Gaiman’s Laws

The brilliant Neil Gaiman has laws, my friends. I’m a bit surprised that it took me this long to find it, under the internet rubble, buried deep into the core.

Anyway, I found four. I don’t know how many Gaiman laws there are,  but I found these:

Gaiman’s First Law:  Picking up your first copy of a book you wrote, if there’s one typo, it will be on the page that your new book falls open to the first time you pick it up

Gaiman’s Second Law: All scientifically possible technology and social change predicted in science fiction will come to pass, but none of it will work properly

Gaiman’s Law of Superhero Movies: The closer the film is to the look and feel of what people like about the comic, the more successful it is

Gaiman’s Law of Hotel Rooms: The nicer a room you have been given, the less time you’ll spend there, and you’ll always be there alone.

I am not an author, but I can definitely relate to the first law. I have been backtracking recently on some of my posts, and I found A LOT of typos. But the great thing about blogs is that you can edit, I’m not sure I did though, or how many typos I missed. True for essays, too. Look for copies of your essays, I’m sure there a few typos there as well. It’s not just for authors then. When a person has written something lengthy, and that person reads it days or weeks after it has been posted, or passed, then that person will inevitably come across a typo. That’s a blog-friendly and student-friendly rewording of Gaiman’s first law. Also, it is quite hard to think and type at the same time, sometimes what goes on in your head is not what is being written or typed.

As for the second law, I’ve always wondered what the world would be like if technology from the books make it to the real world. It would be great, no doubt, but will it work? The author of the article linked to Gaiman’s law hit the nail on the head with her analogy

It’s amazing that we have tiny mobile phones with which we can send photographs of masturbating walruses to our friends on the other side of the world, but less fabulous that you lose signal in a five-yard patch on the Hackney Road just as someone is telling you something important.

I find that reading science fiction and fantasy books, or any genre for that matter, quite exhilarating. Just imagining yourself in the company of the characters in the book, walking with them, eating with them, even talking to them, is really an exciting experience. It’s the alternate universe that we’ve been looking for, but it’s not found in the stars, it’s just right there sitting on the counter top, or on the table, there on your hand,and your just flipping through that universe. But if the technology in those books were to come true, the world would be undeniably cool, there’s  just this slight problem of making it work for a long time and it not causing destruction.

Superhero movie law was spot on, actually. I know that there are people who are very protective of comic books and its characters, I live with one, so getting as close as possible to the comic will be a sure fire way get a hit. It doesn’t work for novels though. Movies adapted from novels face one major problem, that even if they tweak the stories or add new characters that should not be there yet, they have to justify the changes that they’ve made, which basically means they have to MAKE IT WORK. Peter Jackson is doing it to The Hobbit, adding characters like Legolas and Galadriel (they should not be there), and just this morning, I found out that Necromancer who is the future Lord Sauron MIGHT physically appear in the movie. But I think it’s going to work, they’re just stitching the Hobbit films to the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

For the hotel room law, well, I’ve never been alone during travels, and I don’t make the reservations…

That’s it for Gaiman’s Laws, I’m glad I found this actually.

Adios!