Smoke and Mirrors (book)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**Title** **Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions**

Author	Neil Gaiman
Country	UK, US
Language	English
Publisher
Released
Media type	Print ()
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-093470-0 (US-paperback)

For other uses of the phrase see: Smoke and mirrors (disambiguation).

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions is a collection of short stories and poems by Neil Gaiman. It was first published in the US in 1998, and in the UK in 1999.

Many of the stories in this book are reprints from other sources, such as magazines, anthologies, and collections (including ten stories and poems from Gaiman's earlier small press miscellany Angels and Visitations).

[edit] Contents

The included stories and poems are different between some of the editions. The US, UK, and eBook editions have some differences in the stories they contain (see table to right):

†	Not in US print version
‡	Not in eBook version
*	Appears in eBook version as Apple

Reading the Entrails: A Rondel
The Wedding Present (in the introduction)
Chivalry
Nicholas Was...
The Price
Troll Bridge
Don't Ask Jack
The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories
Eaten (Scenes from a Moving picture) ^†
The White Road
Queen of Knives
The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch ^†‡
Changes
The Daughter of Owls
Shoggoth's Old Peculiar
Virus
Looking for the Girl
Only the End of the World Again
Bay Wolf
Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot ^†
We Can Get Them For You Wholesale
One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock
Cold Colours
The Sweeper of Dreams
Foreign Parts
Vampire Sestina
Mouse
The Sea Change
How Do You Think It Feels? ^†‡
When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, age 11¼
Desert Wind
Tastings
In the End ^†*
Babycakes
Murder Mysteries
Snow, Glass, Apples

[edit] Trivia

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources.
Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. (help, get involved!)
Any material not supported by sources may be challenged and removed at any time. This article has been tagged since March 2007.

In the US mass market edition of the book's cover, there is warped painting with weird things relating to individual stories all over it. In the background is a picture of Neil Gaiman, the author.

In his Live At The Aladdin reading in Portland, Gaiman mentions that, upon catching his son listening to him reading the story "Babycakes" in an audio recording, he thought 'Ewww, that guy is sick!' He says it's the only thing he's ever written that has really disturbed him.

A new tradition in a few Gaiman fans is to write out "Nicholas Was..." and send it around in Christmas cards.^{[citation needed]}