One of Neil Gaiman’s long-time employees posted this on the Reddit thread NeilGaimanUncovered. He claims to only be speaking for himself – which may or may not be true – but it’s very informative in how it appears to show how Gaiman and his team are more upset by the growing number of people who are pointing out that he was never more than a mediocre writer than they are to the other negative blows to his reputation, including his erstwhile “sensitive and progressive good guy” persona.
Some people are going around talking about how they never liked Gaiman’s writing, or they always thought that it was derivative and poor. I’m not sure what those people are hoping to accomplish with these statements. It’s like, that’s great for you and your big brain, I guess? You are superior to all the rubes who had the wool pulled over their eyes and fell for his allegedly sneaky writer ways? Better than all the critics and Hugo voters who gave him awards? Better than all the fans who bought his books?
Every time I see one of these posts or replies I just want to ask them, what are you saying about his scores of fans? That you’re better than them? What message are you trying to send to the vulnerable people who say that his work saved their lives, who are now struggling to square that fact with the allegations? I guess that those fans are fools? What does that even say about the victims who were fans? That they were gullible, that if they had been as smart or as discriminating at you then the power dynamic would have been slightly less out of whack because they would not have looked up to him as an author?
I’m just saying…. maybe the discussion should be focusing on the victims and supporting them rather than how superior your taste in literature is.
I can answer those questions, though I can’t answer them there since I’m banned from r/NeilGaimanUncovered, though strangely enough, not from r/NeilGaiman. Go figure.
What we’re hoping to accomplish with our statements about the quality of Neil Gaiman’s writing and his stature as a literary figure is to put him in his true and proper place. The man is not a rock star, he is not even a mainstream celebrity, and he is neither a literary genius nor a top-tier fantasy writer. While he is widely reported to be a bestselling author who has sold more than 50 million books, his close ties to Scientology tend to cast some doubt on the legitimacy of those sales, particularly in light of how his fellow Scientologist, L. Ron Hubbard, is reported to have sold more than 130 million books, most of them to Gaiman and other Scientologists.
Although I was acquainted with a few of the members of his inner circle in Minnesota, I saw no reason to pay any attention to Gaiman whatsoever until after the founding of Arkhaven Comics. As I wrote in 2018:
if you think Neil Gaiman is a great novelist, or even a great SF/F novelist, you are simply wrong. He is a successful, talented and much-loved SF/F author, and understandably so, but he is also little more than a very successful stunt writer with two or three tricks in his bag. There is a reason that all of his notable books involve mythology of one sort or another; his true gift is translating ancient myth into a form that pleases postmodern palates. He also has the ability to convey that sense of the numinous that I lack. But Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, Alan Moore, John C. Wright, China Mieville, Nick Cole, and even George R.R. Martin are all better, more original SF/F writers with considerably more to say about the human condition than Gaiman. When I have thought about the writers whose work I would like to be able to emulate or surpass over the years, Neil Gaiman never once entered into the equation, not even for a moment. Consider that American Gods is described as “Neil Gaiman’s best and most ambitious novel yet.” I liked that story considerably better when it was called Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and On the Road. That being said, of the various comics I have read, Sandman is head-and-shoulders above the rest.
Neil Gaiman is a great comics writer. So is The Legend Chuck Dixon. But writing novels is much, much harder than writing comics, and successful novelists are much better writers than successful comic book scriptors. In the same way that John Scalzi managed to transform his Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer into the perception that he was a Hugo Award-winning novelist, Neil Gaiman transformed his status as a great comics book scriptor into the perception that he was a great novelist. But while Scalzi did eventually win a Hugo Award for best novel, Gaiman never wrote a great or even a very good novel.
Then and now, I would categorize Gaiman as a 4th-tier genre writer. He’s not bad, he’s got a bit of a nice magical veneer, but of the four primary aspects of fiction writing, he has mastered none of them. In none of his works can you give him four stars, let alone five, in any category: Style, Story, Characters, or Creativity. Anyone who is impressed by his works is almost certainly very ill-read indeed; there is a reason his fan base tends to be young and female.
Why does this matter? Because there are those who have actually attempted to excuse and justify his alleged actions on the basis of him being a special literary talent. Setting aside that is no excuse anyhow, it’s also an attempted justification built upon a false foundation. As one Redditor noted:
I was perplexed when I looked online, when the first allegations came out, and several people were saying that Gaiman was an A-tier literary genius (someone said he was objectively in the same league as Woolf and the Brontes) and therefore we should immediately skip to the part where we forgive monumental artists their transgressions, because their writing is truly that transcendentally great.
Perplexed is the correct response. Gaiman not only isn’t in the same league as immortals like the Brontes, he’s not even in the same league as SF/F writers a generation prior who are already being forgotten, writers such as Jack Vance, Tanith Lee, and Ann McCaffrey. One couldn’t possibly compare him to Haruki Murakami, Umberto Eco, or Italo Calvino; even George R. R. Martin is a better and more creative writer. One reason it’s so easy to tell which parts of Good Omens were written by Terry Pratchett and which parts were written by Gaiman is because Pratchett’s contributions, as befitting a 3rd-tier genre writer, are objectively and observably better.
You are superior to all the rubes who had the wool pulled over their eyes and fell for his allegedly sneaky writer ways?
Yes, without question. There is no well-read readers who believe Neil Gaiman is a great writer. It’s not an accident that his most ardent fans are young. They simply don’t know any better. To whom are they comparing him anyhow, JK Rowling?
Better than all the critics and Hugo voters who gave him awards?
Absolutely. The Sad Puppies conclusively proved that the Hugo awards are a popularity contest. NK Jemisin has three Best Novel awards, and even as a genre writer, she’s somewhere around the My Billionaire Dinosaur Boyfriend-level.
Better than all the fans who bought his books?
The clueless and poorly-read fans have already been addressed. The Scientologists who may or may not have been bulk-buying Mr. Gaiman’s books for decades are not exactly known for their literary discernment. Case in point: consider Neil Gaiman’s review of one of the worst science fiction books ever written, Battlefield Earth.
For value for money I have to recommend L. Ron Hubbard’s massive Battlefield Earth – over 1000 pages of thrills, spills, vicious aliens, noble humans. Is mankind an endangered species? Will handsome and heroic Jonny Goodboy Tyler win Earth back from the nine-foot-high Psychlos? A tribute to the days of pulp, I found it unputdownable. And all for 2.95.
“Unputdownable.” Indeed. Of course, since I speak Reviewer, I will grant Mr. Gaiman that at least he recognized how awful Mr. Hubbard’s novel was, since this is the sort of thing that reviewers write when they want to trash a book, but they’re afraid to do so.
That you’re better than them?
Better-read, anyhow. And observably with better taste and more discernment in literature.
What message are you trying to send to the vulnerable people who say that his work saved their lives, who are now struggling to square that fact with the allegations?
His work didn’t save their lives. It couldn’t have. They saved themselves and they don’t need him or his work to serve them as a crutch. They never did.
What does that even say about the victims who were fans?
Don’t get in the tub with Mr. Tubcuddle.
UPDATE: You have to love the meme warriors at r/NeilGaimanMemes.
