One late night in 1986, Neil Gaiman described to editor Richard Evans a new kind of fantasy fiction built around the concept of a magical city. He pointed to recent novels such as Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale and John Crowley's Little, Big as examples of the emerging genre—works that turned New York into a kind of Narnia with skyscrapers and noisy traffic. He wondered aloud why no one had written a story of this sort about London. Evans looked at him and said: "Well, why don't you do it?"
A decade later, Gaiman got his chance. The BBC financed six 30-minute episodes of Neverwhere , a fantasy miniseries set in "London Below," an alternative reality domain located beneath the existing city. His collaborator actor/comedian Lenny Henry had suggested that the plot focus on "tribes of homeless people in London," but Gaiman was resistant to any attempt to glamorize poverty and neglect. When the story finally crystallized, the homeless still figured in the plot, but the tale was infused with a gritty and dark-magic noir ambiance, more like Oz the prison (of HBO fame) than Oz over the rainbow (of Wizardly fame).
"I could talk about homelessness, mental illness, being lost in a big city but also talk about the power that cities have," Gaiman later commented, "and I could do all of that while, at the same time, telling something that is a fantasy series." Although the production was compromised by some ill-advised cost-cutting measures—including a decision to shoot it with videotape rather than film—the show has continued to enjoy a cult following, and stands out for a number of distinctive touches, from set design to music by Brian Eno.
The television series also served as a springboard for a flexible narrative that could morph into a novel, a comic book series, a film script (still in development), even a stage play. Gaiman's 1996 novelization stands out as the best known of these various instantiations of Neverwhere . It became an international bestseller and has been translated into more than 20 languages. Although the book follows closely the script of the miniseries, it gave Gaiman a chance to expand on elements of the story and also bring back scenes eliminated from the screen version, notably a colorful interlude where inhabitants of London Below take over Harrod's for a night and turn in into a magical marketplace—which failed to make it into the BBC series when owners of Harrod's changed their mind about the use of their store as a TV set.
Richard Mayhew, the hero of our story, is a mid-level employee for an investment firm in London. His life revolves around his office cubicle, his ho-hum apartment, and his attractive fiancée Jessica, a pushy young lady who has more ambitions for her future husband than he can muster for himself. But Richard stumbles out of this familiar orbit one evening, when he helps a mysterious young woman named Door escape from her pursuers. Door comes from London Below, and has some dangerous enemies. By befriending her, Mayhew finds he has also cut himself off from his past life—the residents of 'real' London no longer see or recognize him. He has become a non-person, one of those individuals who falls through the cracks of everyday London and ends up in the netherworld beneath the city.
Gaiman's story follows the familiar meme of the heroic vision quest. In order to regain his old life, Richard must join forces with Door and her colleagues—the taciturn bodyguard Hunter and the enigmatic Marquis de Carabas—in overcoming a series of adversaries and obstacles in pursuit of an angel, a magic key, and the door that it unlocks. The ingredients here are familiar from countless adventure and fantasy stories: hired assassins, monstrous creatures, a fortuneteller, talking animals, a maze, hidden passageways and other time-honored elements of speculative fiction. But Gaiman infuses these staples of the genre with such color and panache that, in his hands, even a labyrinth gets some new twists and turns. He has a sure touch for comedy and satire, but never lets it take control of the plot—in the manner, say, of Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. And his smart and smart-alecky dialogue reminds you why the BBC sought him out in the first place to create a TV miniseries.
Here, for example, is a sampling of the repartee of his two leading thugs, Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar— wisecracking and Shakespeare-quoting criminals who seem to enjoy some magical protection against bodily harm:
"So, Mister Vandemar, shall we not also hire ourselves a bodyguard?"
"We don’t need a bodyguard, Mister Croup. We hurt people. We don’t get hurt."
"Oh, Mister Vandemar, if you cut us, do we not bleed?"
Mr. Vandemar pondered this for moment, in the dark. Then he said, with perfect accuracy, "No."
Mayhew seems overmatched at every turn in the underworld, and not just by Vandemar and Croup, who present him with some unusual threats, ( "Do you know what your own liver tastes like? You'll find out, won’t you."), but also by an assortment of other enemies and challenges. He meets up with the Blackfriars at the Blackfriars Underground station—part of an alternative mythology of the London subway system contrived by Gaiman, which also includes an Earl in Earls Court and shepherds at Shepherd's Bush—who force him to undergo an "ordeal" in a locked room. He deals with a pesky underworld girlfriend who hopes to suck the lifeblood out of him. And, finally, in the midst of the maze he encounters Gaiman's stand-in for the minotaur, but with no Ariadne to help him in his struggle.
And, for all this, the stakes are so low—the most Mayhew can hope for is a return trip back to a desk job and his nagging girlfriend. Thus our hero is the mirror image of Gaiman's readers—the latter want escapism from the everyday, the former wants to return to the daily grind. I won't be a spoiler, so you will need to read Neverwhere to see if Richard gets his wish. But as for the readers: they, I assure you, are in safe hands.