Little, Big

Web Goblin here.

Two years and five blog posts ago, we were introduced to the 25th Anniversary edition of Little, Big or, The Fairies' Parliament, by John Crowley, with art by Peter Milton.

At the time, there were 300 numbered editions, all of which had been pre-sold some dozen years earlier. Deep Vellum has since managed to produce another 65 copies of which around 40 are available for purchase.

Additionally, around 200 copies of the trade hardcover are still available. This is the "green edition" featuring a dust jacket containing an essay by Mr. G.

Deep Vellum is offering a 10% discount code, "littlebig40", which can be used for the trade edition, numbered edition, and/or for a poster between now and the equinox, September 21.

More details here.

Labels: John Crowley, little big or the fairies' parliament, webgoblin words

Everything's coming up Goblin!

Good evening. Your humble web goblin here, back in the saddle. Mr. G has turned back over the reins of the blog for the next three weeks while he is in China.

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A little birdie sent me this concept still from Neil Gaiman's "The Price" (a Christopher Salmon film).



I have it on good authority that Salmon will be updating the Video Production Blog on Monday afternoon with its first post, so keep an eye out for that.

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The last time I guested in this space, I made a joke, later elaborated upon, about always wearing a knit goblin-ears cap when working for Mr. G. Since that time, due to the kindness of his readership, I have been sent not one but two goblin-ears caps!






I've been wearing them all winter, and before that to the A Low Key Gathering at the House on the Rock.

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Our month-long Decade Retrospective has not yet drawn to a close, and one of my favorites has not yet seen the spotlight.

from Wednesday, April 10, 2002:

Reading your blog on fan fiction, you mentioned 'slash' fiction - what in the world is that? Shalene



Figuring that someone out there had probably put it better than I had, I typed

What is slash? into google, and found an instant essay for you.




For those in too much of a hurry to click, slash fiction is basically erotic fan fiction, normally TV series based, pairing off two (er or more I suppose) members of the same sex who don't normally couple for the cameras. From the "/" mark in the middle of "Kirk/Spock" or "K/S" fiction, which is where it all started. ("But Spock," said Kirk, huskily, realising, finally, irrevocably, what his true self had been trying to tell him ever since the beginning of season one, "it's so huge. And it's green." "And it would be logical for you to... touch it, Captain," said Spock. And so on. It's normally written by extremely nice ladies. I have several very sane, respected, and respectable friends who write slash fiction, and do not try to make me read it.)



(I wasn't making up the Knight Rider thing either: I remember a table selling printed fanzine slash fiction, before there was ever a world wide web, with several volumes of "Now impale yourself upon my throbbing gearshift" stories which I thumbed through with delighted and horrified amusement. But then, I was never a David Hasselhof fan.)



Neil -



Related to the hot blog topic: What should one do to report a website that one suspects is in violation of copyright? I myself have come across a site that contains: a) information and images about Richard Powers' novel "The Gold Bug Variations" that readers of the book will find quite helpful; b) the whole book, every damn word. There's no way this is legit, but what can I do about it?



I'm slightly afraid of what nastiness might result if I were to contact the site's author. Some sort of discreet, one-stop online copyright-violation-reporting service seems ideal . . . does one exist?



This is a matter close to my heart. If no such service exists, surely certain publicly interested parties ought to examine the notion. Whom should I contact? (Paging Harlan Ellison . . .)




Well, I've always started out by contacting the webmaster (a quick WHOIS search will give you an e-mail address) or the person who posted it, if they have their address up on the page. (Lots of times stuff has been posted without the webmaster knowing it. And they don't want it up, putting their website at risk: I once wrote to the very cool Project Gutenberg people, who make public domain material available on the web, pointing out that Stephen King and Douglas Adams and I were not yet in the public domain, and could they take that page down, and they were mortified.) Seeing I'm the copyright holder and have every right to grumble, no-one's ever done anything more than take the book or story down, occasionally -- very occasionally -- muttering something hopeless and grumbly like "information wants to be free!" as they do, but mostly being very pleased someone let them know that it was up there.



("No, that's pizza," I want to tell them. "Pizza wants to be free. Concentrate on liberating pizza from evil pizzerias. Information, on the other hand, really hates being free, and is never happier than when manacled to a wall, like Kirk and Spock in some piece of late 70s bondage-oriented slash fiction.")



Sending an e-mail to the book's publisher is probably the easiest way to do it, if you don't fancy an exchange of e-mails with the webmaster or the person posting the stuff. (For The Gold Bug Variations it's William Morrow/HarperCollins). Check out the publisher's website, or the author's authorised website if they have one, and send an e-mail to the CONTACT person giving them the website address of the place with the unauthorised materials, and brief details. (For this web site it's Julia Bannon, Julia.bannon@harpercollins.com who would forward your e-mail to the right place.).

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Lastly, because I promised to use these borrowed powers for good, a small plug: for those in the area of Abington, PA who like their games played on top of tables, 7th Dimension Games is a wonderful store with an awesome owner who is a long-time fan of Mr. G and really knows his stuff.

Labels: fezzes are cool, no (more) offers to knit me a cap please but thank you, webgoblin words, where's perry?

It's he.........eere....

Pssst. This is now up and running. It's very skeletal right now. I suggested it, the webgoblin and the former webelf collaborated, I wrote some FAQs based on things people had asked on Twitter, Facebook or here, and we threw it up, figuring it was more important to get something up (two days before Hallowe'en) than to get it right.

Over the next year we'll make it perfect, and by the time for the run-up to next Hallowe'en I hope it'll be a real resource.

For now, it's a work in progress. But better than nothing.

Click on it and see.

http://www.allhallowsread.com/

(And if you don't know what or why, it started up here a few days ago at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/10/modest-proposal-that-doesnt-actually.html)

Two book-buying days before Hallowe'en...

Thank you Dan Guy. Thank you Olga.

Labels: All Hallow's Read, Webelf Wonders, webgoblin words

Welcome to Cabal Week!

Greetings from your humble web goblin!

While Mr. G is busy meeting deadlines and fulfilling obligations, I will be posting pictures of Cabal and re-posting Cabal-centric entries.

(NOTE: "Cabal Week" is not actually scheduled to be a week long. As mapped out, it will run for a fortnight, covering a single narrative arc I like to think of as "Cabal: Year One".)

Neverwear ran a contest earlier this year to create a graphic depiction of Cabal. I liked the nominees so much, I decided to create a new set of journal sidebar images, which will randomly rotate for the duration.

photo most likely by Kyle Cassidy

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reprinted from Some animal thoughts... (Monday, April 30, 2007)

On the way home from the recording, driving through the rain, just as I pulled off the freeway to head home, I saw a large, pale dog on the side of the sliproad. I went in a couple of seconds from a first glance thought of "Oh, he's just wandering around and knows exactly what he's doing," to, on a second glance, "He's absolutely terrified and if he isn't actually lost he's really scared of all the cars and in danger of bolting onto the freeway."

I pulled over, crossed the road and hurried across to where he was. He backed away, skittish and nervous, then came over to me, shaking. No collar or information, just a choke chain. And big. And very wet and very muddy. With cars going past, I decided the wisest thing to do was to put him into my car while I figured out what to do. The car was the Mini. I opened the door and he clambered in. The dog took up most of the Mini that I wasn't in and a fair amount of the Mini that I was in. Big dog, small car.

I phoned my assistant Lorraine, and asked her to let the local Humane Society (really nice people with a no kill policy) know we'd be coming in soon with a dog, then I drove home, narrowly avoiding death on the way (it's amazing how much you can't see when a huge dog fills the car and your field of vision). I ran around the garden with Dog until he'd tired me out. (I really hope he'd just got lost, and his family are looking for him; it would be hard to imagine someone abandoning a dog that cool.) Then I put him into the back of a car much bigger than the Mini and took him to the Humane Society, where they fawned all over him. ("I think he's a husky-wolf cross," said the Humane lady who took him, and she could be right.)

I think he's probably a survivor too.

Labels: Cabal, Cabal: Year One, Dog, webgoblin words

a momentary break from galleys

This just in from our resident webgoblin about neilgaiman.com:

When I'm not spoiling milk or making maids cry, I like to make
improvements to this site. Here are the last few that I can remember,
of which you may not previously have been aware:

* Introductions, as they are posted, are being archived in a new Introductions
section.
* The Where's Neil? feed now includes automatic reminders that pop up in your
feed reader one week before the event date.
* The What's New box on the front page now automatically displays all new, or updated pages on the site. It even has its own feed to which you may subscribe.
* There is a new version of the iGoogle countdown gadget for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK which ticks down the
seconds in real-time just like the one on this site.

Report all errors to
me, if you please; I'm off to pose for that Froud fellow again.

There. (For those of you who missed it, the webgoblin replaced the webelf, who retired, although is still currently working away in the background organising and labelling the early days of this blog, when she is not making music.)

I was wondering if I could sent some pictures of a neat skull I got as a gift, to authenticate, or at least verify the signature. It was bought online & supposedly signed by Mr. Gaiman at Waterstones in Bath, UK, in 2003. I'm sure he signs all sorts of weird things at shows & conventions, but I'm curious to see if this was really signed by him. It would be really great if it's real. Please email me when you can, or to where I can send images of the skull. Thanks!

I don't think I authenticate skulls online. But I did sign at Waterstones in Bath in 2003. And if you go to http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1230 you'll see a blog entry by Todd Klein about signing the print he did, with a picture of a signature of mine, and if it looks anything at all like that, it's probably mine. I mean, I don't think there's a hot trade in forged signed-by-Neil-Gaiman skulls out there...

Which reminds me: this Monqee will be auctioned for a good cause at the end of July...

Hi,

I am searching for a recording of that truly sublime production of Sweeney Todd starring Adrian Lester. I was googling it and i saw your reference to it. My mum and I went to see it when i was 10 and it was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen or heard. In particular we loved the 'Joanna' song and both of us have been singing it ever since! Did you have any luck in finding it?

Thank you
Ama

I didn't, although I learned that it was broadcast on Radio 3, and was offered a cassette by someone working at a shop specialising in things like that, but never followed it up.

Labels: authenticating skulls -- Is this something I do?, Webelf Wonders, webgoblin words