Neil Gaiman Event
One of the things I love about living in a big city is that favourite artists regularly turn up to do their thing right on your doorstep. In this case, one of my favourite authors, the multi-talented Neil Gaiman, came to town to promote his newest short story collection, Fragile Things.
The non-existent Germans and I went along to yesterday evening's event which was a talk followed by a signing for several hundred people. We ran into the predictable amount of alt.fan.pratchett people, starting with Ruthi and Supermouse who fed us French pear-flavoured biscuits (known to me and very nice) and jasmine pastilles (unknown to me but also very nice).
Neil started by reading a poem, "The Day the Saucers Came" which I'd read on the web some time ago, but it was unexpectedly better and funnier when read live. He followed up with a funny SF story. I usually have trouble with his short stories, though I love most everything else he's done, but I liked this one as it made more sense than the usual.
Neil ran himself through some frequently asked questions, mostly about movie scripts he'd written and movie adaptations of his work he was involved in, plus his fascinating secret project with Penn (of Penn and Teller) which I don't think we're supposed to talk about, so I won't. He then took questions from the audience which also mostly focussed on movie work although there were some about comics as well. As usual, he was eloquent and gracious in answering questions, even a horror one about Terry Pratchett which had the afpers arrrghing in chorus.
(I'm sure Uwe will oblige with some photos soon as mine were blurry. No pressure, Uwe. :-) Though I suppose this means I should put up my ones from Neil's interview with Lenny Henry from last year. Hm.)
The non-existent Germans and I went along to yesterday evening's event which was a talk followed by a signing for several hundred people. We ran into the predictable amount of alt.fan.pratchett people, starting with Ruthi and Supermouse who fed us French pear-flavoured biscuits (known to me and very nice) and jasmine pastilles (unknown to me but also very nice).
Neil started by reading a poem, "The Day the Saucers Came" which I'd read on the web some time ago, but it was unexpectedly better and funnier when read live. He followed up with a funny SF story. I usually have trouble with his short stories, though I love most everything else he's done, but I liked this one as it made more sense than the usual.
Neil ran himself through some frequently asked questions, mostly about movie scripts he'd written and movie adaptations of his work he was involved in, plus his fascinating secret project with Penn (of Penn and Teller) which I don't think we're supposed to talk about, so I won't. He then took questions from the audience which also mostly focussed on movie work although there were some about comics as well. As usual, he was eloquent and gracious in answering questions, even a horror one about Terry Pratchett which had the afpers arrrghing in chorus.
(I'm sure Uwe will oblige with some photos soon as mine were blurry. No pressure, Uwe. :-) Though I suppose this means I should put up my ones from Neil's interview with Lenny Henry from last year. Hm.)