Book #83

Sandman III: Dream Country
by Neil Gaiman, et al


I got this for Christmas last year, and never got around to reading it; sometimes I think I've spent almost too much time reading this year, and then I think about all the books I haven't gotten around to reading, and I think I haven't spent enough.

Luckily for me, the Sandman books are fast and easy, though never simple. This one starts with a lovely tale of an author who captured and enslaved one of the original Muses from Greek mythology; he trades her off to another author who is suffering fatal writer's block. The new author rapes the muse and then gets idea after idea, becoming world-renowned almost overnight. Until Morpheus comes, that is: the Sandman asks the author to release his captive, and the author refuses because he says he needs the ideas. So the Sandman gives him ideas: so many he can't stop thinking of them, and he feels compelled to write them down -- and, in a very Gaiman-esque moment, he realizes he doesn't have paper, so he writes in blood on a brick wall, wearing his fingers down to bloody claws. He capitulates and releases the Muse. But the most interesting thing for me was the flow of ideas: I thought immediately, This is what it's like to be in Neil Gaiman's head. I'm sure the Sandman's curse brought the ideas faster, but after all, every one of those ideas came from the author's mind. And some of them are pretty funky: a train full of silent women plowing through the night; a were-goldfish who transforms into a wolf at full moon; a rosebush, a nightingale, and a rubber dog collar. I can't decide if I am envious of Gaiman's brain, or thankful for mine.

The second story is the true history of the world as told by cats. In it, cats used to be the top of the food chain, the size of horses and filled with regal splendor; humans served them, and occasionally became their prey. Until one day a human convinced other humans that they could change things if they dreamed of a different world. So a thousand of them did so, and the world changed to what it is now; and in this story, a cat who had her kittens drowned by her human owner has become a prophet and crusader: she travels the world talking to cats, trying to convince a thousand of them to dream the world back to the old way, where cats were in charge. This was a fantastic story -- but again, and I happy that Neil Gaiman had an idea similar to mine, or does it irritate me that his was published, albeit in a totally different form, while mine is not?

The third story was about Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream; Gaiman had the Sandman commission it from Shakespeare as a gift for the Fae, who come back to the Earth one last time to see the premier, presented in a field on the day in question. This one was beautiful and lyrical and so much sweeter than the average Sandman tale, it was nice. The fourth and last story was not as good, focusing on a woman who suffered an odd curse and became hideously deformed, but also immortal. She wishes for Death, and Death shows up and talks to her for a while before granting her request. It has some neat elements, and I love the happy, carefree attitude of the Sandman's sister, but it wasn't as interesting as the others. I did like reading the script they included afterward, but I don't think I would want to do that. So I won't be writing any comic books. No surprises there.