Further allegations against Neil Gaiman emerge

Tortoise Media has published further allegations against fantasy author Neil Gaiman. Last month, they detailed claims by two women who alleged that Gaiman took advantage of his fame and profile to coerce them into intimate acts they were uncomfortable with. Gaiman has denied the allegations.

One of the new allegations is of Gaiman apparently misreading a situation in the 1980s when he was in his twenties, which he claims was minor. The other allegation is more recent and more serious, suggesting a long-running campaign of coercion in a situation with a serious power differential (Gaiman was allowing a woman and her children to stay in one of his properties rent-free). Gaiman also denies the new allegations.

So far there has been little comment on the allegations by the numerous companies that Gaiman works alongside, such as Netflix (who are airing the Sandman TV series, produced by Warner Brothers) and Amazon (who are producing the final season of Good Omens). UNHCR, the UN refugee agency which Gaiman works for as a goodwill ambassador, has said the allegations are serious but they are still assessing the situation.

Gaiman has also so far only commented on the allegations in responses to the Tortoise Media articles, some handled through his legal team.

Neil Gaiman accused of sexual assault by two women

Fantasy author, editor and screenwriter Neil Gaiman has been accused of sexual assault with two women, one of whom was his employee at the time, as well as a fan. The accusations stem from 2005 and 2022, with the latter incident taking place in New Zealand, where the police have been notified. Gaiman has strongly denied any wrongdoing, claiming relations were consensual and the police have declined his offer to assist in their enquiry.

The Tortoise Media website published an article on the allegations and also released a four-part podcast on the matter yesterday. They reiterate at all times that Gaiman has denied any allegation of wrongdoing.

The later incident stems from February 2022, when Gaiman was 61, that he performed non-consensual acts with a newly-employed nanny, who was 21 at the time, at his residence in New Zealand. Gaiman claims the relationship was consensual and lasted three weeks. The Tortoise alleges to have seen text messages and correspondence suggesting the relationship lasted longer than this and overstepped boundaries. Gaiman has indicated that he was in contact with New Zealand police over the matter and they had declined his offer of an interview, although the New Zealand police have suggested their investigation has been hampered by Gaiman having mostly relocated to the UK and US since the alleged incident.

The earlier incident took place in 2005 when a 20-year-old fan began a relationship with Gaiman, who was 44 at the time, and she claims that he overstepped the boundaries for intimacy in the relationship that she had outlined.

Gaiman has made no direct public comment on the claims so far, only what was quoted in the Tortoise article.

Gaiman is one of the highest-profile living fantasy authors, noted for his Sandman graphic novel series and novels including American Gods, Coraline and Stardust, along with his collaboration with the late Sir Terry Pratchett, Good Omens (all adapted for the screen). Gaiman has been more active in screen work recently, overseeing both a Sandman adaptation for Netflix (currently in post-production on its second season) and an adaptation of Good Omens for Amazon (currently working on its third season). With well north of 40 million books sold, he is frequently cited as a one of the most popular modern fantasy authors and has a substantial fanbase, as well as championing various progressive causes.

So far, there has been no comment on the allegations from any of Gaiman's production partners on the status of these projects.

Gaiman was in an open relationship and later marriage with musician Amanda Palmer from 2009 to 2020, with whom he has a son. He has three children from an earlier relationship. Gaiman courted controversy in 2020 when he flew from New Zealand to Scotland during the COVID pandemic, breaking lockdown rules. He later apologised.

Fallout 4: Far Harbor

A routine case turns up at Valentine's Detective Agency: a young girl has run away from her family, and they want to track her down. The Sole Survivor and Nick Valentine soon discover that the girl has fled to Far Habor, an island located to the north-east of the Commonwealth. Following in her tracks, they find a community fiercely distrustful of outsiders and divided into three camps: the town of Far Harbour itself, the nuke-worshipping cult known as the Children of the Atom and a band of runaway synths dwelling in the scientific outpost of Arcadia. Tensions are rising between the three groups, which is dangerous when one controls a band of powerful robots that can look human and another has access to nuclear weapons. You have to choose which faction to support, or if there is a way to continue the peace and allow the three sides to exist in harmony.

Bethesda RPGs are such gargantuam, time-destroying games (each easily allowing for over 100 hours of gameplay) that the notion of making them even bigger has always seemed a bit redundant. This is especially the case if you've already completed the base game and are entering the expansions as an all-powerful, high-level demigod of destruction. Bethesda's response in the past has been to go completely nuts in originality and experimentation, with their expansions usually being wilder, better-written and more thoughtful than their base games. The Shivering Isles was a huge improvement over the blander Oblivion, Fallout 3's five mini-expansions were much better than the original game (and fixed its truly appalling original ending) and Dragonborn was an excellent mash-up of Skyrim's arctic stylings with the weirdness of Morrowind (arguably, still Bethesda's finest hour). But the highlight of the Bethesda expansion track record (maybe somewhat embarrassingly, as Obsidian actually made them) is easily New Vegas: not only was the base game the most thoughtful, interesting and well-judged of their big RPGs, but its four expansions together made for a fascinating thematic exploration of the philosophy of RPGs whilst also being extremely funny and wildly varying in tone and atmosphere.

Far Harbor isn't competing remotely on the same level as Obsidian's material, but it's more surprising that it also fails to live up to Bethesda's own past achievements. Bethesda have boasted that it's their biggest expansion to date, and that the world map (based on the real island of Bar Harbor, Maine) is the largest they've created for an expansion (if so, it's not by much). However, in terms of locations to visit on that map and the amount of stuff to do it feels slight compared to Dragonborn or Shivering Isles. In terms of the time I spent playing it, it evened out at around 15 hours, which is less than even Old World Blues or Point Lookout, supposed mini-expansions for Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 3 respectively. 15 hours of gameplay is nothing to be sneezed at, but considering that some people have put literally hundreds of hours into Fallout 4 itself it's also not going to be presenting players with a huge challenge.

The game is designed around its three factions and their bases: the human settlement of Far Harbor, the synth base of Arcadia (built in an old observatory) and the Children of the Atom's stronghold of Nucleus, an old nuclear submarine base. In each location you have multiple characters to meet and befriend and a lot of quests to do to build up your reputation with each faction. Ultimately you have to decide on the fate of each faction and the entire island: it is possible to wipe out the entire population of the island if you really want and it's also possible to forge a new peace between the three sides. You can also, laudably, create a messier halfway-house stopgap solution which leaves one or more factions destroyed and the rest angry with you for messing everything up.

That's all fine, but surprisingly short and unchallenging. A lot of the quests for each faction fall back on Fallout 4's biggest weakness, its frustrating and dull overreliance on combat. The Fallout series was, once upon a time, the most roleplaying-intensive of all game series, giving you amazing freedom to complete quests through dialogue, wits, cunning, stealth or combat. Fallout 4 has very little truck with allowing you to solve problems through anything other than bloodletting. Far Harbor does allow you some leeway in how to solve the over-arcing storyling peacefully, but most of the individual quests you do along the way involve having to blast your way to a solution. It's an annoying tendency which is often at odds with the expansion's thematic musings on diplomacy, consequences and regrets for past actions (hint: make sure you take Nick Valentine as your companion, as the game expands a lot on his backstory). If you're coming into this expansion having completed the main game and in the Level 40s or 50s, you'll also find it a complete and total cakewalk (a couple of the tougher robots below Arcadia possibly excepted).

On the plus side, the shorter game length and smaller geographic size of the game allows for a tighter focus on the characters, and there seemed to be more memorable characters with better dialogue than the base game. This comes to life in the game's highlight, a dramatic showdown between the leaders of Arcadia and Far Harbor where your past actions in helping or hindering both sides come dramatically into play (slightly frustratingly, this scene only plays if you've already given up on the "best possible" ending, but then there is a consequence for such things).


Another initial highlight is a side-quest called "Brain Dead", which takes you into a vault populated entirely by robots. A murder has taken place, which quickly turns into a Agatha Christie-style mystery. With robots. This was actually original, zany, well-written and funny, the sort of thing Bethesda used to be really good at. Unfortunately, this quest was quite blatantly "borrowed" from a New Vegas fan mod called Autumn Leaves, which Bethesda apparently have not credited to the original creator, which is definitely not a cool thing.

Overall, Far Harbor (***½) isn't terrible. It's fun, it passes away a few hours and it has some strengths in character and moral decision making that are better than the original game. But it's also lacking in original content and is much slighter than Bethesda made out it as going to be. As possibly the only major, story-focused expansion for Fallout 4 we'll get (the rest have all been cosmetic twinges to the settlement system and allowing you to build new robots), it's severely underwhelming. I would only recommend this at full price to hardcore Fallout 4 fans, and would advise that everyone else wait for the complete Ultimate Edition or for the expansion to be heavily discounted.

WorldCon 2014 announces Jonathan Ross to host Hugo Awards, controversy follows, Ross withdraws

WorldCon 2014, to be held in August in London, announced earlier today that British comedian, talk-show host and celebrity Jonathan Ross will be acting as Master of Ceremonies for the Hugo Award Ceremony. An extraordinarily negative reaction to this decision followed via Twitter and Facebook, resulting in Ross withdrawing before I even had time to finish writing this blog post.

For those not in the know, Jonathan Ross is probably our closest equivalent to an American interviewer like Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien. His Saturday night ITV chat show pulls in 3 million viewers a week or more. Ross is also noted for his geek-friendly views. He is a big fan of TV shows such as Game of Thrones and has championed things like anime, video games and horror movies which other TV commentators would not touch with a bargepole. Ross is also married to scriptwriter Jane Goldman, who co-wrote the movies Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class and Stardust, and has himself written several comic books.

However, the controversy stems from Ross's brand of comedy, which is often confrontational and relies on stereotypes. His humour has been categorised as sexist and occasionally borderline racist (most notably making remarks about the differing skin colours of Madonna and an adopted baby, to her face). Most famously, Ross and fellow comedian Russell Brand got into serious trouble for leaving sexist jokes about the granddaughter of actor Andrew Sachs on his answerphone during a radio show, although they both later apologised. Some of Ross's comments to female guests on his talk show also rely on crude sexual humour a bit too often (one interview with Gwyneth Paltrow in particular seemed to devolve into rather unpleasant sexist jokes quite quickly).

In the interests of balance, Jonathan Ross has also stood up for equal rights in the past: during his BBC morning radio chat show, he made scathing comments about the BBC's lack of ethnic representation amongst its television and radio presenters, comments that could have cost him his job.

For the purposes of hosting the Hugo Awards, I can understand why LonCon decided it'd be a good idea to employ Ross (though it should be noted that he is not being paid). Ross is a huge, bona fide celebrity. It'd raise the profile of the Hugos and Worldcon in the UK more than almost anything else would, and would ensure wider newspaper and television coverage. Ross is certainly one of us, as his personal, extensive collection of vintage toys, games and comics should attest. But he's also a divisive comedian, one whose humour seems to rely too much on belittling others, often on the grounds of gender or sexuality; almost certainly not from some deep-seated prejudice, but more a lazy reliance on obvious sources of humour.

With the other battles SFF fandom is fighting at the moment in trying to make the genre fairer and more inclusive, this was never going to be a popular choice. Indeed, it is impressive how this decision unified almost everyone against it, with multiple fans, authors, editors and attendees suggesting they would boycott the convention and demand refunds if it went ahead with Ross in place. Indeed, one of LonCon's own committee members had already resigned over the issue. Charles Stross also pointed out that inviting someone whom the tabloids are actively trying to attack at every turn is a bad idea regardless of anything else they may say or do.

Even before I finished writing this blog post, LonCon announced that Ross had withdrawn from hosting the event. This is not surprising given the response on social media. However, I think the original idea of getting a well-known, high-profile celebrity to do the job was the right one. I'd love to see someone like Charlie Brooker (an increasingly high-profile British TV personality and writer of the critically-acclaimed Black Mirror SF series), Mark Gatiss (an actor/writer/director/producer on numerous SF projects) or, indeed, Jane Goldman, do the job. It'll be interesting to see who the replacement is.