Thoughts on Recent News of Neil Gaiman

I don’t think I’ve ever had a personal conversation with Gaiman. We exchanged brief emails once when I was SFWA President and soliciting auction items for a fundraiser. And at one point years before then, I interacted briefly at a Locus Awards ceremony and actually won a poster signed by him, which has hung on my walls for years. It’s a complete printing of his “A Study in Emerald”, even signed by him with “To Cat, The game’s afoot.” Nowadays every time I go by it, I think, “Hmmm, maybe that should just come down and go up in the attic.” It’s a pretty frame, if nothing else. At the time I got it framed, I thought it a very special item and splurged a little accordingly.

Since then, it’s lost its shininess. For those not in the know, Gaiman has been accused of sexual assault and coerced sex by multiple women — five so far, with hints that there may be others. There have been apparent NDAs and pay-offs. It’s come out that Clarion had a rule about instructors not having sex with students informally named for him. And while he’s remained mostly silent, while a PR firm industriously scrubs the internet clean wherever it can (including Wikipedia), he’s also indicated that he blames autism for it.

So… a whole lot to unpack here. Let’s go with the most obvious thing first: the vast majority of the F&SF world feels utterly betrayed. Neil was our tousled elfin…