The Sandman: The Dream Hunters

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The Sandman: The Dream Hunters
Dream
Creative team
Written byNeil Gaiman
Artist(s)Yoshitaka Amano

The Sandman: The Dream Hunters is a novella by English author

Buddhist monk and a fox spirit or kitsune
.

Gaiman's afterword states that it was based on an old Japanese

Old Japanese Fairy Tales and retooled to fit in the world of The Sandman, but no such tale is to be found in Ozaki's work. Gaiman has since stated when asked that the story was entirely of his own devising, most recently in the foreword to The Sandman: Endless Nights.[1]

Plot

A

Buddhist monk
from his temple, can claim the temple as its own. Both of them fail, and the badger flees in disgrace, whereas the fox apologises to the monk, and he allows her to stay in the temple.

In a house in Kyoto, a rich

Fiddler's Green and Cain and Abel from the Sandman comics), he arrives at the palace. The gatekeeper, an Itsumade, eventually lets him in. A raven
, who is the departed spirit of a poet, guides him through it, and he is granted an audience.

The King of All Night's Dreaming tells him what the fox had done, and that rescuing her entails the failure of her plan. The monk frees her against her wishes, and the King of All Night's Dreaming allows them a farewell. The monk then takes the fox's place, giving her the advice, "Seek not revenge, but the

Buddha
"; but in conversation with the King of All Night's Dreaming, she resolves to seek revenge first. Following the monk's death, the fox tracks down the onmyōji and seduces him in her human form; then persuades him to destroy his possessions. Therefore, he burns down his house and that of the three women, killing his wife, concubines, and servants in the process. He then returns to the fox, who cajoles him into disrobing, then reverts to her true form and bites one of his eyes.

In the realm of dreams, the King of All Night's Dreaming is satisfied by the story, and that everyone involved learned an important lesson. The narration then suggests that the monk and the fox were re-united in the afterlife; but this is purposely ambiguous.

Comic book adaptation

For the 20th anniversary of Sandman, Neil Gaiman announced at Comic-Con 2007 that P. Craig Russell would illustrate a comic adaptation of the story.[2]

Sandman: The Dream Hunters was released by

Vertigo imprint as a four-issue monthly miniseries from November 2008 to February 2009, featuring cover art by Yuko Shimizu, Mike Mignola, Paul Pope and Joe Kubert
.

Awards

In 2000, it was nominated for the

Hugo Award for Best Related Book[3] and won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Illustrated Narrative.[4][5]

References

  1. ^ Callahan, Tim (17 April 2013). "The Sandman Reread: The Dream Hunters". Retrieved 23 April 2014.
  2. ^ Parkin, JK (28 July 2007). "SDCC '07: The Neil Gaiman Panel". Archived from the original on 29 September 2007. Retrieved 1 August 2007.
  3. ^ "The Locus Index to SF Awards: 2000 Hugo Awards". Locusmag.com. 2 September 2000. Archived from the original on 14 June 2014. Retrieved 22 March 2014.
  4. ^ Koshy, Nithin D. (6 February 2010). "Chasing dreams in an expressionistic Wonderland". Express Buzz. Archived from the original on 9 February 2010. Retrieved 10 February 2010.
  5. ^ "The Locus Index to SF Awards: 2000 Bram Stoker Awards". Locusmag.com. Archived from the original on 3 April 2010. Retrieved 22 March 2014.

External links

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