What Neil Gaiman owes to Gene Wolfe...
Oct. 12th, 2003 12:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hmpf(apart from 'the best sentence in the epilogue' of American Gods, as he himself claims):
Certain locales and characters from the Sandman comics have a very, let's say, *Wolfean* feel to them. The necropolis Litharge owes, methinks, a lot to the dying city of Nessus and its necropolis. Also, there is the vaguely Roman/vaguely baroque city and its ruler of that episode where the Cluracan is imprisoned and then freed by Dream after the intervention of his sister. There are similarities in terminology and in names. I think, browsing 'The Book of the New Sun', I even saw the name 'Hermas' somewhere (not to be confused with Hermes, of course). If I remember correctly, that is also the name of one of the what-were-they-called-again-glorified-undertakers of Litharge. And the macabre apprenticeship described by the undertaker's apprentice in World's End (?) is not at all unlike that of Severian the apprentice of the Guild of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence...
Certain locales and characters from the Sandman comics have a very, let's say, *Wolfean* feel to them. The necropolis Litharge owes, methinks, a lot to the dying city of Nessus and its necropolis. Also, there is the vaguely Roman/vaguely baroque city and its ruler of that episode where the Cluracan is imprisoned and then freed by Dream after the intervention of his sister. There are similarities in terminology and in names. I think, browsing 'The Book of the New Sun', I even saw the name 'Hermas' somewhere (not to be confused with Hermes, of course). If I remember correctly, that is also the name of one of the what-were-they-called-again-glorified-undertakers of Litharge. And the macabre apprenticeship described by the undertaker's apprentice in World's End (?) is not at all unlike that of Severian the apprentice of the Guild of the Seekers for Truth and Penitence...
