cidedly more oriented toward prose in recent years.
One of his Sandman entries won the World Fantasy
Award as best short story in 1991, and the recent
graphic novel The Dream Hunters (1999, with
Yoshitaka Amano) contains so much text that it is
worth considering as a work of prose. His first novel
was Good Omens(1990), a collaboration with Terry
PRATCHETTand a consistently hilarious spoof of
horror novels and movies such as The Omen.A se-
lection of his early fiction appeared as Angels and
Visitations: A Miscellany(1993), but his first solo
novel did not appear until several years later.
Neverwhere(1996) was originally a BBC televi-
sion series created by Gaiman, which he later turned
into a novel. The protagonist finds himself lost in a
magical other reality that exists beneath familiar
London and has a series of adventures as he seeks to
understand his new environment. Stardust(1999) is
an unusual quest story in which the hero attempts
to find a fallen star, which he believes will help him
win the heart of the woman he loves. Coraline
(2002) is an exceptional story for younger readers
about a girl who finds a portal into a world where
animals talk. It won both the Hugo and Nebula
Awards as best novella of the year. His recent fan-
tasy novel American Gods(2001) also collected both
awards. It is the story of a man who discovers that
when waves of immigrants reached the New World,
they brought along certain magical entities as well.
Smoke and Mirrors(1998) was Gaiman’s second
collection of short stories. Among his better shorts
are “The White Road” (1995), “How Do You
Think It Feels?” (1998), “Keepsakes and Treasures”
(1999), and “Inventing Aladdin” (2003). He won
the Hugo Award for his fantastic Sherlock Holme-
sian adventure story “A Study in Emerald” (2003).
Gaiman has also written poetry, edited several an-
thologies, and written a substantial body of nonfic-
tion, most of it related to fantastic literature. He
has very quickly become one of the prominent fig-
ures in literary fantasy while also establishing him-
self as very popular with a wide range of readers.
“The Garden of Fear” Robert E. Howard
(1934)
Although reincarnation would seem to be a logi-
cal plot device for fantasy writers, it is actually
used comparatively rarely. Robert E. HOWARD
liked the idea well enough to use it in this classic
story, although only as a frame for the main plot.
James Allison is a contemporary man who can re-
member his previous lives, including his existence
as Hunwulf the Wanderer and even further back
to the bestial ancestors of humanity. Hunwulf was
a Norse warrior, and the love of his life was Gu-
drun, a beautiful woman who he met while wan-
dering through what would eventually be
northern Europe.
Hunwulf kills the man to whom Gudrun is be-
trothed, and the two lovers flee their people, es-
caping into a land where the natives speak an
unintelligible language, although they manage to
convey a warning about proceeding farther south.
Unfortunately, Gudrun is seized by some large fly-
ing creature during the night, which the natives
insist was a winged man. Hunwulf pursues and
finds an immense, anachronistic tower set within a
garden of odd looking plants. He instinctively dis-
trusts the situation; the plants do not move with
the breeze, and he feels as though he is being
watched by unseen eyes. His caution is rewarded
when a winged man throws a hapless victim from
the top of the tower. The plants attack the sacri-
fice, draining his blood.
The winged man is the prototype of the devil,
a holdover from an ancient race whose line is all
but extinct and whose existence has remained in
our racial memory ever since. Hunwulf is un-
daunted, however, and starts a brush fire to stam-
pede a herd of mammoths, who crush the flowers
and nearly destroy the tower. The winged man flies
off to safety but returns while Hunwulf is scaling
the castle wall, resulting in the final battle during
which the demonic figure is slain, but only because
Gudrun herself intercedes at a crucial point.
Howard’s female characters were rarely reticent
about taking a hand themselves in a battle when
the situation demanded it.
Howard’s speculation that racial memory might
retain the concept of a prehistoric race has been
used many times since in works as disparate as
Arthur C. Clarke’s visionary science fiction novel
Childhood’s End(1953) to the Cthulhu Mythos sto-
ries of H. P. LOVECRAFTand other horror novels such
as Seductions(1984) by Ray GARTON. His depiction“The Garden of Fear” 127