Things I Like - Books

I'm a huge fan of science fiction, ever since reading Isaac Asimov's I, Robot. From there, I discovered Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke. Back then, science fiction usually had a space or alien component and it was often set in the future.

Sci-fi has changed in the last 30 years. While there are still plenty of tales with aliens and future worlds, the genre has been expanded to include fantasy (everything from fairies to vampires).

Neil Gaiman is one of those authors who writes both science fiction and fantasy. And he's very prolific - even if you've never read one of his books, you've probably seen or heard of his work (movies Stardust and Beowolf, television series Neverwhere). His most recent project is the movie Coraline, a stop-action film based on his book for young readers.

His novel, American Gods (published in 2001) definitely falls into the fantasy category, but there are no vampires or wizards. Instead we have gods, both the old gods of mythology and the new gods of American culture: "gods of credit card and freeway, of Internet and telephone, of radio and hospital and television, gods of plastic and of beeper and of neon." The story follows Shadow, a recently released convict, as he travels across the country in the employ of Mr. Wednesday (the god Odin). There's a battle brewing between the two groups of gods for the soul of America and Shadow isn't sure which side he should support.

The story is clearly fantasy, but the matter of fact portrayal of gods walking and living among us combined with the true to life depictions of the people, places and towns that Shadow sees in his travels raises the question - what is truly real?

I will admit that I enjoyed this book more the second time around. There's so much to take in that I found I had missed things in the initial reading. Coraline is next on my list of his titles to read, I'm assuming that it won't be as complicated...

Visit Gaiman's site here: http://www.neilgaiman.com/