(https://en.m.wikipedia.org)
A while ago, I gave a brief post about The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman, and I said I would do another post when I finished the book. I had completed it a while ago, but I simply forgot to do this post. So, without further introduction, this is a wonderful read, and I recommend it highly!
Gaiman’s book is a collections of short pieces he has written for a variety of reasons, including people, films, books, writing, and life. If you love his books, then you should enjoy his book.
Here are a few quotations from this wonderful book:
“What speculative fiction is really good at is not the future, but the present. Taking an aspect of it that troubles or is dangerous, and extending or extrapolating that aspect into something that allows the people of that time to see what they are doing from a different angle and a different place. It’s cautionary.” (178)
“Ideas, written ideas are special. They are the way we transmit our stories and our ideas from one generation to the next. If we lose them, we lose our shared history. We lose much of what makes us human. And fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over. ” (181-182)
“And now go, and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make good art.” (459)
I give this book five stars out of five!
Gaiman, Neil. The View from the Cheap Seats. HarperCollins. 2017.
