Neil Gaiman - Fragile Things - Short Fictions and Wonders

“How to Talk to Girls at Parties” © 2006. First publication.

“The Day the Saucers Came” © 2006. First published in the eZine SpiderWords 1, no. 2 (www.spiderwords.com).

“Sunbird” © 2005 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things That Aren’t as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel About Lost Lands, Stray Cell-phones, Creatures from the Sky, Parents Who Disappear in Peru, a Man Named Lars Farf, and One Other Story We Couldn’t Quite Finish, So Maybe You Could Help Us Out.

“Inventing Aladdin” © by Neil Gaiman. First published in Swan Sister.

“The Monarch of the Glen” © 2004 by Neil Gaiman. First published in Legends II.

Frontispiece illustration: A panel from the comic strip “Little Nemo in Slumberland” by Winsor McCay, the New York Herald, September 29, 1907.

FRAGILE THINGS. Copyright © 2006 by Neil Gaiman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Microsoft Reader October 2006 ISBN 0-06-120722-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gaiman, Neil.

Fragile things: short fictions and wonders / Neil Gaiman.-1st ed.

p. cm.

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-051522-5

ISBN-10: 0-06-051522-8

Australia

HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)

Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

Canada

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900

Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

New Zealand

HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

P.O. Box 1

Auckland, New Zealand

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

United Kingdom

HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

London, W6 8JB, UK

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

United States

HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

10 East 53rd Street

New York, NY 10022

http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com