By Brian EstadtStaff writer

Neil Gaiman doesn’t have much use for garden-variety faeries.

No, Gaiman likes his faeries — the characters who populate his

new book, “Stardust” — a little ferocious. Make that a lot fero-

cious.

“I like faeries that have the idea of wildness,” Gaiman says.

“Faeries from the old legends.”

The type of faeries people believed in the 1890s. Or the 1990s.

Gaiman, writer and creator of the critically acclaimed “The

Sandman” comic book series, recounts a story told to him by his

hostess during a visit to a small Irish town a few years ago.

A town farmer wanted to move a faerie stone that was taking up

good pasture land. His neighbors — no, pretty much the entire

town — cautioned against it, saying the stone obviously had

been put there for a reason.

Moving it, they warned, could be hazardous to your health.

“These aren’t benevolent creatures,” Gaiman says. “Listen to

how people talk about them. ‘The Fair Folk’ — it’s kind of how

you talk about a bully, because if they overhear you, you can get in trouble.”

Of course, the farmer scoffed. The farmer always scoffs in these sort of stories. He moved the faerie stone.

He had a farm to run, after all.

“The next day he had a stroke,” Gaiman says, “and didn’t that just prove it for the townspeople?

“These guys are scary. These guys are primal powers and they don’t have your best interest at heart.”

Billed as a faerie tale for adults, “Stardust” is a romance in the classic sense. Like all classic faerie tales

and fantasies, it starts in the ordinary world — in this case, a small English town —and moves into a

world of fantasy.

When young Tristran Thorn impetuously vows to recover a shooting star for the prettiest girl in town, he

is sent on an adventure into the faerie realm to recover the fallen star.

He’s not the only one. The star also has attracted the attentions of an awfully hungry witch and three

lords who are busy trying to kill — and avoid being killed by — one another.

Plus, the star, who broke her leg during the fall, isn’t interested in spending time with any of her pursuers.

“I love the realm of the imagination,” Gaiman says. “One of the fun things about ‘Stardust,’ is it’s very

grounded. People die there. Weird stuff happens there. There’s poverty. There’s unpleasantness.”

And there’s enough faerie magic to make a reader pause, smile and relive the wonder that many discov-

ered in C.S. Lewis’ “Chronicles of Narnia.” In the pages of “Stardust,” readers encounter trees that separate

flesh from bone with their razor sharp leaves and a ship that sails above storm clouds and uses a copper

chest to fish for lightning bolts.

Neil GaimanMr. Sandman brings a faerie tale

Originally published Jan. 13, 1999, in the east

suburban editions of Gateway Newspapers. Copy-

right 1999 Gateway Newspapers/Trib Total

Media.

As for why he wrote a faerie tale when the calendar is ready to flip

over to 2000, Gaiman says these stories are needed today. Especially

by people who’ve forgotten what a wonderful thing the imagination

is.

“Adults are now being discriminated against. We are an oppressed

minority now,” he says. “We don’t get faerie stories anymore. Kids

get faerie stories.”

A transplanted Londoner living in the Midwest with his American

wife and their children, Gaiman says that, as far as his exposure to

faerie tales goes, his youth was a relatively normal one.

Though he was exposed to some of the darker, older versions of faerie tales, Gaiman also watched and en-

joyed — except for Snow White, that is — the Disney fairy tales. He also recalls reading the Blue and Red

Fairy Books written by Andrew Lang in the late 1800s.

And now, some 30 years after first journeying into the magic lands of faerie, Gaiman wants to help others

return to that wonderful realm.

“The most important thing about faerie stories is they feel right,” he says. “They serve some sort of need.”

Assessing the current state of fantasy writing, Gaiman give a less-than-glowing evaluation.

“I think it’s a very sad state of affairs, that right now what should be fantasy is just imitations of one an-

other,” Gaiman says. “You want imagination and what you get is the same old, same old.”

One reason for that is the number of stories produced that are merely variations on the richly detailed

world that Bilbo and Frodo journeyed through.

“After Tolkien, there was a fantasy genre,” Gaiman says. “You got a lot of people writing books that were,

frankly, derivative; that didn’t have the scope or power of ‘The Lord of The Rings.’

“With ‘Stardust,’ I was trying to write a book that used to get written before Tolkien, before the fantasy

genre.”

No less an authority than the master fabulist Italo Calvino has urged writers to keep it brief. In his manual

for writers, “Six Essays for the Next Millennium,” Calvino extolled the virtues of brevity.

During the writing of ‘Stardust,’ Gaiman has the same mindset as Calvino. He abandoned his computer

and literally penned the first few chapters.

“It wasn’t done for effect,” Gaiman says. “I wanted to be writing from an attitude and from a period before

computers. People get on a computer and they bloat. They get fat.”

Gaiman wanted thin. He wanted a light book that wasn’t lightweight. And he wanted to write pre-Tolkien

fantasy.

“One of the most fun things is I got to write a 1920s book now.”

Though “Stardust” is his first book set in the realms of faerie, it isn’t his first attempt at writing faeries.

Faeries routinely appeared in “The Sandman” — most memorably in Issue 19.

An award-winning story that makes Titania and Oberon’s horde of faeries the audience for the first per-

formance of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Issue 19 featured a telling moment in which

The Puck, Robin Goodfellow, marvels at the magic of human theater.

Delighted by the story unfolding before him, Puck is astonished at the fact that tale told by the play never

happened but is nonetheless true — true to the nature of the Fair Folk.

“That, to me, is the paradox of fiction, of great fiction,” Gaiman says. “It is not true, but it says more about

truth than fiction.

If You’re Going

Neil Gaiman will appear at the

Monroeville Borders this Satur-

day from 12:30 to 2 p.m. In ad-

dition to reading from his new

book, “Stardust,” he will do a

book signing.

“These things reflect. They aren’t true exactly, but they reflect the truth.”

Though he writes of faeries, Gaiman is a realist. At least when it comes to the two versions of his new

book.

One version, published by Avon Books, is an ordinary hardcover book. It has a shiny jacket that says Neil

Gaiman and Stardust and has flattering blurbs on the back.

The other version, published by DC Comics, features 175 paintings by Charles Vess and has an attached

ribbon bookmark. It is richer in appearance and the format enhances the magical nature of the story.

There’s another difference between the two editions. The Avon book will far outsell its DC counterpart.

Though he wishes it weren’t true, Gaiman acknowledge that there is a bias against illustrated stories.

“I would love to be able to say that they’re gaining acceptance, but they’re not. I think it’s sad and funny.”

More sad than funny, to hear Gaiman tell it.

Sandman fans go out of their way to praise the series by pointing out all the classic references couched in

the series. The Shakespearean references. The quotes from “Paradise Lost.” The homage to Chaucer in the

‘World’s End’ storyline.

A lot of times they’ll point to the aforementioned issue 19. Gaiman does, too.

“Sandman 19 was technically one of the hardest things I’ve ever written,” Gaiman says. “It was like doing a

ballet with the story.

“I finished it and lo, it was very good. Charles Vess did some of the finest illustration of his career, and we

were thrilled when it was nominated for the World Fantasy Award. And we were beyond thrilled when we

won the World Fantasy Award.”

“It was the first time a comic had taken on a work of prose and won.”

It would also be the last time.

After “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” took the Howard Phillips Lovecraft trophy, Gaiman celebrated Satur-

day night.

By Sunday morning, eligibility criteria had been amended so that mere comics couldn’t compete with

prose in the Year’s Best Short Story category.

“It was like closing the door after the horse had not only gotten out of the barn but won the Kentucky

Derby,” Gaiman says. “At the end of the day, it was sad, and it was silly. It says that no, we aren’t yet ac-

cepted.”

Not exactly true. Though comics have been barred from competing against prose for the award, Sand-

man’s continued popularity shows that it has truly struck a blow for illustrated tales.

The series and the 10-volume collections of the comic books have drawn rave reviews from Stephen King,

Clive Barker, Normal Mailer and Harlan Ellison to name a few. And countless fans, to not name a lot.

“It’s a 2,000-page story. It’s enormous,” Gaiman says. “It has a beginning. It has a middle. It has an end. It’s

being taught in universities and every so many months someone sends me a master’s thesis on Sandman.

“I wish people were more open-minded. But there is tremendous resistance.”

Saturday, when throngs of fans crowd Borders in Monroeville for Gaiman’s appearance, the powers that

be who run the World Fantasy Convention will be proven wrong again.