Neil Gaiman and Philosophy

Edited by Tracy L. Bealer, Rachel Luria, and Wayne Yuen

Popular Culture and Philosophy® series

Neil Gaiman is the imaginative wizard behind the best-selling novels American Gods (soon to be an HBO series) and The Anansi Boys, the graphic series The Sandman, and popular children’s books like Coraline and The Graveyard Book.

Neil Gaiman and Philosophy looks at Gaiman’s work through a philosophical lens. How does fantasy interact with reality and what can each tell us about the other? Do we each have other selves who embody different personal qualities? If the unknown influences the known, is the unknown just as real as the known? What makes people truly valuable?

In Neil Gaiman and Philosophy, eighteen philosophers explore Gaiman’s best-loved and unforgettable worlds:

The Graveyard Book, a macabre parallel to The Jungle Book, in which the boy Bod is raised by the supernatural inhabitants of a graveyard.

Coraline, in which a girl neglected by her parents finds another world with an Other Mother who pays her a lot of attention, but then turns out to be evil and won’t let her go.

Neverwhere, in which a London man discovers a magical parallel city, London Below.

The Sandman, best-selling comic books in which the Lord of Dreams attempts to rebuild his kingdom after years of imprisonment.

Good Omens (with Terry Pratchett) treats biblical prophecy, the Antichrist, and the End Times as a hilarious comic tale, filled with sly but good-humored twists and turns.

MirrorMask, where a young circus girl finds that the pictures she has drawn have given her access to a fantastic world of light and shadow, populated with characters who have designs on her.

Wayne Yuen teaches philosophy at Ohlone College in California. Rachel Luria is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. She has published works of short fiction and comics in publications such as The Florida Review, Dash Literary Journal, and Yemassee Literary Journal.