Today the novelist and screenwriter Neil Gaiman (picture ©Kyle Cassidy) turns 50.

Born on November 10, 1960 in Portchester, Hampshire, in England, Gaiman was able to read at a very early age and started reading anything he could.

In the early ’80s Neil Gaiman worked as a journalist conducting interviews and writing book reviews.

In 1984 Gaiman wrote his first book, a biography of Duran Duran, a pop band that was very famous at the time.

Still in the ’80s Gaiman started writing comic books as well: particularly the series “The Sandman” went on for 75 issues between December 1988 and March 1996.

In 1998 Gaiman published “Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion”, a book about “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and its author Douglas Adams.

Neil Gaiman’s first novel was “Good Omens”, written with Terry Pratchett and published in 1990. In 1996 Gaiman published his first solo novel “Neverwhere”, the novelization of a TV mini-series he contributed to screenwrite though there are various differences with the novel. His 1999 fantasy novel “Stardust” was published in both a standard and in an illustrated edition.

In 1998 the episode of the show “Babylon 5” “Day of the Dead” written by Neil Gaiman was broadcasted, the only episode in the last three seasons of the show not to be written by the show creator J. Michael Straczynski.

In 2001 Neil Gaiman published “American Gods”, a fantasy with a mythological bases novel that brought the author the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, SFX Magazine and Bram Stoker awards. The success was so huge that Gaiman published a sequel in 2005: “Anansi Boys”.

In 2008 Gaiman published the novel “The Graveyard Book” that brought him another Hugo award for the category but also the Carnegie Medal awarded every year to books for children and young adults. A chapter of the novel had already been published in the anthology “M is for Magic” and had won the Locus award as the best novelette.

The broadcast of an episode of the show “Doctor Who” written by Neil Gaiman is scheduled for 2011.

Neil Gaiman keeps on dividing his time among various forms of writing continuing to show that he’s a really eclectic author so let’s hope that he’ll keep on delighting us with his fantasy for many more years!