IN his introduction to Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances, Neil Gaiman acknowledges that short stories aren’t the publishing world’s favourite form of fiction. They aren’t seen as ‘real’, in the same way that novels are. They are in fact regarded as vanity projects or low profit sellers. It is, however, only in a short story that the true mettle of a writer is tested. The literary world sparkles plentifully with such gems; barely five or eight pages long but with immeasurable and profound impact.

Gaiman is a prolific writer, who is steadily becoming the crown prince across multiple genres, otherwise ruled by authors like Arthur C. Clarke, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, Terry Pratchett, and Douglas Adams. He writes for young children, young adults and adults, and some of his most celebrated work is graphic novels such as The Sandman series. His celebrity status, helped along immensely by his considerable social media presence, cannot be begrudged. He is an immensely gifted writer, who hides away in a cabin in the dark woods only part-time. The rest of the time, he connects with his readers, and has defied conventional expectations of what a ‘real literary writer’ should be. If you’re still not convinced, know that Gaiman-esque is a recognised description in speculative fiction circles.

Trigger Warning is the author’s third collection of short stories. The stories range from fabulism to folklore legends, horror to fairytales, poetry, and imaginative retellings of popular fiction. For a bonus, there are some stories original to this collection: most noticeably ‘Black dog’, the continuation of Gaiman’s American Gods character Shadow Moon’s story.

The lengthy introduction to the collection is a bonus. Gaiman explains this: “I would respect authors who did not write an introduction, but I could not truly love them as I loved the authors who made me realise that each of the stories in the anthology was written, actually made up word by word and written down by someone human, who thought and breathed and walked and probably even sang in the shower like me”.

He generously introduces each of his stories, complete with the backstory and other unorthodox titbits. This grounds the reader, both in the physical landscape of the man Gaiman, and also in the emotional and intellectual realm of the author Gaiman. For a self-professed Gaiman fan, but more importantly for anyone interested in the craft of writing and how a speculative fiction master creates his stories, this is imperative reading.

Gaiman has the uncanny ability to seamlessly weave together strands from folklore, history, and patches of the mundane, into something incredible. The story ‘The truth is a cave in the Black Mountains…’ is masterfully constructed — not one line goes by without a hint of the sentient darkness lurking at the edges of the story. It dives straight into the recesses of myths and legends — into the misty, deserted, serpentine pathways of the Isle of Skye. It is told by a dwarf, who seeks a reticent guide to lead him up to the cave on the highest perch of the mountains of the Misty Isle, where legend has it that there lies a great treasure in gold. In this journey of two most unlikely partners, there is disquiet; an unsettling determination to find the truth and in doing so, in finding justice for a crime so heinous, it truly deserves a trigger warning.

The language used in the stories is calculated but never contrived, deeply meaningful but not inaccessible, and most importantly, it is welcoming. Tales that are otherwise triggers, as Gaiman announces them in the introduction, for the most unpleasant of feelings and memories are told in a style that would delight a child. It is like eating an impossibly spicy meal, which is a bad omen in every way for your innards, but it’s so delicious that you can’t help but have it.

In ‘The thing about Cassandra’, the story goes from making up that first girlfriend, to 20 years later, unexpectedly finding that girlfriend in flesh and blood, with all the details imagined. It could be a love story, and a clichéd one at that, but in true Gaimen-esque style, the story ends not with an epic affirmation of dreaming up true love, but literally in ashes and dust. It strips a collective fantasy of its romance and instead furnishes it with a climax much darker, and perhaps in a twisted way, more probable.

One of my personal favourites was ‘Nothing o’ clock’— a double-barrelled tale of terror from Gaiman combined with an adventure from the TV show ‘Doctor Who’. The Doctor in his usual steady, charmingly eccentric way goes up against the very scary Kin, creatures as old as the Time Lords and Time itself. Time is the Kin’s power, and they give the old children’s game of asking ‘What’s the time Mr Wolf?’ an apocalyptic new meaning as they plan to eventually take over the world, as is usual in the ‘Doctor Who’ canon. ‘Black dog’ showcases Gaiman’s superb ability to keep creating new paths for old characters, be they ancient gods, fairytale characters or his own creations as in this story, which follows Shadow from American Gods. True to the world that we met Shadow initially in, this story too uses ancient pantheons from lands no longer visible to the jaded eye as its crux. It is, however, a bit hackneyed — especially with one of the main characters turning out to be a spirit only visible to Shadow; in this bit I confess, I felt a bit insulted. There are good ghost stories and bad ghost stories, and this unfortunate addition to a perfectly good tale made it a bad one.

In Gaiman’s world, ‘reality’ as we know it is constantly subject to frequent slips or shifts, depending on how unexpectedly they come at the reader; where displacement of conventional knowledge and rationality is to be expected, and a more primordial and subterranean worldview surfaces. For even the most reluctant reader of speculative fiction, Gaiman pulls out the red carpet. He writes for readers who appreciate the mosaic of imagination, where broken fragments come together in one wondrous whole, pieced together in invisible unity and reaching out to be so much more than the individual parts. Gaiman’s world, like that of all great writers, is a shrine to imagination, celebrating its lurking fears, disturbances and fantasies. Enter at your own risk.

Trigger Warning: Short Fictions and Disturbances

(SCIENCE FICTION)

By Neil Gaiman

William Morrow, US

ISBN 978-0062330260

352pp.