into the dream realm she ruled over as a
child, she must now attempt to save it from the evil Cuckoo, who
has assumed Barbie's childhood form and plans the realm's
destruction. "A Game of You was, in many ways a kind of anti-
story," Gaiman notes. "I wanted to look at what reader
expectations are; why people go to fantasy, what kinds of
fantasies people have." It is also a vehicle whereby he can
examine the role that gender plays: "the difference between
little-boy fantasies and little-girl fantasies." As in many of
the "Sandman" stories, much of the action is violent, but a
violence premeditated by an ancient justice. Writing about A
Game of You in the Village Voice Literary Supplement, Erik Davis
says, "Gaiman does not make this colorful story-book
material 'mature' by clipping its wings with adult rationality
or clever deconstructions. He just takes dream logic as far as
it will go, right into darkness and blood."

The Sandman: Brief Lives finds Dream and Delirium on a quest to
find Destruction, who exiled himself on Earth over three hundred
years ago. They enlist the aid of the Greek mythological figure
Orpheus, now a head without a body, in helping them follow the
path left in the wake of their brother. In The Sandman: World's
End a group of travellers take shelter from a "reality storm"--a
tempest of otherworldly proportions--in an inn where they share
their mystical stories. And in The Sandman: The Kindly Ones, the
series draws to its destined conclusion as Hippolyta Hall vows
revenge against the Lord of Dreams for the disappearance of her
son. Driven mad by loss and rage, she gains the help of beings
known as the "Kindly Ones" to seek a redress that even Morpheus
acknowledges is justified.

Throughout the series, the character of Morpheus remains
enigmatic. "He's definitely not human," explains Gaiman. "I
mean, he is the personification of dreams. He's the king of the
dreaming place where you close your eyes each night and go. And
whether he's [good or evil] depends an awful lot on where you're
standing. From his own standards, he is always acting for the
best, but his moral code and his point of view are not human.
And I like that. You know, he's very stand-offish ... he's a bit
stuck-up."

Redrawing the World of Sandman for Younger Readers

"The Sandman" is written for a mature audience: as Gaiman
maintains, "if you're too young for 'Sandman,' you will be bored
silly by it. It's filled with long bits with people having
conversations." More strongly focused towards a YA audience are
The Books of Magic and Death: The High Cost of Living. The Books
of Magic collected the four magazine issues that concern the
initiation of a young boy with "powers" into the lore of real
magic. It includes cameos by such figures as the Sandman and his
sister, Death. "It's a fascinating look at magic, its benefits
and burdens," notes Locus reviewer Carolyn Cushman, "all
dramatically illustrated, and with a healthy helping of humor."

A spin-off of Gaiman's "Sandman" series, Death: The High Cost of
Living features the Endless who, Gaiman notes, is "the
friendliest, nicest, and easiest to get along with." Allowed to
return to Earth only once each century--"better to comprehend
what the lives she takes must feel like, to taste the bitter
tang of mortality"--Death appears in the form of a sixteen- year-
old girl who helps Sexton, a teenager contemplating suicide, to
rediscover the many simple joys of living. "Gaiman brings a
gritty urban contemporaneity to the fantasy genre," writes a
Publishers Weekly reviewer. "The combination of wry mystic,
immortal, and MTV slacker produces an engaging chemistry."

Even though these works are aimed at younger readers, they lack
none of the sophistication that Gaiman brings to his other
works. "Gene Wolfe, one of my favorite writers in the whole
world, once defined good literature as 'that which can be read
with pleasure by an educated reader and reread with increased
pleasure.' And that's what I've always tried to do: create
something that you can read with pleasure, that you can go back
to and get more out of. It seems like part of a deal that there
should be between a writer and a reader; that you want to give
them more than they could get the first time."

In fact, younger readers are among Gaiman's most enthusiastic,
and expressive, fans. "What I enjoy most is when people say to
me, 'When I was sixteen I didn't know what I was going to do
with my life and then I read "Sandman" and now I'm at University
studying mythology,' or whatever. I think it's wonderful when
you've opened a door to people and showed them things that they
never would have been interested in, things that they would
never've known they would have been interested in." Recognizing
his responsibility to his audience, Gaiman considers it a "point
of honor" that the history reflected in his fiction is "good
history: that the mythology is good, accurate mythology."

In fact, he finds a specific value in introducing readers to
mythology, not only the new mythology of Sandman but ancient
human mythologies as well. "You gain a cultural underpinning to
the last 2500 to 3000 years, which, if you lack it, there's an
awful lot of stuff that you will simply never quite understand."
As an example, Gaiman cites the seeming impenetrability of the
Romantic Poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries: "They assumed in their readers a level of classical
education which nobody has anymore." Within "Sandman" even
readers unfamiliar with the Norse god Loki or the three-headed
spirit of Irish mythology "sort of half-know; there's a gentle
and sort of delightful familiarity with these tales. It feels
right. And I think that's probably the most important thing," he
adds. "Giving people this stuff, pointing out that it can be
interesting, but also pointing out what mythologies do know. And
how they affect us."

Work in Traditional Prose Yields Good Omens

The inventiveness that critics see in Gaiman's graphic novels is
also evident in his fantasy collaboration with former fellow
journalist Terry Pratchett titled Good Omens: The Nice and
Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch. An avid fan of
writer Douglas Adams, Gaiman had great fun outlining the
origins, development, and phenomenal success of Adams's popular
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in Don't Panic: The
Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion. After the
book was finished, he couldn't fight the temptation to mimic
Adams's classic English humor style; he wrote the first 4,000
words of Good Omens in early 1988, sent it to a few friends--one
being Pratchett--and then put it in a drawer. A year later
Pratchett convinced Gaiman to collaborate on the novel. "I'd
never written a novel at that point," Gaiman recalls, "so I
thought I'd quite like the idea of doing it as an apprentice,
with a master craftsmen." Most of the novel was written on the
phone: "Terry and I would write our bits, then we'd have long,
long phonecalls during the course of which we'd read each other
the bits we'd written and we'd just make each other laugh going
over bits that were coming up. The fun was just getting the
other one to the point of complete hysteria." Gaiman
acknowledges that Pratchett authored sixty percent of Good
Omens, "mainly because you couldn't stop him writing. It was a
delight to write; it was really nine weeks of madness, that
book."

In Good Omens Gaiman and Pratchett recount how, after six
thousand years on earth, Hell decides it's time to send up the
Antichrist and jump-start Armageddon--the end of humankind. The
slightly tarnished but still angelic Aziraphale and the quasi-
demonic Crowley, field agents for Heaven and Hell, respectively,
are quite content with their long lives in the "Earthly
Paradise" and would prefer not to return to the monotony of
their former existences. While written in a slapstick style,
full of wordplay, antiheroic heroes, and a humor that sometimes
borders on the sophomoric, Good Omens also tackles universal
themes. Commending the novel, reviewer Howard Waldrup notes in
the Washington Post that it "tackles things most science fiction
and fantasy writers never think about, much less write."

In addition to Good Omens, Gaiman has written several other prose
works, including the short story collection Angels and
Visitations, which, along with 1994's Mr. Punch & the "Sandman"
epic, he personally counts among his most accomplished works.
Indeed, Mr. Punch stands out as one of his more concise creative
efforts. Contained in a single volume, it follows in the
tradition of Gaiman's first work, Violent Cases, as a narration
by a man who recalls a haunting incident from his childhood and
attempts to seek its meaning. "I was fascinated both by family
secrets and the weirdness of families; what families are all
about," explains Gaiman. "The Punch and Judy story--the
incredible violence and the murders and the death in this little
puppet story designed to entertain children--became just a
wonderful metaphor for just the relationship between kids and
adults, the way that kids perceive the world versus the way that
adults perceive the world." The most challenging thing about Mr.
Punch, which falls into some as-yet- undefined category of
literature between comic book and novella, was "trying to write
it as if the narrator himself was starting to understand it for
the first time while he was talking ... that he'd known all this
stuff but he'd never put it together." Gaiman's work raises
introspective questions that the reader is left to ponder
Similarly, Stardust, a thought-provoking adult fairy story
written by Gaiman and illustrated by Charles Vess, also attempts
to bridge the gap between the graphic novel and novel formats.
While Mr. Punch, with its haunting full-page montages by Dave
McKean, looks like a comic, Gaiman describes the forthcoming
Stardust as a "very extensively illustrated novella."

One of Those Kids Who Reads Everything

An intrigued reader of Gaiman's work might well ask, "Where does
this all come from?" What kind of kid actually grows up to write
fantasy comics? Gaiman's childhood may shed some light on such
questions, then again, he is no ordinary scribbler of superhero
exploits.

Describing himself as "a completely omnivorous and cheerfully
undiscerning reader," he admits to getting "very grumpy at
school when they'd tell us that we couldn't read comics,
because 'if you read comics you will not read OTHER THINGS.'"
Gaiman, who had read the entire children's library over a period
of about two or three years before starting on the adult library-
-"I don't think I ever got to 'Z' but I got up to about 'L'"--
couldn't help but ask the logical question: "Why are comics
going to stop me [from] reading?"

When he was fifteen Gaiman and his schoolmates took a battery of
vocational tests, followed the next day by interviews with
career advisors who "would look at our tests and say, 'Well,
maybe you'd be interested in accountancy,' or whatever. When I
went for my interview, the guy said 'What do you want to do?'
and I said, 'Well, I'd really, really like to write American
comics.' And it was obvious that this was the first time he'd
ever heard that. He just sort of stared at me for a bit and then
said, 'Well, how do you go about doing that, then?'I said, 'I
have no idea--you're the careers advisor. Advise.' And he looked
like I'd slapped him on the face with a wet herring; he sort of
stared at me and there was this pause and it went on for a while
and then he said, 'Have you ever thought about accountancy?'"

With that inspiring careers advice under his belt, Gaiman went on
to become a journalist, which "was terrific in giving me an idea
of how the world worked. I was the kind of journalist who would
go out and do interviews with people and then write them up for
magazines. I learned economy and I learned about dialogue."

Comic Books: From Concept to Book-Rack

After working in prose, television script, and comics formats,
Gaiman has found comics to be the most challenging. "Frankly,
all the three have in common is that they all use the alphabet,"
he notes. "With prose you're using words to reach into the back
of somebody's head and build up pictures and images. It's as if
you've put somebody in a dark room and you're talking to them.
Its main strength is the fact that everybody is getting an
individual experience. On the other hand, it has weaknesses....
You can loose immediacy in a book. Unlike a movie, you'll never
be on the edge of your seat.

"With a T.V. script, you're writing something that is really a
guide. You're giving the lines and you're saying what's
happening, but there are hundreds of people involved in the
process who will make other decisions about things, from
lighting to where the camera is. Although you can suggest and
although you can put everything you have in your head in the
script, you know that a lot of it is going to be ignored.

"I think there are probably as many ways to write comics as there
are comics writers and any way you do it is right. But the way
that I do it is called 'full script.' You start with page one,
panel one, and you describe everything in the panel. And you
tell the artist what to draw. Then you go on to panel two. And
you may well tell them what size the panels are, what kind of
feeling you're after, etc." Scriptwriting is incredibly time-
consuming: "When I started writing 'Sandman,' it took up two
weeks of every month," Gaiman explains; "by the time I finished,
it was taking up about six weeks of every month. It is two
thousand pages long, which is quite large-- four thousand pages
of script, well over a million words." Some comics writers also
do their own art, but they are in the minority. It takes a lot
longer to both write and draw a story, notes Gaiman: "If you
stop and think about it, it's kind of like saying that a
playwright is somebody who should get up on stage and act
everything out."

The Future of Comics

Although the new comics typically found on the racks of comic-
book stores find a large audience, readership has begun to
decline in recent years as both the biceps and quantity of
interchangeable superheroes swell to the point of numbing the
enthusiasm of even hard-core comic-book aficionados. What Gaiman
would like to see is more comics for more people, for the medium
of the illustrated graphic novel to "go legit" and become
recognized as a work of serious fiction. "Many years ago,
[science fiction writer] Theodore Sturgeon coined Sturgeon's
law. And Sturgeon's law is that ninety percent of everything is
crap. And its a good kind of touchstone.... The trouble is the
ten percent. Ten percent of T.V. is good; ten percent of romance
novels are probably wonderful ... but it's the finding them."
Gaiman believes that graphic novels are currently in a Golden
Age, "And I just wish we could get [them] to the people who'd
like them."

Meanwhile, Gaiman remains busy on several projects, including a
novel based on his television series, Neverwhere, which began
airing in Great Britain in the fall of 1996. While many fans
have mourned the end of the "Sandman" saga, Gaiman notes that
every story must have an ending. His fans can rest assured that
any absence he takes from the world of comics will only be
temporary. "Comics is my first love," Gaiman maintains, "and I
think it's always something that I will go back to."

If you enjoy the works of Neil Gaiman,you may also want to check
out the following books: Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide
to the Galaxy Trilogy, 1990-1992. Esther Friesner, Unicorn U,
1992. Peter Ustinov, The Old and Man and Mr. Smith, 1991.

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Addresses: Home: England and the U.S. Midwest.; Contact:
Merrilee Heifetz, Writers House Inc., 21 West 26th St., New
York, NY 10010

AWARDS
Mekon Award, Society of Strip Illustrators, and Eagle Award for
best graphic novel, both 1988, both for Violent Cases; Eagle
Award for best writer of U.S. comics, 1990; World Fantasy Award
for best short story, 1991; eight Will Eisner awards, including
award for best writer of the year, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994; three
Harvey awards, including best writer; recipient of international
awards, including honors from Finland, Italy, Spain, Brazil, and
Austria.

CAREER
Freelance journalist, 1983-87; writer, 1987--.WORKS

WORKS
* Graphic Novels
 * (With Kim Newman) Ghastly beyond Belief, Arrow, 1985.
 * Violent Cases, illustrated by Dave McKean, Titan (London),
1987, Tundra (Northampton, MA), 1991.
 * Black Orchid (originally published in magazine form, 1989),
illustrated by Dave McKean, lettered by Todd Klein, DC Comics,
1991.
 * The Sandman: A Doll's House, illustrated by Mike Dringenberg
and Malcom Jones III, DC Comics (New York City), 1990.
 * The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes (previously published in
magazine form as Sandman volumes 1-8), DC Comics, 1991.
 * The Sandman: Dream Country (previously published in magazine
form as Sandman volumes 17-20), illustrated by Kelley Jones and
others, DC Comics, 1991.
 * The Sandman: Season of Mists (previously published in
magazine form as Sandman volumes 21-28), DC Comics, 1992.
 * Signal to Noise, illustrated by Dave McKean, Dark Horse
Comics, 1992.
 * Miracleman: The Golden Age, illustrated by Mark Buckingham,
HarperCollins, 1993.
 * The Sandman: A Game of You (previously published in magazine
form as Sandman volumes 32-37), illustrated by Shawn McManus, DC
Comics, 1993.
 * The Books of Magic (previously published in magazine form,
four volumes), illustrated by John Bolton and others, DC Comics,
1993.
 * The Sandman: Fables and Reflections (previously published in
magazine form as Sandman volumes 29-31, 38-40, 50), illustrated
by Bryan Talbot, DC Comics, 1994.
 * Death: The High Cost of Living (previously published in
magazine form, three volumes), illustrated by Chris Bachalo,
Mark Buckingham, and Dave McKean, DC Comics, 1994.
 * The Sandman: Brief Lives (previously published in magazine
form as Sandman volumes 41-49), illustrated by Jill Thompson and
Vince Locke, DC Comics, 1994.
 * Mr. Punch, illustrated by Dave McKean, DC Comics, 1994.
 * The Sandman: World's End (previously published in magazine
form as Sandman volumes 51-56), illustrated by D. Giordana,
Vince Locke, and Dave McKean, DC Comics, 1995.
 * The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (previously published in
magazine form as Sandman volumes 57-69), illustrated by Marc
Hempel, D'Israeli, Richard Case, and others, DC Comics, 1996.
 * Author of additional "Sandman" magazines, including The
Tempest, DC Comics, 1996; creator of characters for magazines,
including Lady Justice, Wheel of Worlds, Mr. Hero, the Newmatic
Man, and Teknophage, published by Tekno Comix (Boca Raton, FL),
1995.
* Novels and Short Stories
 * (With Terry Pratchett) Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate
Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (novel), Workman (New York
City), 1990.
 * (With Mary Gentle) Villains! (short stories), edited by Mary
Gentle and Roz Kaveney, ROC (New York City), 1992.
 * (With Mary Gentle and Roz Kaveney) The Weerde (short
stories), ROC, 1992.
 * Angels & Visitations: A Miscellany (short stories),
illustrated by Steve Bissette, P. Craig Russell, and others,
Dreamhaven Books & Art, 1993.
 * Neverwhere (based on Gaiman's BBC television series),
[London], 1996.
 * The Day I Traded My Father for a Goldfish (juvenile),
illustrated by Dave McKean, White Wolf, 1996.
 * Stardust (four volumes), illustrated by Charles Vess, DC
Comics, forthcoming.
* Non-fiction
 * Duran, Duran: The First Four Years of the Fab Five, Proteus
(New York City), 1984.
 * Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Companion, Pocket Books (New York City), 1988, second edition,
with material by David K. Dickson, published as Don't Panic:
Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Titan,
1993.
 * Author of the television script for the series Neverwhere,
BBC-TV, 1996.

 * Other Works
 * Adaptations: The "Sandman" series has been optioned for film
by Warner Bros.; The Sandman: Book of Dreams (DC Comics, 1996),
contains short fiction based on Gaiman's characters by writers
that include Stephen King, Clive Barker, and Tad Williams.

 * Work in Progress: A book of short fiction for Avon; a
screenplay featuring the character "Death."

FURTHER READINGS
 * Bryant, Edward, review of The Sandman: The Books of Magic,
Locus, January 1991, p. 21.

 *  Cushman, Carolyn, review of The Sandman: The Books of Magic,
Locus, April 1993, p. 29.

 *  Davis, Erik, review of The Sandman: A Game of You, Village
Voice Literary Supplement, July 8, 1993, p. 10.

 *  Review of Death: The High Cost of Living, Publishers Weekly,
February 21, 1994, p. 248.

 *  Gaiman, Neil, interview with Pamela Shelton, July, 1996.

 *  Hand, Elizabeth, review of The Books of Magic, Washington
Post Book World, January 27, 1991, p. 8.

 *  McConnell, Frank, "Epic Comics," Commonweal, October 20,
1995, pp. 21-23.
http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/lore/951020_Commonweal.html

 *  Waldrup, Howard, review of Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate
Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, Washington Post, December 20,
1990.

For More Information See-
Books
 *  Sanders, Joe, "Neil Gaiman," St. James Guide to Science
Fiction Writers, St. James Press, 1995, pp. 350-52.

Periodicals
 * Analog: Science Fiction/Science Fact, February, 1991, p. 176.
 * Booklist, May 1, 1988, p. 1469; September 15, 1990, p. 140;
March 15, 1992, p. 1364.
 * Detroit News, March 2, 1996, pp. C1, 4.
 * Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1990, p. 950.
 * Library Journal, September 15, 1990, p. 104; July, 1993, p.
78.
 * Locus, July, 1990, p. 29; November, 1990, p. 57; February,
1991, pp. 38, 39, 42; December, 1991, p. 52; April, 1992, p. 46;
June, 1992, p. 15; December, 1993, p. 50.
 * New York Times Book Review, October 7, 1990, p. 27.
 * Publishers Weekly, April 1, 1988, p. 79; July 20, 1990, p.
50;  February 10, 1992, p. 78; October 11, 1993, p. 54; October
24, 1994, pp. 57-58; March 6, 1995, p. 68; December 11, 1995, p.
15.
 * School Library Journal, February, 1991, p. 104.
 * Science Fiction Chronicle, October, 1985, p. 43; July, 1988,
p. 42;February, 1991, p. 43; March, 1991, p. 30; November, 1992,
p. 34.
 * Voice of Youth Advocates, August, 1992, p. 174; April, 1995,
pp. 15-16.