Good Omens: Why Neil Gaiman teamed up with Terry Pratchett
Neil Gaiman photo by Beowulf Sheehan. Terry Pratchett photo by Rob Wilkins.
Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett’s brilliantly dark, screamingly funny take on the last judgment of humankind…
Adapted into a TV show by Amazon Prime, Good Omens is a collaboration from popular authors Neil Gaiman (known for the blockbuster Sandman comic book series as well as novels like American Gods, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book) and Terry Pratchett (best remembered for his 41-novel Discworld series).
According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world’s only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner.
So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon—both of whom have lived amongst Earth’s mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle—are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture.
And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist...
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
By Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett
William Morrow
“Good Omens...is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated. Lots of literary inventiveness in the plotting and chunks of very good writing and characterization. It’s a wow. It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one. Take your pick.” (Washington Post)
“Countless puns, humorous footnotes, and satirical illusions enliven the story. A book that’s sure to appeal to devoted fans of Douglas Adams.” (School Library Journal)
About the Authors
Neil Gaiman is the critically acclaimed and award-winning creator of the Sandman series of graphic novels, and author of the New York Times bestselling novels Anansi Boys, American Gods, and Coraline; as well as the novels Neverwhere and Stardust, the short fiction collection Smoke and Mirrors, and the New York Times bestselling children’s books The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and The Wolves in the Walls. Originally from England, Gaiman now lives in the United States. Visit www.neilgaiman.com
Terry Pratchett is the internationally bestselling author of dozens of books, including his phenomenally successful Discworld series. His young adult novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, won the Carnegie Medal, and Where’s My Cow? his Discworld book for “readers of all ages” was also a New York Times bestseller. Pratchett received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010. In December 2007, Pratchett announced he was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. Pratchett died on 12 March 2015, aged 66. Visit www.terrypratchettbooks.com
Neil Gaiman talks to Michael Chabon about Sir Terry Pratchett
Watch the video below as Neil Gaiman speaks at length about his friend and colleague Sir Terry Pratchett, who died in 2015. Gaiman had some great stories to share, and recalled the experience and process of writing Good Omens with his late friend.
During the video, Gaiman explained the origins of his working with Pratchett on Good Omens. Gaiman said, “We would have the kind of conversations where Terry would say, ‘I’m done with the Discworld, and now I’m gonna do this big science fiction series.’ I’d say, ‘That’s all very well, but I think you should do a book about death.’”
Then Gaiman had an idea for combining an English children’s books series with the plot of The Omen. He wrote the first five thousand words and sent it off to friends to get feedback. Then, about that time, he started writing the blockbuster comic book series Sandman.
“And one day, the phone rings,” Gaiman says, “and a voice on the other end says, ‘That thing you sent me, you’re doing anything with that?’ I said, ‘Well, no, I’m not. I’m writing Sandman and Books of Magic and all this other stuff.”
Pratchett asked Gaiman to either sell him the idea and that opening—or the two of them could write it together—because Pratchett wanted to find out what happens next.
“I said, ‘We are going to write it together,’ because I am not stupid,” Gaiman says. “It’s a lot like Michelangelo phoning you up and saying, ‘Do you want to paint a ceiling together?’ You go, ‘Here is somebody who really knows his craft.’ The opportunity to write a novel with [Pratchett] is the equivalent of the ultimate MFA. So I said yes.”
At that point, Gaiman was still writing Sandman and Books of Magic. About two o’clock in the morning, he’d get out of whatever document he was in, and go over to write Good Omens until about four or five o’clock in the morning. Then he’d sleep.
“We would talk plot on the phone each day for maybe an hour, an hour-and-a-half,” Gaiman says, “make each other laugh, come up with great gags, talk about what we were going to do next, and then it was a mad dash to get to the next good bit before the other one could.”
As Gaiman explains, the two authors divided the work, then reworked each other’s writing. “But as we got toward the end of the book, we started handing bits back,” he says. “By the end, we had each written every character. Then we’d go in and start footnoting each other’s bits or just adding gags to each other’s bits.”
You can watch the video for the whole conversation between Gaiman and Chabon.